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Andrew Michael Hurley

The Summer People by a master of suspense

I discovered this tale some time back and it has haunted me ever since. The titular vacationers are a family from New York, who rent a particular off-grid rural cabin each year. During this visit, instead of returning home, they choose to lengthen their holiday for a month longer – an action that appears to disturb everyone in the surrounding community. Everyone conveys a similar vague warning that not a soul has ever stayed in the area after the holiday. Even so, they insist to stay, and that’s when events begin to grow more bizarre. The person who brings fuel won’t sell to them. No one is willing to supply groceries to the cottage, and as the Allisons endeavor to drive into town, their vehicle fails to start. A tempest builds, the power within the device diminish, and with the arrival of dusk, “the elderly couple crowded closely within their rental and waited”. What could be the Allisons expecting? What might the townspeople be aware of? Whenever I revisit the writer’s chilling and inspiring tale, I’m reminded that the best horror stems from what’s left undisclosed.

An Acclaimed Writer

An Eerie Story from a noted author

In this short story a couple travel to a typical seaside town in which chimes sound continuously, a constant chiming that is bothersome and puzzling. The opening extremely terrifying moment takes place after dark, as they decide to go for a stroll and they are unable to locate the sea. There’s sand, there is the odor of rotting fish and brine, waves crash, but the water is a ghost, or something else and more dreadful. It is truly deeply malevolent and every time I travel to a beach after dark I think about this story which spoiled the ocean after dark to my mind – favorably.

The recent spouses – she’s very young, he’s not – go back to the hotel and learn the cause of the ringing, through an extended episode of confinement, necro-orgy and death-and-the-maiden meets danse macabre bedlam. It’s a chilling meditation about longing and decline, a pair of individuals growing old jointly as partners, the bond and aggression and affection of marriage.

Not only the scariest, but probably a top example of short stories in existence, and an individual preference. I read it in Spanish, in the initial publication of this author’s works to be published in Argentina in 2011.

A Prominent Novelist

Zombie from Joyce Carol Oates

I read Zombie near the water in the French countryside recently. Even with the bright weather I felt cold creep over me. I also experienced the electricity of anticipation. I was working on my third novel, and I had hit a block. I was uncertain if it was possible a proper method to craft certain terrifying elements the story includes. Going through this book, I saw that it could be done.

Published in 1995, the book is a grim journey into the thoughts of a murderer, the protagonist, modeled after a notorious figure, the serial killer who murdered and dismembered 17 young men and boys in Milwaukee over a decade. As is well-known, this person was obsessed with creating a submissive individual that would remain him and made many macabre trials to achieve this.

The acts the novel describes are horrific, but similarly terrifying is its mental realism. Quentin P’s dreadful, fragmented world is plainly told using minimal words, names redacted. The audience is immersed trapped in his consciousness, forced to witness mental processes and behaviors that shock. The alien nature of his psyche feels like a physical shock – or finding oneself isolated in an empty realm. Starting Zombie is less like reading but a complete immersion. You are consumed entirely.

Daisy Johnson

White Is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi

During my youth, I was a somnambulist and subsequently commenced experiencing nightmares. At one point, the fear involved a nightmare during which I was stuck in a box and, upon awakening, I discovered that I had removed a piece off the window, seeking to leave. That house was crumbling; during heavy rain the downstairs hall filled with water, maggots came down from the roof onto the bed, and once a sizeable vermin scaled the curtains in my sister’s room.

After an acquaintance handed me this author’s book, I had moved out with my parents, but the narrative about the home perched on the cliffs appeared known to me, longing at that time. It’s a novel concerning a ghostly clamorous, sentimental building and a female character who eats limestone off the rocks. I adored the story immensely and came back frequently to the story, consistently uncovering {something