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A Renowned Horror Author

A Chilling Tale from a master of suspense

I encountered this story some time back and it has lingered with me from that moment. The titular seasonal visitors happen to be a couple urban dwellers, who occupy the same isolated rural cabin annually. This time, instead of going back to urban life, they decide to lengthen their vacation for a month longer – something that seems to disturb everyone in the surrounding community. Each repeats an identical cryptic advice that no one has lingered in the area after the end of summer. Even so, the couple are determined to remain, and at that point events begin to get increasingly weird. The person who brings the kerosene declines to provide to the couple. Nobody will deliver groceries to the cottage, and as they attempt to go to the village, the car fails to start. A storm gathers, the energy in the radio fade, and with the arrival of dusk, “the two old people clung to each other within their rental and expected”. What are the Allisons waiting for? What could the townspeople know? Whenever I read Jackson’s unnerving and thought-provoking story, I recall that the finest fright stems from the unspoken.

Mariana Enríquez

An Eerie Story by Robert Aickman

In this short story a pair travel to a typical coastal village where bells ring continuously, an incessant ringing that is irritating and unexplainable. The first truly frightening scene happens after dark, at the time they choose to walk around and they fail to see the ocean. There’s sand, the scent exists of decaying seafood and seawater, there are waves, but the water appears spectral, or something else and even more alarming. It’s just insanely sinister and every time I travel to a beach at night I remember this narrative that ruined the sea at night to my mind – in a good way.

The recent spouses – she’s very young, the man is mature – go back to the inn and learn the reason for the chiming, during a prolonged scene of enclosed spaces, macabre revelry and demise and innocence intersects with dance of death chaos. It’s a chilling contemplation about longing and decline, two people aging together as spouses, the connection and violence and affection of marriage.

Not just the most frightening, but probably a top example of short stories available, and a personal favourite. I encountered it in Spanish, in the initial publication of Aickman stories to be published locally in 2011.

A Prominent Novelist

A Dark Novel from Joyce Carol Oates

I perused Zombie beside the swimming area in the French countryside in 2020. Even with the bright weather I felt an icy feeling within me. Additionally, I sensed the thrill of anticipation. I was writing my third novel, and I encountered a wall. I wasn’t sure if it was possible an effective approach to write certain terrifying elements the book contains. Reading Zombie, I understood that it could be done.

Published in 1995, the story is a dark flight through the mind of a young serial killer, Quentin P, inspired by an infamous individual, the murderer who murdered and cut apart multiple victims in the Midwest between 1978 and 1991. As is well-known, the killer was obsessed with producing a compliant victim who would never leave by his side and made many grisly attempts to do so.

The actions the novel describes are appalling, but equally frightening is its own emotional authenticity. The protagonist’s awful, fragmented world is simply narrated with concise language, identities hidden. The reader is plunged trapped in his consciousness, compelled to observe thoughts and actions that shock. The alien nature of his psyche is like a tangible impact – or being stranded on a desolate planet. Starting this story is less like reading than a full body experience. You are swallowed whole.

An Accomplished Author

White Is for Witching by a gifted writer

When I was a child, I walked in my sleep and subsequently commenced suffering from bad dreams. Once, the horror included a vision in which I was trapped within an enclosure and, as I roused, I realized that I had torn off a piece out of the window frame, attempting to escape. That building was decaying; when it rained heavily the ground floor corridor filled with water, insect eggs came down from the roof on to my parents’ bed, and once a large rat ascended the window coverings in that space.

After an acquaintance handed me this author’s book, I was residing elsewhere at my family home, but the tale about the home high on the Dover cliffs seemed recognizable in my view, nostalgic as I was. It’s a story concerning a ghostly noisy, atmospheric home and a female character who consumes limestone from the cliffs. I cherished the novel immensely and came back again and again to the story, always finding {something