Horror Novelists Reveal the Scariest Stories They have Actually Read
Andrew Michael Hurley
A Chilling Tale from Shirley Jackson
I discovered this narrative some time back and it has stayed with me ever since. The named vacationers turn out to be the Allisons from New York, who occupy an identical remote lakeside house each year. This time, instead of going back to the city, they choose to extend their holiday an extra month – something that seems to unsettle everyone in the adjacent village. Each repeats an identical cryptic advice that not a soul has remained in the area after the end of summer. Even so, the couple insist to not leave, and that is the moment things start to grow more bizarre. The individual who supplies the kerosene won’t sell to the couple. Nobody agrees to bring supplies to the cottage, and when the Allisons try to travel to the community, the automobile refuses to operate. A storm gathers, the batteries in the radio fade, and as darkness falls, “the two old people huddled together within their rental and anticipated”. What might be they expecting? What could the townspeople understand? Every time I read the writer’s unnerving and influential narrative, I remember that the finest fright stems from what’s left undisclosed.
An Acclaimed Writer
Ringing the Changes from Robert Aickman
In this brief tale a pair go to an ordinary coastal village in which chimes sound the whole time, a perpetual pealing that is irritating and puzzling. The first truly frightening moment occurs during the evening, when they decide to walk around and they are unable to locate the sea. The beach is there, there’s the smell of decaying seafood and salt, surf is audible, but the sea appears spectral, or something else and more dreadful. It is truly profoundly ominous and every time I visit to the shore in the evening I recall this tale which spoiled the ocean after dark to my mind – positively.
The recent spouses – the wife is youthful, he’s not – head back to the hotel and learn the reason for the chiming, in a long sequence of claustrophobia, macabre revelry and demise and innocence meets danse macabre chaos. It is a disturbing meditation on desire and decline, a pair of individuals maturing in tandem as partners, the bond and aggression and tenderness of marriage.
Not merely the scariest, but probably among the finest brief tales available, and a beloved choice. I read it in the Spanish language, in the first edition of these tales to be released in this country several years back.
A Prominent Novelist
Zombie by an esteemed writer
I read Zombie by a pool in France recently. Even with the bright weather I experienced a chill through me. I also felt the excitement of excitement. I was working on my latest book, and I encountered a wall. I didn’t know if there was an effective approach to craft some of the fearful things the book contains. Experiencing this novel, I realized that it was possible.
Released decades ago, the book is a bleak exploration through the mind of a criminal, the main character, modeled after Jeffrey Dahmer, the serial killer who killed and cut apart 17 young men and boys in the Midwest over a decade. As is well-known, the killer was consumed with making a zombie sex slave that would remain with him and made many grisly attempts to achieve this.
The actions the novel describes are terrible, but equally frightening is the mental realism. The character’s terrible, fragmented world is plainly told with concise language, identities hidden. The audience is sunk deep stuck in his mind, compelled to witness mental processes and behaviors that appal. The strangeness of his psyche is like a tangible impact – or being stranded on a desolate planet. Going into this book is less like reading but a complete immersion. You are swallowed whole.
Daisy Johnson
A Haunting Novel by Helen Oyeyemi
During my youth, I was a somnambulist and eventually began experiencing nightmares. At one point, the terror involved a dream in which I was trapped inside a container and, when I woke up, I found that I had ripped a part out of the window frame, seeking to leave. That house was crumbling; when it rained heavily the downstairs hall flooded, insect eggs came down from the roof onto the bed, and on one occasion a large rat ascended the window coverings in my sister’s room.
Once a companion presented me with the story, I was no longer living with my parents, but the tale regarding the building located on the coastline felt familiar to me, nostalgic at that time. This is a novel concerning a ghostly loud, emotional house and a young woman who eats limestone from the shoreline. I adored the book so much and returned frequently to the story, always finding {something
