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Andrew Michael Hurley

The Summer People from Shirley Jackson

I read this narrative some time back and it has haunted me since then. The titular “summer people” turn out to be the Allisons urban dwellers, who rent the same off-grid country cottage every summer. This time, in place of returning to the city, they choose to extend their holiday for a month longer – a decision that to disturb all the locals in the surrounding community. All pass on a similar vague warning that nobody has ever stayed in the area beyond the end of summer. Even so, they are determined to stay, and that’s when things start to become stranger. The man who supplies the kerosene refuses to sell to the couple. Not a single person will deliver food to the cabin, and as the family try to drive into town, the automobile refuses to operate. Bad weather approaches, the batteries within the device die, and with the arrival of dusk, “the aged individuals huddled together in their summer cottage and waited”. What are the Allisons anticipating? What might the locals understand? Each occasion I read this author’s chilling and thought-provoking narrative, I’m reminded that the finest fright comes from that which remains hidden.

Mariana Enríquez

Ringing the Changes from a noted author

In this concise narrative two people journey to a common coastal village where church bells toll constantly, a constant chiming that is annoying and unexplainable. The opening very scary episode happens after dark, as they opt to go for a stroll and they fail to see the water. The beach is there, the scent exists of rotting fish and salt, there are waves, but the water appears spectral, or a different entity and more dreadful. It is simply deeply malevolent and every time I travel to the coast after dark I remember this narrative that ruined the ocean after dark for me – positively.

The young couple – the woman is adolescent, the man is mature – return to the hotel and discover why the bells ring, through an extended episode of enclosed spaces, gruesome festivities and death-and-the-maiden encounters grim ballet pandemonium. It is a disturbing reflection on desire and decline, two people growing old jointly as spouses, the bond and brutality and gentleness of marriage.

Not merely the most terrifying, but perhaps a top example of brief tales in existence, and a personal favourite. I read it in Spanish, in the initial publication of Aickman stories to be released locally several years back.

A Prominent Novelist

Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates

I perused this narrative near the water overseas recently. Despite the sunshine I sensed a chill over me. Additionally, I sensed the electricity of anticipation. I was writing my third novel, and I encountered an obstacle. I was uncertain if there was a proper method to compose certain terrifying elements the book contains. Experiencing this novel, I understood that it was possible.

Released decades ago, the book is a grim journey through the mind of a criminal, Quentin P, inspired by Jeffrey Dahmer, the criminal who murdered and dismembered 17 young men and boys in a city during a specific period. Infamously, this person was consumed with creating a submissive individual who would stay him and made many grisly attempts to accomplish it.

The deeds the story tells are terrible, but similarly terrifying is its emotional authenticity. Quentin P’s dreadful, fragmented world is simply narrated with concise language, names redacted. The reader is plunged caught in his thoughts, compelled to see ideas and deeds that horrify. The strangeness of his psyche resembles a bodily jolt – or finding oneself isolated on a desolate planet. Entering this story is not just reading but a complete immersion. You are swallowed whole.

An Accomplished Author

White Is for Witching from Helen Oyeyemi

During my youth, I was a somnambulist and later started having night terrors. At one point, the fear featured a nightmare in which I was confined in a box and, upon awakening, I discovered that I had torn off a piece off the window, seeking to leave. That building was crumbling; when it rained heavily the entranceway became inundated, maggots fell from the ceiling into the bedroom, and once a big rodent ascended the window coverings in my sister’s room.

When a friend presented me with Helen Oyeyemi’s novel, I was residing elsewhere in my childhood residence, but the tale about the home located on the coastline seemed recognizable in my view, longing at that time. This is a story about a haunted noisy, atmospheric home and a girl who consumes calcium from the cliffs. I loved the book immensely and returned frequently to it, each time discovering {something