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A Renowned Horror Author

The Summer People from a master of suspense

I encountered this story some time back and it has lingered with me since then. The named vacationers turn out to be a couple from New York, who rent a particular off-grid country cottage every summer. On this occasion, in place of heading back home, they opt to prolong their stay a few more weeks – a decision that to unsettle all the locals in the surrounding community. All pass on the same veiled caution that not a soul has remained at the lake past the end of summer. Regardless, the Allisons are resolved to not leave, and that is the moment things start to become stranger. The individual who delivers oil refuses to sell for them. No one is willing to supply food to the cabin, and when they endeavor to travel to the community, the car won’t start. Bad weather approaches, the power of their radio diminish, and when night comes, “the two old people crowded closely in their summer cottage and waited”. What might be they expecting? What do the locals understand? Each occasion I peruse Jackson’s unnerving and influential story, I remember that the finest fright stems from that which remains hidden.

Mariana Enríquez

An Eerie Story by a noted author

In this concise narrative a pair travel to a typical beach community where church bells toll constantly, a constant chiming that is bothersome and unexplainable. The initial very scary scene happens at night, when they choose to walk around and they are unable to locate the ocean. The beach is there, there is the odor of decaying seafood and salt, waves crash, but the water seems phantom, or another thing and worse. It is simply deeply malevolent and each occasion I go to a beach at night I recall this story that ruined the ocean after dark in my view – in a good way.

The newlyweds – she’s very young, the husband is older – go back to their lodging and discover why the bells ring, in a long sequence of claustrophobia, macabre revelry and mortality and youth meets grim ballet pandemonium. It is a disturbing reflection about longing and deterioration, two people aging together as spouses, the attachment and brutality and tenderness within wedlock.

Not just the scariest, but perhaps a top example of short stories out there, and a beloved choice. I read it in the Spanish language, in the debut release of these tales to appear locally in 2011.

Catriona Ward

Zombie from Joyce Carol Oates

I read this book by a pool in France in 2020. Although it was sunny I sensed a chill within me. I also felt the thrill of anticipation. I was writing my latest book, and I encountered an obstacle. I was uncertain whether there existed a proper method to write some of the fearful things the narrative involves. Going through this book, I saw that it was possible.

First printed in the nineties, the story is a grim journey into the thoughts of a young serial killer, the main character, modeled after Jeffrey Dahmer, the serial killer who slaughtered and mutilated numerous individuals in Milwaukee during a specific period. Infamously, the killer was obsessed with creating a zombie sex slave that would remain with him and made many horrific efforts to achieve this.

The deeds the story tells are terrible, but just as scary is the mental realism. Quentin P’s dreadful, shattered existence is directly described in spare prose, details omitted. The reader is plunged stuck in his mind, compelled to see mental processes and behaviors that appal. The foreignness of his thinking resembles a tangible impact – or finding oneself isolated on a barren alien world. Entering this book is not just reading than a full body experience. You are absorbed completely.

Daisy Johnson

A Haunting Novel from Helen Oyeyemi

When I was a child, I sleepwalked and eventually began experiencing nightmares. At one point, the horror involved a vision where I was stuck within an enclosure and, when I woke up, I discovered that I had removed the slat out of the window frame, trying to get out. That house was crumbling; when it rained heavily the downstairs hall became inundated, insect eggs came down from the roof onto the bed, and at one time a large rat climbed the drapes in the bedroom.

After an acquaintance handed me this author’s book, I had moved out with my parents, but the story about the home perched on the cliffs seemed recognizable in my view, longing at that time. It is a novel about a haunted noisy, atmospheric home and a female character who consumes limestone from the shoreline. I cherished the book immensely and came back again and again to its pages, each time discovering {something