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A Renowned Horror Author

The Summer People from Shirley Jackson

I read this tale some time back and it has haunted me from that moment. The titular seasonal visitors turn out to be the Allisons from New York, who rent an identical remote lakeside house each year. This time, instead of heading back home, they opt to extend their vacation a few more weeks – something that seems to disturb all the locals in the nearby town. Each repeats a similar vague warning that nobody has remained at the lake after the holiday. Regardless, the Allisons insist to not leave, and that is the moment events begin to become stranger. The individual who delivers fuel declines to provide to the couple. No one will deliver food to the cottage, and at the time they attempt to go to the village, the car fails to start. Bad weather approaches, the power of their radio fade, and as darkness falls, “the two old people huddled together within their rental and anticipated”. What could be this couple waiting for? What could the residents be aware of? Whenever I revisit Jackson’s disturbing and inspiring narrative, I’m reminded that the best horror stems from the unspoken.

Mariana Enríquez

Ringing the Changes by a noted author

In this concise narrative two people journey to a typical beach community where bells ring the whole time, an incessant ringing that is annoying and puzzling. The initial truly frightening episode occurs after dark, as they opt to take a walk and they can’t find the sea. There’s sand, there’s the smell of rotting fish and seawater, there are waves, but the ocean appears spectral, or something else and worse. It is simply insanely sinister and every time I go to the coast at night I recall this narrative which spoiled the sea at night to my mind – positively.

The recent spouses – the wife is youthful, he’s not – head back to their lodging and learn the reason for the chiming, during a prolonged scene of claustrophobia, necro-orgy and mortality and youth meets grim ballet pandemonium. It’s an unnerving meditation on desire and deterioration, a pair of individuals growing old jointly as partners, the bond and brutality and affection of marriage.

Not only the scariest, but perhaps among the finest brief tales available, and an individual preference. I experienced it in Spanish, in the first edition of Aickman stories to be published in this country a decade ago.

Catriona Ward

Zombie from an esteemed writer

I read Zombie by a pool in France recently. Although it was sunny I sensed a chill over me. I also experienced the thrill of anticipation. I was working on a new project, and I faced an obstacle. I wasn’t sure whether there existed an effective approach to write some of the fearful things the narrative involves. Reading Zombie, I saw that it was possible.

First printed in the nineties, the book is a grim journey into the thoughts of a young serial killer, the protagonist, based on a notorious figure, the murderer who murdered and dismembered 17 young men and boys in Milwaukee over a decade. Infamously, Dahmer was fixated with making a zombie sex slave that would remain with him and attempted numerous horrific efforts to do so.

The deeds the novel describes are terrible, but equally frightening is its own emotional authenticity. The protagonist’s dreadful, shattered existence is directly described with concise language, names redacted. The audience is sunk deep stuck in his mind, compelled to observe ideas and deeds that horrify. The alien nature of his psyche resembles a physical shock – or finding oneself isolated on a desolate planet. Entering Zombie feels different from reading but a complete immersion. You are absorbed completely.

Daisy Johnson

A Haunting Novel by Helen Oyeyemi

In my early years, I walked in my sleep and eventually began having night terrors. Once, the horror included a vision during which I was trapped within an enclosure and, when I woke up, I realized that I had ripped the slat out of the window frame, seeking to leave. That house was decaying; when it rained heavily the entranceway flooded, insect eggs fell from the ceiling onto the bed, and at one time a big rodent ascended the window coverings in the bedroom.

Once a companion presented me with Helen Oyeyemi’s novel, I was residing elsewhere at my family home, but the tale about the home high on the Dover cliffs felt familiar to me, homesick at that time. It’s a story concerning a ghostly loud, emotional house and a female character who consumes chalk from the cliffs. I cherished the story deeply and came back frequently to it, consistently uncovering {something