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A Renowned Horror Author

The Summer People by Shirley Jackson

I encountered this story years ago and it has lingered with me since then. The so-called “summer people” turn out to be a family from the city, who occupy the same isolated lakeside house every summer. On this occasion, rather than heading back to the city, they opt to extend their stay a few more weeks – something that seems to disturb all the locals in the adjacent village. Each repeats the same veiled caution that not a soul has ever stayed in the area beyond the holiday. Even so, the Allisons are resolved to stay, and that’s when events begin to get increasingly weird. The person who brings fuel declines to provide to the couple. Nobody agrees to bring supplies to their home, and as they endeavor to go to the village, their vehicle won’t start. A tempest builds, the energy in the radio die, and when night comes, “the elderly couple huddled together within their rental and waited”. What could be this couple waiting for? What might the locals know? Each occasion I revisit this author’s unnerving and thought-provoking story, I remember that the finest fright comes from that which remains hidden.

Mariana Enríquez

Ringing the Changes by a noted author

In this concise narrative a pair travel to an ordinary coastal village where church bells toll continuously, an incessant ringing that is irritating and inexplicable. The initial truly frightening episode occurs during the evening, when they choose to walk around and they are unable to locate the sea. Sand is present, there’s the smell of putrid marine life and salt, there are waves, but the ocean seems phantom, or another thing and even more alarming. It’s just deeply malevolent and each occasion I travel to the coast after dark I think about this tale that ruined the beach in the evening for me – positively.

The young couple – she’s very young, the husband is older – head back to the inn and learn why the bells ring, in a long sequence of claustrophobia, gruesome festivities and death-and-the-maiden intersects with dance of death chaos. It’s a chilling reflection about longing and decline, a pair of individuals aging together as a couple, the connection and brutality and gentleness within wedlock.

Not just the scariest, but probably one of the best short stories available, and a beloved choice. I read it en español, in the first edition of Aickman stories to be published locally several years back.

Catriona Ward

A Dark Novel from an esteemed writer

I read this narrative by a pool in the French countryside a few years ago. Even with the bright weather I sensed an icy feeling over me. I also felt the thrill of anticipation. I was working on a new project, and I had hit an obstacle. I was uncertain whether there existed any good way to craft some of the fearful things the narrative involves. Going through this book, I saw that it was possible.

First printed in the nineties, the book is a bleak exploration within the psyche of a young serial killer, the main character, inspired by an infamous individual, the serial killer who killed and mutilated multiple victims in a city during a specific period. As is well-known, the killer was fixated with making a zombie sex slave who would never leave by his side and carried out several grisly attempts to do so.

The deeds the book depicts are horrific, but equally frightening is its psychological persuasiveness. Quentin P’s dreadful, shattered existence is simply narrated with concise language, names redacted. The reader is plunged stuck in his mind, forced to observe mental processes and behaviors that shock. The strangeness of his psyche is like a bodily jolt – or getting lost on a desolate planet. Going into this story feels different from reading than a full body experience. You are consumed entirely.

Daisy Johnson

A Haunting Novel from a gifted writer

During my youth, I was a somnambulist and eventually began experiencing nightmares. Once, the horror included a vision where I was stuck inside a container and, when I woke up, I discovered that I had removed a piece out of the window frame, seeking to leave. That building was falling apart; during heavy rain the ground floor corridor became inundated, maggots fell from the ceiling onto the bed, and once a large rat scaled the curtains in my sister’s room.

Once a companion gave me this author’s book, I was residing elsewhere with my parents, but the tale regarding the building perched on the cliffs seemed recognizable to me, nostalgic as I was. This is a novel concerning a ghostly noisy, sentimental building and a female character who ingests chalk off the rocks. I cherished the story immensely and returned frequently to the story, each time discovering {something