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Andrew Michael Hurley

A Chilling Tale by a master of suspense

I discovered this tale years ago and it has stayed with me ever since. The titular “summer people” are a family from New York, who rent a particular isolated lakeside house every summer. On this occasion, instead of going back home, they opt to lengthen their vacation for a month longer – something that seems to unsettle everyone in the nearby town. All pass on the same veiled caution that no one has ever stayed by the water after the end of summer. Nonetheless, the couple are determined to stay, and that’s when things start to become stranger. The person who brings the kerosene refuses to sell to them. Nobody is willing to supply supplies to their home, and when they endeavor to go to the village, their vehicle won’t start. A tempest builds, the batteries in the radio die, and when night comes, “the two old people clung to each other in their summer cottage and anticipated”. What might be this couple expecting? What might the residents know? Every time I peruse this author’s chilling and inspiring narrative, I recall that the top terror stems from the unspoken.

Mariana Enríquez

An Eerie Story from a noted author

In this brief tale two people journey to a common beach community where church bells toll continuously, a perpetual pealing that is annoying and unexplainable. The first extremely terrifying moment takes place after dark, when they choose to walk around and they can’t find the sea. There’s sand, the scent exists of rotting fish and seawater, surf is audible, but the sea seems phantom, or something else and worse. It’s just deeply malevolent and whenever I travel to a beach at night I recall this narrative that ruined the sea at night to my mind – favorably.

The recent spouses – the woman is adolescent, the man is mature – return to the hotel and find out why the bells ring, through an extended episode of claustrophobia, gruesome festivities and mortality and youth intersects with dance of death bedlam. It’s a chilling meditation on desire and decay, two people aging together as partners, the connection and violence and gentleness of marriage.

Not merely the most frightening, but perhaps among the finest short stories in existence, and an individual preference. I read it en español, in the initial publication of Aickman stories to be published locally in 2011.

Catriona Ward

A Dark Novel by an esteemed writer

I perused Zombie near the water in France a few years ago. Despite the sunshine I sensed an icy feeling through me. I also felt the thrill of fascination. I was working on my third novel, and I encountered a block. I wasn’t sure whether there existed any good way to craft certain terrifying elements the story includes. Going through this book, I saw that it was possible.

Released decades ago, the book is a grim journey through the mind of a young serial killer, the main character, based on Jeffrey Dahmer, the murderer who slaughtered and mutilated multiple victims in the Midwest between 1978 and 1991. Notoriously, Dahmer was consumed with producing a compliant victim who would never leave by his side and attempted numerous horrific efforts to accomplish it.

The deeds the novel describes are horrific, but similarly terrifying is its mental realism. Quentin P’s terrible, shattered existence is plainly told using minimal words, names redacted. You is sunk deep caught in his thoughts, forced to observe ideas and deeds that horrify. The strangeness of his thinking resembles a tangible impact – or finding oneself isolated on a barren alien world. Going into this story is less like reading than a full body experience. You are absorbed completely.

An Accomplished Author

White Is for Witching by a gifted writer

During my youth, I sleepwalked and later started having night terrors. On one occasion, the horror featured a vision during which I was trapped in a box and, upon awakening, I discovered that I had removed a piece out of the window frame, seeking to leave. That building was decaying; when it rained heavily the downstairs hall filled with water, maggots fell from the ceiling on to my parents’ bed, and on one occasion a large rat climbed the drapes in that space.

After an acquaintance gave me the story, I was residing elsewhere with my parents, but the tale about the home high on the Dover cliffs felt familiar to myself, longing as I was. This is a novel about a haunted noisy, emotional house and a young woman who ingests calcium off the rocks. I adored the story immensely and came back repeatedly to the story, consistently uncovering {something