Frightening Novelists Discuss the Most Terrifying Narratives They've Ever Experienced

A Renowned Horror Author

A Chilling Tale by a master of suspense

I read this story long ago and it has haunted me since then. The titular “summer people” are the Allisons urban dwellers, who rent the same off-grid lakeside house each year. This time, in place of heading back home, they decide to extend their holiday for a month longer – something that seems to disturb everyone in the surrounding community. Each repeats the same veiled caution that nobody has remained in the area past Labor Day. Even so, the Allisons are determined to remain, and that’s when events begin to get increasingly weird. The person who supplies oil won’t sell to the couple. No one agrees to bring food to the cabin, and at the time the family try to drive into town, their vehicle fails to start. Bad weather approaches, the energy of their radio die, and with the arrival of dusk, “the aged individuals huddled together in their summer cottage and expected”. What might be they expecting? What do the townspeople understand? Every time I revisit Jackson’s chilling and inspiring narrative, I’m reminded that the top terror stems from that which remains hidden.

An Acclaimed Writer

An Eerie Story by Robert Aickman

In this short story a pair go to an ordinary coastal village in which chimes sound constantly, an incessant ringing that is annoying and puzzling. The initial truly frightening episode takes place during the evening, when they decide to go for a stroll and they can’t find the ocean. Sand is present, the scent exists of decaying seafood and salt, there are waves, but the sea seems phantom, or a different entity and even more alarming. It is truly deeply malevolent and each occasion I visit to a beach at night I recall this narrative that destroyed the ocean after dark to my mind – positively.

The newlyweds – she’s very young, he’s not – return to the inn and discover the reason for the chiming, during a prolonged scene of claustrophobia, gruesome festivities and mortality and youth intersects with grim ballet chaos. It’s a chilling contemplation regarding craving and decay, two bodies maturing in tandem as a couple, the connection and violence and affection of marriage.

Not merely the scariest, but probably among the finest short stories out there, and a beloved choice. I read it en español, in the debut release of this author’s works to be released locally several years back.

A Prominent Novelist

Zombie by an esteemed writer

I read Zombie by a pool in the French countryside recently. Even with the bright weather I experienced an icy feeling through me. I also felt the thrill of excitement. I was composing my third novel, and I encountered a wall. I didn’t know if there was a proper method to craft various frightening aspects the book contains. Experiencing this novel, I realized that it could be done.

First printed in the nineties, the novel is a grim journey through the mind of a criminal, the main character, based on an infamous individual, the serial killer who murdered and mutilated numerous individuals in Milwaukee over a decade. Notoriously, this person was fixated with producing a zombie sex slave who would stay him and made many macabre trials to accomplish it.

The actions the novel describes are horrific, but equally frightening is the mental realism. Quentin P’s dreadful, shattered existence is directly described in spare prose, identities hidden. You is sunk deep trapped in his consciousness, forced to witness ideas and deeds that shock. The foreignness of his mind feels like a tangible impact – or finding oneself isolated in an empty realm. Going into this story is not just reading but a complete immersion. You are swallowed whole.

An Accomplished Author

White Is for Witching from Helen Oyeyemi

When I was a child, I walked in my sleep and later started having night terrors. At one point, the horror featured a dream where I was confined in a box and, upon awakening, I realized that I had ripped a piece out of the window frame, attempting to escape. That house was falling apart; when storms came the entranceway became inundated, maggots came down from the roof onto the bed, and once a large rat climbed the drapes in that space.

When a friend presented me with this author’s book, I had moved out with my parents, but the tale of the house perched on the cliffs seemed recognizable in my view, longing at that time. It is a book featuring a possessed noisy, sentimental building and a female character who eats chalk from the shoreline. I adored the novel so much and returned frequently to it, each time discovering {something