Frightening Novelists Share the Scariest Narratives They have Ever Experienced
Andrew Michael Hurley
A Chilling Tale by Shirley Jackson
I discovered this story long ago and it has lingered with me ever since. The so-called “summer people” turn out to be the Allisons from the city, who rent an identical remote country cottage every summer. This time, in place of returning home, they opt to lengthen their stay an extra month – a decision that to alarm all the locals in the nearby town. All pass on the same veiled caution that nobody has lingered by the water past Labor Day. Even so, the couple insist to not leave, and that’s when things start to become stranger. The individual who delivers the kerosene refuses to sell for them. Nobody agrees to bring food to their home, and when the Allisons try to go to the village, their vehicle fails to start. A tempest builds, the batteries within the device diminish, and with the arrival of dusk, “the aged individuals clung to each other in their summer cottage and anticipated”. What are this couple anticipating? What could the locals understand? Each occasion I revisit the writer’s disturbing and influential tale, I’m reminded that the best horror originates in that which remains hidden.
An Acclaimed Writer
An Eerie Story by Robert Aickman
In this concise narrative a pair journey to a common beach community where church bells toll continuously, a constant chiming that is irritating and puzzling. The first extremely terrifying scene occurs after dark, when they choose to go for a stroll and they can’t find the water. Sand is present, there’s the smell of decaying seafood and salt, surf is audible, but the water is a ghost, or something else and even more alarming. It is truly profoundly ominous and every time I travel to the coast in the evening I remember this narrative which spoiled the beach in the evening for me – favorably.
The recent spouses – she’s very young, the man is mature – head back to the hotel and find out the reason for the chiming, through an extended episode of confinement, macabre revelry and death-and-the-maiden meets dance of death chaos. It is a disturbing reflection about longing and deterioration, a pair of individuals aging together as partners, the bond and violence and tenderness within wedlock.
Not merely the most terrifying, but perhaps one of the best short stories available, and a beloved choice. I encountered it in the Spanish language, in the first edition of this author’s works to be published in this country several years back.
A Prominent Novelist
Zombie from Joyce Carol Oates
I read this narrative beside the swimming area in the French countryside in 2020. Even with the bright weather I experienced a chill through me. I also experienced the excitement of excitement. I was working on my latest book, and I encountered an obstacle. I was uncertain if there was a proper method to craft certain terrifying elements the story includes. Going through this book, I realized that there was a way.
Released decades ago, the story is a grim journey within the psyche of a young serial killer, the main character, modeled after a notorious figure, the criminal who murdered and cut apart numerous individuals in Milwaukee between 1978 and 1991. Infamously, this person was obsessed with producing a submissive individual who would never leave by his side and attempted numerous macabre trials to do so.
The acts the novel describes are horrific, but just as scary is its emotional authenticity. The character’s awful, broken reality is simply narrated in spare prose, details omitted. The audience is plunged stuck in his mind, forced to observe ideas and deeds that appal. The alien nature of his mind feels like a tangible impact – or finding oneself isolated on a desolate planet. Starting this story is not just reading but a complete immersion. You are swallowed whole.
An Accomplished Author
A Haunting Novel from a gifted writer
When I was a child, I walked in my sleep and later started experiencing nightmares. At one point, the terror included a nightmare during which I was confined in a box and, when I woke up, I found that I had torn off a piece off the window, trying to get out. That home was decaying; when it rained heavily the ground floor corridor filled with water, maggots fell from the ceiling onto the bed, and at one time a large rat ascended the window coverings in the bedroom.
Once a companion presented me with Helen Oyeyemi’s novel, I was residing elsewhere in my childhood residence, but the story about the home perched on the cliffs felt familiar to myself, homesick as I was. It is a novel about a haunted noisy, atmospheric home and a female character who eats limestone from the shoreline. I loved the story immensely and went back again and again to it, always finding {something
