Frightening Novelists Reveal the Scariest Narratives They've Actually Experienced
Andrew Michael Hurley
A Chilling Tale from Shirley Jackson
I discovered this story years ago and it has haunted me from that moment. The so-called seasonal visitors happen to be a couple from the city, who rent an identical remote country cottage every summer. During this visit, in place of heading back to the city, they opt to prolong their holiday a few more weeks – something that seems to disturb each resident in the nearby town. Everyone conveys an identical cryptic advice that nobody has ever stayed at the lake after the holiday. Nonetheless, the Allisons are determined to remain, and that’s when things start to get increasingly weird. The person who delivers the kerosene declines to provide to the couple. Nobody agrees to bring food to the cottage, and at the time they attempt to travel to the community, the automobile won’t start. A tempest builds, the energy within the device fade, and when night comes, “the aged individuals crowded closely within their rental and expected”. What might be this couple waiting for? What could the residents be aware of? Every time I read Jackson’s chilling and inspiring story, I remember that the best horror comes from that which remains hidden.
Mariana Enríquez
An Eerie Story by a noted author
In this short story a pair journey to a typical seaside town where church bells toll continuously, a perpetual pealing that is bothersome and unexplainable. The initial very scary moment occurs during the evening, at the time they choose to walk around and they are unable to locate the ocean. Sand is present, there’s the smell of putrid marine life and brine, there are waves, but the ocean is a ghost, or another thing and worse. It is simply deeply malevolent and whenever I travel to a beach in the evening I remember this story that destroyed the sea at night in my view – 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, during a prolonged scene of enclosed spaces, necro-orgy and death-and-the-maiden meets grim ballet chaos. It’s a chilling contemplation about longing and deterioration, a pair of individuals maturing in tandem as partners, the bond and violence and gentleness of marriage.
Not just the scariest, but perhaps one of the best short stories available, and an individual preference. I read it in Spanish, in the initial publication of Aickman stories to be published locally in 2011.
Catriona Ward
A Dark Novel from Joyce Carol Oates
I read this narrative near the water in France a few years ago. Despite the sunshine I sensed a chill within me. Additionally, I sensed the electricity of fascination. I was writing my latest book, and I faced a block. I didn’t know whether there existed an effective approach to craft certain terrifying elements the story includes. Going through this book, I understood that there was a way.
Released decades ago, the book is a grim journey within the psyche of a murderer, the main character, based on Jeffrey Dahmer, the criminal who murdered and mutilated 17 young men and boys in a city between 1978 and 1991. Notoriously, this person was consumed with creating a zombie sex slave who would stay with him and attempted numerous horrific efforts to do so.
The actions the story tells are horrific, but equally frightening is the emotional authenticity. The protagonist’s terrible, broken reality is simply narrated using minimal words, names redacted. The audience is sunk deep stuck in his mind, obliged to see ideas and deeds that shock. The strangeness of his psyche resembles a bodily jolt – or finding oneself isolated on a barren alien world. Entering Zombie is less like reading and more like a physical journey. You are consumed entirely.
Daisy Johnson
A Haunting Novel by Helen Oyeyemi
When I was a child, I walked in my sleep and later started experiencing nightmares. At one point, the fear included a nightmare in which I was trapped in a box and, when I woke up, I realized that I had ripped a part out of the window frame, attempting to escape. That house was decaying; when it rained heavily the downstairs hall flooded, maggots came down from the roof onto the bed, and on one occasion a large rat scaled the curtains in my sister’s room.
When a friend presented me with Helen Oyeyemi’s novel, I was residing elsewhere in my childhood residence, but the story of the house located on the coastline seemed recognizable to me, longing as I felt. It’s a novel concerning a ghostly noisy, atmospheric home and a young woman who consumes calcium from the cliffs. I cherished the book immensely and went back frequently to the story, consistently uncovering {something
