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A Renowned Horror Author

The Summer People by Shirley Jackson

I discovered this tale long ago and it has haunted me ever since. The so-called seasonal visitors are the Allisons from the city, who occupy an identical remote lakeside house each year. On this occasion, in place of returning to urban life, they choose to extend their stay for a month longer – something that seems to unsettle everyone in the nearby town. Each repeats a similar vague warning that not a soul has lingered in the area after the holiday. Nonetheless, they insist to remain, and that’s when situations commence to become stranger. The man who supplies the kerosene refuses to sell to them. Not a single person will deliver supplies to their home, and when the Allisons attempt to go to the village, the car refuses to operate. A tempest builds, the power within the device die, and when night comes, “the two old people clung to each other inside their cabin and anticipated”. What could be this couple expecting? What could the locals understand? Each occasion I revisit this author’s chilling and influential narrative, I’m reminded that the finest fright comes from what’s left undisclosed.

An Acclaimed Writer

Ringing the Changes by Robert Aickman

In this concise narrative a couple journey to an ordinary coastal village where church bells toll the whole time, an incessant ringing that is irritating and puzzling. The opening truly frightening episode happens at night, when they opt to take a walk and they are unable to locate the sea. Sand is present, there’s the smell of decaying seafood and salt, waves crash, but the sea is a ghost, or something else and more dreadful. It is truly deeply malevolent and each occasion I go to the shore at night I recall this tale that destroyed the beach in the evening to my mind – positively.

The young couple – the woman is adolescent, the man is mature – head back to the inn and find out the cause of the ringing, in a long sequence of enclosed spaces, gruesome festivities and death-and-the-maiden intersects with danse macabre chaos. It is a disturbing reflection on desire and decline, two people aging together as partners, the attachment and violence and affection within wedlock.

Not only the scariest, but probably one of the best concise narratives available, and a personal favourite. I read it in Spanish, in the debut release of these tales to be published locally a decade ago.

Catriona Ward

A Dark Novel from an esteemed writer

I perused this book near the water overseas recently. Although it was sunny I experienced a chill over me. I also felt the excitement of fascination. I was writing my latest book, and I encountered a wall. I didn’t know whether there existed an effective approach to compose various frightening aspects the story includes. Going through this book, I understood that it was possible.

First printed in the nineties, the book is a bleak exploration into the thoughts of a young serial killer, Quentin P, based on Jeffrey Dahmer, the murderer who slaughtered and dismembered 17 young men and boys in a city during a specific period. As is well-known, this person was obsessed with making a submissive individual that would remain by his side and carried out several grisly attempts to achieve this.

The acts the story tells are horrific, but similarly terrifying is the mental realism. The character’s dreadful, fragmented world is directly described in spare prose, names redacted. The reader is immersed trapped in his consciousness, forced to observe thoughts and actions that shock. The alien nature of his psyche feels like a bodily jolt – or finding oneself isolated on a barren alien world. Going into this story is not just reading but a complete immersion. You are consumed entirely.

Daisy Johnson

A Haunting Novel by a gifted writer

During my youth, I walked in my sleep and eventually began experiencing nightmares. Once, the horror involved a dream during which I was trapped inside a container and, upon awakening, I discovered that I had ripped a part from the window, attempting to escape. That building was decaying; when it rained heavily the ground floor corridor became inundated, insect eggs dropped from above onto the bed, and on one occasion a big rodent climbed the drapes in the bedroom.

Once a companion presented me with the story, I had moved out at my family home, but the story about the home located on the coastline seemed recognizable in my view, homesick at that time. It’s a story about a haunted loud, sentimental building and a young woman who consumes calcium from the shoreline. I cherished the novel deeply and returned frequently to the story, consistently uncovering {something