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Andrew Michael Hurley

A Chilling Tale by Shirley Jackson

I read this narrative long ago and it has stayed with me since then. The named seasonal visitors turn out to be a couple urban dwellers, who lease the same remote rural cabin every summer. This time, in place of heading back to urban life, they opt to extend their holiday for a month longer – a decision that to alarm all the locals in the nearby town. All pass on an identical cryptic advice that nobody has lingered at the lake beyond the holiday. Even so, the couple are resolved to remain, and that’s when situations commence to grow more bizarre. The man who delivers fuel declines to provide to the couple. No one agrees to bring groceries to their home, and at the time they attempt to go to the village, the car refuses to operate. Bad weather approaches, the batteries in the radio die, and with the arrival of dusk, “the two old people clung to each other inside their cabin and waited”. What are this couple expecting? What might the residents know? Whenever I revisit this author’s disturbing and thought-provoking tale, I’m reminded that the best horror comes from what’s left undisclosed.

An Acclaimed Writer

Ringing the Changes by Robert Aickman

In this short story two people journey to a typical beach community in which chimes sound constantly, a constant chiming that is annoying and inexplicable. The first extremely terrifying scene happens at night, when they decide to walk around and they fail to see the ocean. There’s sand, there’s the smell of decaying seafood and brine, surf is audible, but the water seems phantom, or a different entity and more dreadful. It’s just insanely sinister and every time I visit to the coast at night I recall this story which spoiled the ocean after dark for me – in a good way.

The newlyweds – she’s very young, the husband is older – head back to their lodging and discover why the bells ring, during a prolonged scene of enclosed spaces, gruesome festivities and mortality and youth encounters danse macabre chaos. It is a disturbing reflection regarding craving and decline, two people growing old jointly as a couple, the attachment and aggression and gentleness of marriage.

Not just the scariest, but likely one of the best brief tales in existence, and a beloved choice. I experienced it in Spanish, in the initial publication of these tales to be published locally a decade ago.

Catriona Ward

Zombie from Joyce Carol Oates

I delved into Zombie near the water in France in 2020. Despite the sunshine I felt an icy feeling over me. I also felt the excitement of anticipation. I was composing my third novel, and I encountered a wall. I wasn’t sure if it was possible a proper method to compose certain terrifying elements the book contains. Going through this book, I realized that it could be done.

Released decades ago, the story is a dark flight into the thoughts of a young serial killer, the protagonist, based on Jeffrey Dahmer, the murderer who murdered and dismembered 17 young men and boys in a city between 1978 and 1991. Infamously, the killer was fixated with creating a submissive individual that would remain with him and carried out several horrific efforts to achieve this.

The deeds the story tells are appalling, but similarly terrifying is its own emotional authenticity. The protagonist’s awful, broken reality is plainly told with concise language, names redacted. You is plunged caught in his thoughts, obliged to see mental processes and behaviors that appal. The alien nature of his thinking is like a tangible impact – or being stranded in an empty realm. Starting Zombie is not just reading but a complete immersion. You are swallowed whole.

An Accomplished Author

White Is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi

In my early years, I was a somnambulist and later started suffering from bad dreams. At one point, the fear included a dream where I was confined in a box and, upon awakening, I discovered that I had ripped the slat from the window, trying to get out. That house was decaying; during heavy rain the ground floor corridor filled with water, maggots fell from the ceiling onto the bed, and at one time a sizeable vermin scaled the curtains in my sister’s room.

When a friend presented me with Helen Oyeyemi’s novel, I had moved out at my family home, but the story regarding the building high on the Dover cliffs appeared known to myself, homesick as I was. This is a story about a haunted loud, atmospheric home and a young woman who consumes calcium from the cliffs. I loved the novel immensely and went back repeatedly to it, each time discovering {something