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A Renowned Horror Author

The Summer People by Shirley Jackson

I encountered this story years ago and it has stayed with me from that moment. The named vacationers happen to be a family from New York, who lease an identical isolated rural cabin each year. On this occasion, in place of returning to the city, they decide to prolong their vacation an extra month – an action that appears to disturb all the locals in the adjacent village. Everyone conveys a similar vague warning that nobody has lingered in the area past the holiday. Regardless, the Allisons are resolved to remain, and at that point things start to grow more bizarre. The man who delivers oil declines to provide for them. Not a single person will deliver food to the cottage, and at the time the Allisons attempt to drive into town, their vehicle fails to start. Bad weather approaches, the batteries in the radio diminish, and with the arrival of dusk, “the aged individuals huddled together in their summer cottage and waited”. What might be this couple waiting for? What do the locals know? Whenever I revisit this author’s disturbing and inspiring tale, I remember that the best horror comes from that which remains hidden.

Mariana Enríquez

An Eerie Story from a noted author

In this brief tale a pair go to a common beach community where church bells toll continuously, an incessant ringing that is irritating and puzzling. The initial extremely terrifying episode happens at night, as they choose to go for a stroll and they can’t find the ocean. Sand is present, the scent exists of decaying seafood and seawater, waves crash, but the sea seems phantom, or something else and even more alarming. It is truly insanely sinister and whenever I go to the shore at night I recall this story which spoiled the ocean after dark to my mind – favorably.

The newlyweds – she’s very young, the husband is older – go back to the inn and learn why the bells ring, in a long sequence of claustrophobia, gruesome festivities and death-and-the-maiden encounters grim ballet chaos. It’s an unnerving reflection on desire and decline, two bodies aging together as a couple, the connection and violence and gentleness within wedlock.

Not merely the most terrifying, but probably among the finest short stories in existence, and a beloved choice. I read it in Spanish, in the debut release of Aickman stories to be published in this country a decade ago.

Catriona Ward

A Dark Novel from an esteemed writer

I perused this narrative by a pool in France a few years ago. Despite the sunshine I experienced an icy feeling over me. I also experienced the thrill of excitement. I was writing my latest book, and I had hit a wall. I didn’t know if there was a proper method to compose some of the fearful things the book contains. Reading Zombie, I realized that it was possible.

Released decades ago, the story is a grim journey through the mind of a young serial killer, Quentin P, modeled after Jeffrey Dahmer, the serial killer who murdered and mutilated multiple victims in the Midwest between 1978 and 1991. As is well-known, the killer was obsessed with making a compliant victim who would never leave him and made many grisly attempts to accomplish it.

The deeds the story tells are horrific, but equally frightening is its own emotional authenticity. Quentin P’s dreadful, shattered existence is directly described in spare prose, names redacted. You is immersed trapped in his consciousness, compelled to observe mental processes and behaviors that appal. The strangeness of his thinking resembles a physical shock – or being stranded in an empty realm. Going into Zombie is not just reading but a complete immersion. You are absorbed completely.

An Accomplished Author

A Haunting Novel by a gifted writer

During my youth, I sleepwalked and later started suffering from bad dreams. On one occasion, the horror involved a nightmare during which I was stuck within an enclosure and, upon awakening, I found that I had removed a part off the window, seeking to leave. That house was falling apart; during heavy rain the entranceway flooded, insect eggs came down from the roof on to my parents’ bed, and on one occasion a sizeable vermin ascended the window coverings in the bedroom.

After an acquaintance gave me the story, I had moved out at my family home, but the tale of the house high on the Dover cliffs appeared known to myself, longing at that time. It’s a story featuring a possessed loud, emotional house and a young woman who eats limestone from the shoreline. I loved the book so much and went back repeatedly to its pages, always finding {something