Scary Novelists Discuss the Scariest Narratives They have Ever Encountered

A Renowned Horror Author

The Summer People by a master of suspense

I encountered this story some time back and it has lingered with me since then. The so-called “summer people” are the Allisons from the city, who occupy a particular remote country cottage annually. On this occasion, rather than returning to the city, they choose to prolong their vacation a few more weeks – something that seems to unsettle each resident in the surrounding community. Everyone conveys an identical cryptic advice that nobody has lingered in the area past Labor Day. Even so, the couple are resolved to stay, and at that point things start to become stranger. The person who supplies the kerosene refuses to sell for them. Not a single person agrees to bring supplies to their home, and at the time the family attempt to travel to the community, their vehicle won’t start. Bad weather approaches, the batteries within the device fade, and as darkness falls, “the aged individuals clung to each other inside their cabin and waited”. What could be they waiting for? What do the locals be aware of? Each occasion I read Jackson’s chilling and inspiring story, I recall that the finest fright stems from the unspoken.

Mariana Enríquez

Ringing the Changes by Robert Aickman

In this short story a pair go to an ordinary beach community where bells ring constantly, a constant chiming that is bothersome and puzzling. The opening very scary scene happens after dark, as they opt to take a walk and they can’t find the sea. Sand is present, the scent exists of rotting fish and salt, surf is audible, but the sea is a ghost, or another thing and worse. It is truly insanely sinister and every time I go to the coast at night I remember this narrative that destroyed the beach in the evening in my view – favorably.

The newlyweds – the wife is youthful, he’s not – return to the inn and learn the cause of the ringing, in a long sequence of enclosed spaces, necro-orgy and death-and-the-maiden meets grim ballet pandemonium. It’s an unnerving reflection about longing and decay, two bodies maturing in tandem as spouses, the attachment and aggression and affection in matrimony.

Not merely the most frightening, but perhaps among the finest concise narratives available, and a personal favourite. I read it en español, in the initial publication of these tales to be published in this country in 2011.

A Prominent Novelist

A Dark Novel by Joyce Carol Oates

I read this book beside the swimming area in France a few years ago. Even with the bright weather I experienced an icy feeling through me. I also experienced the electricity of anticipation. I was writing my latest book, and I faced a block. I didn’t know if it was possible an effective approach to craft various frightening aspects the story includes. Going through this book, I saw that there was a way.

Published in 1995, the novel is a dark flight within the psyche of a criminal, Quentin P, inspired by Jeffrey Dahmer, the criminal who murdered and cut apart 17 young men and boys in Milwaukee over a decade. Infamously, this person was fixated with making a submissive individual who would stay with him and attempted numerous macabre trials to achieve this.

The acts the novel describes are terrible, but equally frightening is its own emotional authenticity. The protagonist’s terrible, broken reality is simply narrated in spare prose, identities hidden. The audience is sunk deep trapped in his consciousness, forced to see thoughts and actions that horrify. The alien nature of his psyche resembles a physical shock – or being stranded on a barren alien world. Entering this book is not just reading than a full body experience. You are absorbed completely.

Daisy Johnson

A Haunting Novel from a gifted writer

In my early years, I sleepwalked and eventually began suffering from bad dreams. Once, the horror involved a dream where I was stuck inside a container and, when I woke up, I realized that I had ripped the slat out of the window frame, seeking to leave. That building was decaying; when storms came the ground floor corridor filled with water, insect eggs dropped from above on to my parents’ bed, and on one occasion a big rodent climbed the drapes in my sister’s room.

After an acquaintance presented me with this author’s book, I was no longer living in my childhood residence, but the story about the home high on the Dover cliffs seemed recognizable to myself, homesick at that time. It’s a story concerning a ghostly loud, atmospheric home and a young woman who eats chalk from the cliffs. I loved the story so much and returned frequently to the story, consistently uncovering {something