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Andrew Michael Hurley

A Chilling Tale from a master of suspense

I discovered this narrative some time back and it has stayed with me since then. The titular seasonal visitors are a couple from New York, who rent a particular isolated rural cabin annually. During this visit, in place of going back to the city, they decide to prolong their stay a few more weeks – 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 beyond Labor Day. Nonetheless, they are resolved to not leave, and at that point situations commence to grow more bizarre. The person who delivers oil won’t sell to them. Not a single person will deliver supplies to the cottage, and at the time the family endeavor to drive into town, their vehicle fails to start. Bad weather approaches, the power of their radio diminish, and as darkness falls, “the aged individuals huddled together in their summer cottage and expected”. What could be the Allisons anticipating? What could the locals be aware of? Every time I revisit the writer’s unnerving and influential tale, I recall that the finest fright comes from the unspoken.

An Acclaimed Writer

An Eerie Story from Robert Aickman

In this brief tale a couple journey to a common seaside town in which chimes sound continuously, a perpetual pealing that is bothersome and inexplicable. The first very scary scene occurs after dark, as they choose to walk around and they can’t find the water. Sand is present, there is the odor of putrid marine life and salt, waves crash, but the ocean appears spectral, or a different entity and worse. It is simply deeply malevolent and whenever I visit to the coast at night I remember this tale that destroyed the sea at night in my view – favorably.

The young couple – she’s very young, the husband is older – go back to the hotel and find out why the bells ring, during a prolonged scene of claustrophobia, gruesome festivities and demise and innocence intersects with danse macabre bedlam. It’s an unnerving reflection regarding craving and decay, two people maturing in tandem as partners, the bond and aggression and gentleness of marriage.

Not just the scariest, but likely among the finest short stories out there, and an individual preference. I experienced it in the Spanish language, in the first edition of these tales to be released locally several years back.

A Prominent Novelist

A Dark Novel by Joyce Carol Oates

I read this book by a pool overseas recently. Even with the bright weather I sensed an icy feeling within me. I also experienced the thrill of anticipation. I was writing my third novel, and I encountered a wall. I wasn’t sure if it was possible an effective approach to craft certain terrifying elements the book contains. Going through this book, I understood that it could be done.

Published in 1995, the novel is a dark flight into the thoughts of a murderer, the main character, based on Jeffrey Dahmer, the murderer who slaughtered and dismembered 17 young men and boys in Milwaukee during a specific period. As is well-known, the killer was obsessed with making a submissive individual who would stay with him and attempted numerous macabre trials to do so.

The deeds the book depicts are terrible, but equally frightening is the emotional authenticity. The protagonist’s awful, shattered existence is plainly told in spare prose, names redacted. The reader is plunged trapped in his consciousness, compelled to witness ideas and deeds that horrify. The foreignness of his thinking is like a bodily jolt – or finding oneself isolated on a desolate planet. Going into this book is not just reading but a complete immersion. You are swallowed whole.

Daisy Johnson

White Is for Witching from a gifted writer

During my youth, I was a somnambulist and subsequently commenced having night terrors. Once, the fear included a dream where I was confined inside a container and, as I roused, I discovered that I had removed a part from the window, attempting to escape. That house was decaying; during heavy rain the ground floor corridor filled with water, maggots fell from the ceiling on to my parents’ bed, and at one time a big rodent scaled the curtains in that space.

When a friend handed me the story, I was no longer living at my family home, but the story about the home high on the Dover cliffs felt familiar to me, nostalgic as I felt. It is a book featuring a possessed loud, emotional house and a girl who eats limestone off the rocks. I adored the story immensely and went back again and again to the story, each time discovering {something