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Andrew Michael Hurley

A Chilling Tale by a master of suspense

I read this narrative years ago and it has lingered with me from that moment. The so-called seasonal visitors turn out to be a family from New York, who lease a particular remote lakeside house annually. On this occasion, instead of returning to the city, they decide to lengthen their stay an extra month – something that seems to alarm all the locals in the nearby town. All pass on the same veiled caution that nobody has lingered at the lake past the holiday. Even so, the couple are resolved to stay, and at that point things start to grow more bizarre. The individual who brings fuel refuses to sell to the couple. No one will deliver supplies to their home, and at the time the family endeavor to go to the village, the automobile refuses to operate. A storm gathers, the energy within the device fade, and when night comes, “the aged individuals crowded closely in their summer cottage and waited”. What might be they waiting for? What might the townspeople know? Every time I read this author’s disturbing and inspiring story, I remember that the best horror originates in that which remains hidden.

Mariana Enríquez

An Eerie Story from Robert Aickman

In this brief tale a couple journey to an ordinary coastal village where bells ring the whole time, a constant chiming that is irritating and inexplicable. The initial truly frightening episode happens at night, at the time they opt to walk around and they can’t find the ocean. The beach is there, the scent exists of decaying seafood and brine, surf is audible, but the ocean seems phantom, or a different entity and more dreadful. It’s just deeply malevolent and each occasion I visit to the coast at night I remember this story that ruined the beach in the evening in my view – favorably.

The recent spouses – the wife is youthful, the man is mature – return to their lodging and discover the reason for the chiming, in a long sequence of claustrophobia, gruesome festivities and mortality and youth meets grim ballet pandemonium. It’s an unnerving reflection about longing and decay, two bodies growing old jointly as spouses, the connection and brutality and gentleness within wedlock.

Not just the most frightening, but perhaps a top example of concise narratives out there, and a personal favourite. I read it en español, in the initial publication of these tales to be released locally several years back.

Catriona Ward

Zombie from Joyce Carol Oates

I perused Zombie near the water in France a few years ago. Even with the bright weather I felt a chill over me. Additionally, I sensed the thrill of fascination. I was working on a new project, and I had hit an obstacle. I was uncertain if there was an effective approach to craft some of the fearful things the book contains. Going through this book, I understood that it could be done.

Published in 1995, the story is a bleak exploration through the mind of a murderer, the main character, inspired by a notorious figure, the serial killer who murdered and cut apart multiple victims in Milwaukee over a decade. Infamously, Dahmer was fixated with making a zombie sex slave that would remain him and attempted numerous macabre trials to achieve this.

The actions the story tells are appalling, but similarly terrifying is its emotional authenticity. Quentin P’s terrible, broken reality is simply narrated using minimal words, details omitted. The audience is immersed stuck in his mind, forced to observe mental processes and behaviors that appal. The alien nature of his mind feels like a bodily jolt – or finding oneself isolated in an empty realm. Entering this story is not just reading and more like a physical journey. You are absorbed completely.

An Accomplished Author

A Haunting Novel from Helen Oyeyemi

In my early years, I sleepwalked and subsequently commenced experiencing nightmares. On one occasion, the terror featured a vision in which I was stuck inside a container and, when I woke up, I found that I had torn off the slat off the window, seeking to leave. That home was crumbling; when it rained heavily the entranceway became inundated, insect eggs came down from the roof into the bedroom, and on one occasion a big rodent climbed the drapes in the bedroom.

Once a companion handed me the story, I was residing elsewhere at my family home, but the narrative regarding the building perched on the cliffs felt familiar to me, homesick as I felt. It’s a novel about a haunted noisy, atmospheric home and a female character who eats limestone off the rocks. I loved the book so much and came back repeatedly to its pages, always finding {something