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A Renowned Horror Author

The Summer People from a master of suspense

I discovered this tale years ago and it has haunted me ever since. The titular seasonal visitors turn out to be the Allisons from New York, who rent a particular off-grid rural cabin annually. On this occasion, in place of going back to the city, they choose to prolong their holiday for a month longer – a decision that to alarm everyone in the adjacent village. Everyone conveys the same veiled caution that no one has ever stayed by the water beyond the end of summer. Nonetheless, they are resolved to remain, and that’s when events begin to become stranger. The individual who supplies oil won’t sell for them. Not a single person will deliver supplies to the cabin, and as they try to go to the village, the car fails to start. A tempest builds, the power of their radio diminish, and when night comes, “the two old people clung to each other within their rental and waited”. What might be the Allisons waiting for? What could the locals be aware of? Whenever I revisit this author’s disturbing and thought-provoking tale, I remember that the finest fright stems from that which remains hidden.

Mariana Enríquez

An Eerie Story from Robert Aickman

In this concise narrative a couple go to an ordinary beach community where bells ring continuously, a constant chiming that is annoying and unexplainable. The initial truly frightening episode takes place after dark, at the time they decide to go for a stroll and they are unable to locate the water. There’s sand, there’s the smell of putrid marine life and salt, waves crash, but the water is a ghost, or a different entity and worse. It is truly profoundly ominous and whenever I travel to the coast after dark I think about this narrative that ruined the sea at night for me – positively.

The young couple – the woman is adolescent, the man is mature – head back to the inn and learn the cause of the ringing, during a prolonged scene of enclosed spaces, gruesome festivities and mortality and youth meets grim ballet bedlam. It’s an unnerving reflection on desire and decline, two people growing old jointly as partners, the attachment and violence and affection within wedlock.

Not merely the scariest, but probably among the finest concise narratives out there, and a personal favourite. I encountered it in Spanish, in the initial publication of Aickman stories to be released locally a decade ago.

A Prominent Novelist

Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates

I read this narrative near the water in France in 2020. Despite the sunshine I sensed an icy feeling through me. Additionally, I sensed the excitement of excitement. I was composing my latest book, and I faced a block. I was uncertain if it was possible a proper method to compose various frightening aspects the story includes. Experiencing this novel, I understood that it was possible.

Published in 1995, the story is a grim journey into the thoughts of a young serial killer, the protagonist, inspired by a notorious figure, the serial killer who murdered and cut apart multiple victims in the Midwest during a specific period. Notoriously, this person was consumed with making a submissive individual who would never leave with him and carried out several macabre trials to do so.

The actions the novel describes are appalling, but just as scary is the emotional authenticity. The character’s terrible, broken reality is directly described in spare prose, details omitted. The reader is plunged stuck in his mind, obliged to see thoughts and actions that horrify. The alien nature of his mind is like a bodily jolt – or finding oneself isolated on a desolate planet. Entering this book feels different from reading and more like a physical journey. You are consumed entirely.

An Accomplished Author

White Is for Witching from a gifted writer

In my early years, I walked in my sleep and later started experiencing nightmares. Once, the terror included a dream in which I was trapped inside a container and, upon awakening, I discovered that I had torn off a piece from the window, trying to get out. That home was decaying; during heavy rain the downstairs hall filled with water, maggots dropped from above on to my parents’ bed, and on one occasion a sizeable vermin climbed the drapes in my sister’s room.

When a friend presented me with this author’s book, I was no longer living with my parents, but the tale about the home high on the Dover cliffs felt familiar to me, longing as I felt. It’s a novel featuring a possessed loud, atmospheric home and a female character who ingests chalk from the shoreline. I cherished the story deeply and returned frequently to the story, consistently uncovering {something