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A Renowned Horror Author

The Summer People from Shirley Jackson

I discovered this tale some time back and it has haunted me from that moment. The named seasonal visitors are a family from the city, who rent the same isolated lakeside house each year. On this occasion, instead of heading back to the city, they opt to prolong their vacation for a month longer – an action that appears to unsettle each resident in the nearby town. Each repeats the same veiled caution that not a soul has ever stayed by the water after Labor Day. Nonetheless, they are determined to not leave, and at that point events begin to become stranger. The person who brings oil refuses to sell for them. No one agrees to bring groceries to the cottage, and at the time the family attempt to travel to the community, the car won’t start. A storm gathers, the energy within the device diminish, and with the arrival of dusk, “the aged individuals clung to each other within their rental and waited”. What are the Allisons waiting for? What could the locals understand? Every time I read Jackson’s disturbing and thought-provoking story, I’m reminded that the top terror comes from the unspoken.

An Acclaimed Writer

Ringing the Changes from Robert Aickman

In this short story two people go to a common beach community in which chimes sound continuously, a constant chiming that is bothersome and puzzling. The first extremely terrifying moment occurs after dark, at the time they opt to take a walk and they are unable to locate the water. Sand is present, there is the odor of decaying seafood and brine, there are waves, but the ocean seems phantom, or something else and more dreadful. It is truly profoundly ominous and every time I go to a beach at night I remember this narrative that ruined the sea at night to my mind – in a good way.

The young couple – she’s very young, the husband is older – go back to the inn and discover why the bells ring, through an extended episode of confinement, macabre revelry and mortality and youth intersects with danse macabre chaos. It’s an unnerving reflection regarding craving and decay, two bodies growing old jointly as partners, the attachment and brutality and affection within wedlock.

Not merely the scariest, but likely among the finest short stories available, and an individual preference. I encountered it in the Spanish language, in the initial publication of Aickman stories to appear locally in 2011.

A Prominent Novelist

A Dark Novel from an esteemed writer

I delved into this book beside the swimming area overseas a few years ago. Despite the sunshine I felt a chill over me. I also felt the electricity of anticipation. I was working on a new project, and I had hit a block. I didn’t know whether there existed any good way to write some of the fearful things the narrative involves. Experiencing this novel, I realized that it was possible.

Published in 1995, the book is a bleak exploration into the thoughts of a criminal, Quentin P, modeled after an infamous individual, the serial killer who slaughtered and mutilated multiple victims in Milwaukee during a specific period. As is well-known, the killer was fixated with creating a submissive individual who would stay him and attempted numerous grisly attempts to do so.

The actions the novel describes are appalling, but equally frightening is the emotional authenticity. The protagonist’s terrible, fragmented world is simply narrated with concise language, identities hidden. The audience is sunk deep trapped in his consciousness, obliged to see thoughts and actions that horrify. The alien nature of his psyche feels like a physical shock – or being stranded on a barren alien world. Going into this book is less like reading but a complete immersion. You are swallowed whole.

Daisy Johnson

A Haunting Novel by a gifted writer

When I was a child, I was a somnambulist and eventually began experiencing nightmares. At one point, the terror included a nightmare during which I was stuck within an enclosure and, as I roused, I realized that I had torn off the slat out of the window frame, attempting to escape. That building was falling apart; when storms came the downstairs hall filled with water, insect eggs dropped from above on to my parents’ bed, and at one time a large rat ascended the window coverings in my sister’s room.

When a friend handed me this author’s book, I was no longer living in my childhood residence, but the narrative about the home perched on the cliffs felt familiar to me, homesick at that time. This is a story featuring a possessed clamorous, emotional house and a young woman who consumes chalk off the rocks. I adored the book immensely and returned again and again to it, each time discovering {something