Frightening Authors Reveal the Most Frightening Narratives They've Ever Read

A Renowned Horror Author

A Chilling Tale by a master of suspense

I encountered this tale long ago and it has stayed with me from that moment. The named “summer people” turn out to be a family from the city, who rent an identical isolated lakeside house every summer. This time, in place of going back home, they choose to lengthen their stay for a month longer – something that seems to disturb everyone in the nearby town. All pass on the same veiled caution that nobody has lingered at the lake past the holiday. Nonetheless, the couple are determined to not leave, and at that point things start to get increasingly weird. The person who delivers the kerosene refuses to sell to the couple. No one will deliver supplies to their home, and as the Allisons attempt to go to the village, the car fails to start. A storm gathers, the energy of their radio fade, and when night comes, “the aged individuals crowded closely within their rental and waited”. What might be this couple waiting for? What do the residents know? Each occasion I revisit the writer’s chilling and influential tale, I recall that the best horror comes from the unspoken.

An Acclaimed Writer

An Eerie Story by a noted author

In this short story a pair journey to a common beach community where church bells toll constantly, an incessant ringing that is annoying and unexplainable. The initial very scary scene happens at night, at the time they opt to go for a stroll and they fail to see the ocean. The beach is there, there is the odor of rotting fish and brine, there are waves, but the water is a ghost, or a different entity and worse. It is simply insanely sinister and whenever I travel to the shore in the evening I remember this narrative that destroyed the ocean after dark in my view – in a good way.

The recent spouses – she’s very young, the man is mature – return to the inn and learn the reason for the chiming, during a prolonged scene of confinement, macabre revelry and mortality and youth intersects with grim ballet bedlam. It’s a chilling contemplation on desire and decay, two bodies maturing in tandem as a couple, the attachment and brutality and gentleness within wedlock.

Not merely the scariest, but perhaps among the finest concise narratives out there, and a beloved choice. I experienced it in the Spanish language, in the debut release of Aickman stories to be released in Argentina several years back.

A Prominent Novelist

Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates

I read Zombie near the water in France recently. Even with the bright weather I experienced an icy feeling over me. Additionally, I sensed the thrill of anticipation. I was working on a new project, and I encountered a block. I wasn’t sure if it was possible an effective approach to compose various frightening aspects the book contains. Going through this book, I saw that it could be done.

Published in 1995, the book is a grim journey through the mind of a young serial killer, Quentin P, modeled after an infamous individual, the murderer who killed and dismembered multiple victims in the Midwest over a decade. As is well-known, the killer was obsessed with producing a compliant victim that would remain by his side and attempted numerous grisly attempts to achieve this.

The acts the novel describes are horrific, but equally frightening is its emotional authenticity. The character’s awful, broken reality is simply narrated using minimal words, names redacted. The reader is sunk deep trapped in his consciousness, compelled to witness thoughts and actions that horrify. The strangeness of his mind resembles a physical shock – or being stranded on a desolate planet. Going into this book is not just reading and more like a physical journey. You are swallowed whole.

Daisy Johnson

White Is for Witching from Helen Oyeyemi

During my youth, I was a somnambulist and subsequently commenced experiencing nightmares. At one point, the horror featured a dream in which I was confined within an enclosure and, upon awakening, I discovered that I had torn off the slat from the window, attempting to escape. That building was decaying; during heavy rain the downstairs hall became inundated, fly larvae came down from the roof onto the bed, and on one occasion a large rat scaled the curtains in the bedroom.

After an acquaintance presented me with Helen Oyeyemi’s novel, I was residing elsewhere at my family home, but the story of the house high on the Dover cliffs felt familiar in my view, homesick as I was. It’s a story featuring a possessed loud, atmospheric home and a girl who ingests calcium from the shoreline. I loved the book deeply and went back frequently to its pages, each time discovering {something