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Andrew Michael Hurley

A Chilling Tale by a master of suspense

I encountered this narrative years ago and it has lingered with me since then. The so-called seasonal visitors are a couple from the city, who rent the same off-grid rural cabin annually. During this visit, rather than returning home, they decide to lengthen their holiday for a month longer – something that seems to alarm each resident in the adjacent village. Everyone conveys the same veiled caution that nobody has ever stayed by the water beyond the end of summer. Regardless, they are resolved to not leave, and at that point things start to grow more bizarre. The individual who brings oil refuses to sell to the couple. Not a single person will deliver food to their home, and as the Allisons attempt to drive into town, their vehicle fails to start. Bad weather approaches, the energy within the device diminish, and when night comes, “the two old people huddled together in their summer cottage and expected”. What might be the Allisons expecting? What might the residents know? Whenever I revisit this author’s unnerving and inspiring narrative, I’m reminded that the top terror comes from what’s left undisclosed.

Mariana Enríquez

An Eerie Story from Robert Aickman

In this concise narrative a couple go to a typical seaside town where bells ring the whole time, an incessant ringing that is irritating and unexplainable. The first extremely terrifying scene happens during the evening, when they decide to go for a stroll and they fail to see the water. Sand is present, there’s the smell of putrid marine life and salt, there are waves, but the ocean appears spectral, or a different entity and worse. It is simply deeply malevolent and every time I go to a beach at night I remember this story which spoiled the ocean after dark in my view – positively.

The recent spouses – the woman is adolescent, he’s not – head back to the hotel and discover the reason for the chiming, in a long sequence of enclosed spaces, gruesome festivities and demise and innocence encounters dance of death chaos. It’s an unnerving contemplation regarding craving and decline, a pair of individuals maturing in tandem as partners, the connection and brutality and affection in matrimony.

Not merely the most terrifying, but probably one of the best short stories in existence, and a personal favourite. I read it in Spanish, in the debut release of these tales to be released in this country several years back.

A Prominent Novelist

A Dark Novel from an esteemed writer

I delved into this narrative beside the swimming area in the French countryside recently. Despite the sunshine I sensed a chill over me. I also experienced the excitement of anticipation. I was composing my third novel, and I had hit an obstacle. I didn’t know if there was an effective approach to write some of the fearful things the narrative involves. Reading Zombie, I understood that there was a way.

Published in 1995, the book is a grim journey through the mind of a murderer, the protagonist, based on Jeffrey Dahmer, the criminal who killed and mutilated 17 young men and boys in a city over a decade. Infamously, Dahmer was fixated with producing a zombie sex slave that would remain him and made many macabre trials to do so.

The deeds the book depicts are horrific, but equally frightening is its emotional authenticity. Quentin P’s dreadful, broken reality is plainly told with concise language, identities hidden. The audience is immersed stuck in his mind, forced to see thoughts and actions that appal. The strangeness of his mind is like a tangible impact – or being stranded in an empty realm. Starting Zombie feels different from reading and more like a physical journey. You are swallowed whole.

An Accomplished Author

A Haunting Novel by a gifted writer

During my youth, I sleepwalked and subsequently commenced having night terrors. On one occasion, the horror included a dream where I was stuck within an enclosure and, upon awakening, I realized that I had torn off a part out of the window frame, seeking to leave. That building was crumbling; when it rained heavily the entranceway became inundated, fly larvae fell from the ceiling into the bedroom, and at one time a large rat ascended the window coverings in my sister’s room.

When a friend handed me the story, I was residing elsewhere at my family home, but the narrative of the house high on the Dover cliffs appeared known to myself, homesick as I was. This is a novel featuring a possessed noisy, atmospheric home and a girl who eats limestone from the cliffs. I loved the book so much and went back repeatedly to it, always finding {something