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A Renowned Horror Author

A Chilling Tale from Shirley Jackson

I read this story years ago and it has stayed with me since then. The titular vacationers turn out to be a family from New York, who rent a particular remote lakeside house each year. During this visit, in place of returning to the city, they choose to lengthen their stay an extra month – an action that appears to disturb all the locals in the surrounding community. All pass on an identical cryptic advice that no one has lingered by the water after the holiday. Regardless, the Allisons are resolved to stay, and at that point things start to get increasingly weird. The man who delivers the kerosene refuses to sell to them. Nobody agrees to bring food to the cottage, and as the family endeavor to travel to the community, the automobile fails to start. Bad weather approaches, the energy in the radio die, and with the arrival of dusk, “the elderly couple clung to each other inside their cabin and waited”. What might be the Allisons anticipating? What might the townspeople be aware of? Every time I revisit Jackson’s disturbing and thought-provoking narrative, I’m reminded that the finest fright stems from that which remains hidden.

Mariana Enríquez

An Eerie Story by Robert Aickman

In this concise narrative a pair journey to a typical beach community in which chimes sound continuously, a constant chiming that is bothersome and puzzling. The first very scary episode occurs at night, at the time they decide to take a walk and they can’t find the ocean. There’s sand, the scent exists of rotting fish and salt, waves crash, but the water seems phantom, or something else and worse. It is truly insanely sinister and every time I visit to a beach at night I remember this tale that destroyed the sea at night to my mind – favorably.

The newlyweds – she’s very young, the husband is older – go back to their lodging and find out why the bells ring, during a prolonged scene of claustrophobia, gruesome festivities and death-and-the-maiden meets danse macabre bedlam. It’s a chilling reflection about longing and deterioration, two bodies aging together as partners, the attachment and brutality and affection within wedlock.

Not only the scariest, but probably a top example of brief tales out there, and a beloved choice. I read it in the Spanish language, in the initial publication of this author’s works to be released locally a decade ago.

Catriona Ward

A Dark Novel by an esteemed writer

I delved into Zombie beside the swimming area in the French countryside in 2020. Even with the bright weather I experienced an icy feeling through me. I also experienced the thrill of fascination. I was composing my third novel, and I faced a wall. I didn’t know if there was any good way to craft some of the fearful things the story includes. Going through this book, I understood that it could be done.

Released decades ago, the book is a bleak exploration into the thoughts of a criminal, the main character, modeled after a notorious figure, the murderer who murdered and cut apart multiple victims in the Midwest over a decade. Notoriously, the killer was obsessed with making a compliant victim who would stay with him and carried out several macabre trials to achieve this.

The actions the book depicts are terrible, but just as scary is its mental realism. Quentin P’s dreadful, fragmented world is directly described with concise language, names redacted. The audience is plunged stuck in his mind, forced to witness thoughts and actions that shock. The alien nature of his mind is like a bodily jolt – or being stranded in an empty realm. Starting this story is less like reading and more like a physical journey. You are absorbed completely.

An Accomplished Author

A Haunting Novel by Helen Oyeyemi

In my early years, I sleepwalked and eventually began having night terrors. On one occasion, the fear involved a vision during which I was trapped in a box and, upon awakening, I realized that I had removed a part off the window, trying to get out. That house was falling apart; when it rained heavily the ground floor corridor became inundated, insect eggs fell from the ceiling into the bedroom, and at one time a sizeable vermin scaled the curtains in that space.

Once a companion presented me with the story, I was residing elsewhere at my family home, but the story about the home located on the coastline felt familiar to myself, nostalgic as I was. It is a novel featuring a possessed clamorous, sentimental building and a girl who ingests calcium from the cliffs. I cherished the novel so much and went back again and again to the story, consistently uncovering {something