Frightening Writers Reveal the Most Terrifying Narratives They have Actually Encountered

A Renowned Horror Author

The Summer People by Shirley Jackson

I read this narrative long ago and it has haunted me from that moment. The so-called seasonal visitors turn out to be a family from New York, who occupy an identical isolated rural cabin every summer. This time, in place of returning to urban life, they opt to extend their stay for a month longer – a decision that to alarm everyone in the nearby town. Each repeats the same veiled caution that no one has lingered at the lake after the end of summer. Nonetheless, the Allisons are resolved to stay, and that’s when events begin to become stranger. The person who delivers fuel won’t sell to them. Nobody is willing to supply food to the cottage, and when the family try to travel to the community, the car refuses to operate. Bad weather approaches, the batteries within the device fade, and as darkness falls, “the two old people clung to each other in their summer cottage and waited”. What could be this couple expecting? What might the locals be aware of? Whenever I revisit Jackson’s disturbing and inspiring story, I recall that the finest fright stems from what’s left undisclosed.

An Acclaimed Writer

An Eerie Story by Robert Aickman

In this concise narrative a couple go to an ordinary seaside town where bells ring continuously, a perpetual pealing that is annoying and unexplainable. The first very scary moment happens after dark, when they choose to go for a stroll and they are unable to locate the sea. There’s sand, there’s the smell of decaying seafood and salt, there are waves, but the water seems phantom, or something else and more dreadful. It is truly insanely sinister and each occasion I travel to the shore in the evening I think about this story which spoiled the sea at night in my view – positively.

The newlyweds – the wife is youthful, the husband is older – head back to the hotel and find out the cause of the ringing, during a prolonged scene of confinement, necro-orgy and death-and-the-maiden intersects with danse macabre chaos. It’s a chilling contemplation regarding craving and decay, two people maturing in tandem as a couple, the connection and aggression and gentleness within wedlock.

Not only the scariest, but perhaps one of the best brief tales in existence, and a beloved choice. I encountered it in the Spanish language, in the debut release of Aickman stories to be published locally a decade ago.

A Prominent Novelist

A Dark Novel by Joyce Carol Oates

I read this book beside the swimming area in France in 2020. Even with the bright weather I sensed cold creep through me. Additionally, I sensed the excitement of fascination. I was writing a new project, and I faced a wall. I didn’t know if there was any good way to write certain terrifying elements the narrative involves. Reading Zombie, I understood that it was possible.

Released decades ago, the novel is a grim journey within the psyche of a young serial killer, the main character, based on Jeffrey Dahmer, the murderer who slaughtered and dismembered multiple victims in the Midwest between 1978 and 1991. Infamously, this person was consumed with making a submissive individual who would never leave him and carried out several grisly attempts to achieve this.

The acts the novel describes are horrific, but similarly terrifying is its emotional authenticity. The character’s terrible, shattered existence is directly described using minimal words, identities hidden. The audience is immersed caught in his thoughts, forced to witness thoughts and actions that appal. The strangeness of his thinking resembles a tangible impact – or getting lost on a barren alien world. Starting Zombie feels different from reading but a complete immersion. You are absorbed completely.

Daisy Johnson

A Haunting Novel from a gifted writer

During my youth, I walked in my sleep and subsequently commenced suffering from bad dreams. Once, the fear featured a dream in which I was trapped within an enclosure and, upon awakening, I realized that I had torn off the slat from the window, seeking to leave. That home was crumbling; during heavy rain the ground floor corridor flooded, fly larvae came down from the roof on to my parents’ bed, and once a big rodent ascended the window coverings in that space.

Once a companion presented me with the story, I had moved out with my parents, but the narrative regarding the building high on the Dover cliffs appeared known to me, nostalgic at that time. It is a novel featuring a possessed clamorous, atmospheric home and a young woman who consumes limestone from the shoreline. I adored the story so much and came back frequently to the story, each time discovering {something