Frightening Novelists Reveal the Scariest Narratives They've Ever Read
A Renowned Horror Author
A Chilling Tale from Shirley Jackson
I encountered this story some time back and it has lingered with me since then. The so-called “summer people” happen to be the Allisons from New York, who lease an identical isolated lakeside house every summer. During this visit, instead of going back home, they opt to prolong their stay an extra month – something that seems to disturb each resident in the nearby town. All pass on an identical cryptic advice that not a soul has lingered by the water beyond the end of summer. Regardless, they are determined to not leave, and that’s when events begin to become stranger. The person who brings the kerosene won’t sell for them. Nobody will deliver supplies to the cottage, and when the family try to go to the village, the automobile won’t start. A tempest builds, the power within the device fade, and with the arrival of dusk, “the elderly couple crowded closely in their summer cottage and anticipated”. What might be the Allisons expecting? What could the residents understand? Every time I read Jackson’s chilling and influential narrative, I’m reminded that the best horror stems from what’s left undisclosed.
An Acclaimed Writer
Ringing the Changes from a noted author
In this short story two people journey to an ordinary seaside town in which chimes sound continuously, a perpetual pealing that is annoying and puzzling. The initial very scary scene occurs after dark, at the time they decide to take a walk and they can’t find the water. The beach is there, there’s the smell of rotting fish and brine, surf is audible, but the water is a ghost, or another thing and more dreadful. It’s just insanely sinister and whenever I travel to the shore at night I recall this tale that ruined the beach in the evening to my mind – in a good way.
The newlyweds – the wife is youthful, the husband is older – return to the inn and find out why the bells ring, during a prolonged scene of enclosed spaces, necro-orgy and demise and innocence meets dance of death chaos. It’s a chilling meditation regarding craving and decay, a pair of individuals growing old jointly as spouses, the attachment and violence and gentleness of marriage.
Not only the most terrifying, but perhaps among the finest short stories available, and a personal favourite. I encountered it in the Spanish language, in the first edition of these tales to be released in this country a decade ago.
A Prominent Novelist
A Dark Novel from Joyce Carol Oates
I perused Zombie by a pool overseas a few years ago. Despite the sunshine I felt cold creep within me. I also experienced the electricity of excitement. I was composing my third novel, and I had hit an obstacle. I didn’t know if there was any good way to craft certain terrifying elements the narrative involves. Going through this book, I realized that it could be done.
Released decades ago, the novel is a grim journey into the thoughts of a criminal, Quentin P, inspired by a notorious figure, the murderer who slaughtered and dismembered multiple victims in the Midwest between 1978 and 1991. Infamously, this person was obsessed with producing a zombie sex slave who would stay him and made many horrific efforts to achieve this.
The actions the novel describes are terrible, but similarly terrifying is its own mental realism. Quentin P’s terrible, fragmented world is directly described in spare prose, identities hidden. The reader is immersed trapped in his consciousness, forced to observe thoughts and actions that shock. The foreignness of his psyche is like a tangible impact – or finding oneself isolated on a desolate planet. Entering Zombie feels different from reading but a complete immersion. You are consumed entirely.
Daisy Johnson
A Haunting Novel from Helen Oyeyemi
When I was a child, I sleepwalked and eventually began experiencing nightmares. On one occasion, the fear included a vision during which I was trapped within an enclosure and, as I roused, I realized that I had torn off the slat from the window, seeking to leave. That home was crumbling; during heavy rain the entranceway filled with water, insect eggs fell from the ceiling into the bedroom, and at one time a large rat climbed the drapes in my sister’s room.
Once a companion gave me the story, I had moved out at my family home, but the narrative of the house high on the Dover cliffs felt familiar in my view, homesick as I was. It is a book featuring a possessed noisy, emotional house and a young woman who consumes limestone off the rocks. I adored the story deeply and came back again and again to it, each time discovering {something
