Scary Authors Reveal the Most Frightening Stories They have Actually Encountered

Andrew Michael Hurley

A Chilling Tale from Shirley Jackson

I encountered this narrative years ago and it has stayed with me from that moment. The so-called “summer people” happen to be the Allisons from New York, who lease a particular remote rural cabin each year. On this occasion, in place of heading back to the city, they choose to extend their holiday an extra month – something that seems to alarm everyone in the nearby town. All pass on the same veiled caution that not a soul has remained in the area past the holiday. Even so, the couple insist to stay, and at that point events begin to become stranger. The person who brings fuel won’t sell for them. Nobody agrees to bring supplies to the cottage, and as they attempt to drive into town, their vehicle refuses to operate. A tempest builds, the energy of their radio die, and as darkness falls, “the two old people crowded closely within their rental and expected”. What could be this couple expecting? What might the townspeople be aware of? Whenever I revisit this author’s unnerving and thought-provoking narrative, I remember that the best horror comes from the unspoken.

An Acclaimed Writer

Ringing the Changes by a noted author

In this short story a couple go to a typical beach community in which chimes sound constantly, a constant chiming that is annoying and unexplainable. The first extremely terrifying scene occurs during the evening, at the time they decide to take a walk and they are unable to locate the water. Sand is present, there’s the smell of rotting fish and brine, surf is audible, but the ocean is a ghost, or a different entity and even more alarming. It’s just insanely sinister and each occasion I travel to the coast at night I remember this narrative which spoiled the ocean after dark for me – positively.

The young couple – the wife is youthful, the husband is older – return to their lodging and learn the reason for the chiming, through an extended episode of confinement, macabre revelry and demise and innocence meets danse macabre pandemonium. It’s a chilling meditation on desire and decay, two bodies aging together as partners, the connection and aggression and affection of marriage.

Not only the scariest, but probably among the finest concise narratives in existence, and a personal favourite. I read it en español, in the first edition of this author’s works to appear locally in 2011.

Catriona Ward

A Dark Novel by Joyce Carol Oates

I perused this book by a pool in France recently. Despite the sunshine I sensed an icy feeling over me. Additionally, I sensed the excitement of fascination. I was working on a new project, and I had hit an obstacle. I was uncertain if it was possible a proper method to compose various frightening aspects the book contains. Going through this book, I realized that it was possible.

Published in 1995, the book is a dark flight into the thoughts of a young serial killer, the main character, based on Jeffrey Dahmer, the murderer who murdered and dismembered 17 young men and boys in the Midwest between 1978 and 1991. Infamously, the killer was fixated with creating a compliant victim who would stay by his side and carried out several grisly attempts to achieve this.

The acts the book depicts are terrible, but equally frightening is its emotional authenticity. Quentin P’s awful, shattered existence is plainly told in spare prose, identities hidden. The audience is plunged trapped in his consciousness, compelled to witness ideas and deeds that horrify. The strangeness of his psyche resembles a bodily jolt – or finding oneself isolated on a desolate planet. Entering this book feels different from reading and more like a physical journey. You are absorbed completely.

An Accomplished Author

White Is for Witching from Helen Oyeyemi

In my early years, I was a somnambulist and eventually began experiencing nightmares. At one point, the horror involved a nightmare where I was trapped within an enclosure and, as I roused, I found that I had torn off a part from the window, trying to get out. That building was falling apart; when it rained heavily the entranceway filled with water, insect eggs came down from the roof on to my parents’ bed, and at one time a large rat ascended the window coverings in my sister’s room.

When a friend gave me the story, I was residing elsewhere with my parents, but the story regarding the building located on the coastline seemed recognizable to me, nostalgic at that time. This is a novel about a haunted loud, emotional house and a young woman who ingests calcium from the shoreline. I loved the novel so much and came back frequently to its pages, each time discovering {something