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A Renowned Horror Author

A Chilling Tale by a master of suspense

I read this tale long ago and it has stayed with me from that moment. The titular seasonal visitors turn out to be a couple urban dwellers, who lease the same isolated country cottage annually. This time, instead of returning to urban life, they opt to lengthen their vacation a few more weeks – an action that appears to alarm all the locals in the nearby town. All pass on an identical cryptic advice that no one has ever stayed in the area after the end of summer. Even so, they are determined to not leave, and that is the moment things start to grow more bizarre. The man who supplies oil refuses to sell for them. Nobody is willing to supply food to the cottage, and as the family try to travel to the community, their vehicle refuses to operate. A storm gathers, the batteries in the radio diminish, and when night comes, “the two old people crowded closely in their summer cottage and waited”. What are this couple waiting for? What do the locals know? Each occasion I peruse the writer’s chilling and influential story, I remember that the top terror originates in that which remains hidden.

Mariana Enríquez

An Eerie Story by Robert Aickman

In this concise narrative two people go to a typical coastal village where bells ring constantly, a perpetual pealing that is irritating and unexplainable. The opening very scary scene takes place after dark, when they decide to take a walk and they are unable to locate the water. The beach is there, there is the odor of decaying seafood and brine, surf is audible, but the sea seems phantom, or something else and worse. It is simply insanely sinister and whenever I visit to the shore at night I recall this tale that destroyed the ocean after dark in my view – positively.

The newlyweds – she’s very young, the husband is older – head back to their lodging and find out the reason for the chiming, in a long sequence of enclosed spaces, necro-orgy and death-and-the-maiden encounters grim ballet pandemonium. It’s a chilling contemplation regarding craving and decline, a pair of individuals maturing in tandem as partners, the connection and aggression and tenderness within wedlock.

Not only the most terrifying, but perhaps a top example of brief tales in existence, and a personal favourite. I read it in Spanish, in the initial publication of these tales to be published in this country in 2011.

A Prominent Novelist

A Dark Novel from an esteemed writer

I read this narrative near the water in the French countryside in 2020. Even with the bright weather I experienced cold creep within me. Additionally, I sensed the thrill of anticipation. I was writing my third novel, and I had hit a wall. I wasn’t sure whether there existed a proper method to craft some of the fearful things the story includes. Reading Zombie, I understood that it could be done.

First printed in the nineties, the book is a dark flight into the thoughts of a murderer, the main character, modeled after Jeffrey Dahmer, the murderer who murdered and dismembered 17 young men and boys in a city between 1978 and 1991. Infamously, this person was fixated with creating a zombie sex slave who would stay by his side and made many macabre trials to accomplish it.

The actions the book depicts are horrific, but similarly terrifying is the emotional authenticity. The protagonist’s dreadful, broken reality is plainly told with concise language, names redacted. You is immersed stuck in his mind, compelled to see mental processes and behaviors that shock. The alien nature of his thinking resembles a physical shock – or being stranded in an empty realm. Going into this book feels different from reading and more like a physical journey. You are consumed entirely.

An Accomplished Author

White Is for Witching from Helen Oyeyemi

In my early years, I walked in my sleep and eventually began suffering from bad dreams. Once, the fear featured a nightmare during which I was trapped in a box and, upon awakening, I discovered that I had ripped the slat out of the window frame, trying to get out. That home was crumbling; during heavy rain the downstairs hall filled with water, insect eggs came down from the roof onto the bed, and once a sizeable vermin ascended the window coverings in the bedroom.

After an acquaintance gave me the story, I was residing elsewhere at my family home, but the tale about the home perched on the cliffs seemed recognizable to myself, longing as I was. It’s a book about a haunted clamorous, atmospheric home and a girl who consumes calcium off the rocks. I loved the story deeply and came back frequently to it, always finding {something