Horror Writers Reveal the Most Frightening Stories They have Ever Experienced

Andrew Michael Hurley

The Summer People from a master of suspense

I encountered this story some time back and it has stayed with me since then. The so-called seasonal visitors are a family urban dwellers, who lease the same off-grid rural cabin every summer. During this visit, instead of going back home, they decide to prolong their holiday an extra month – something that seems to unsettle each resident in the nearby town. Everyone conveys an identical cryptic advice that no one has ever stayed by the water after the end of summer. Even so, the couple are determined to stay, and at that point things start to become stranger. The person who brings oil won’t sell to the couple. No one will deliver food to their home, and when the Allisons try to travel to the community, their vehicle fails to start. Bad weather approaches, the batteries in the radio fade, and as darkness falls, “the elderly couple crowded closely within their rental and waited”. What are this couple waiting for? What do the residents understand? Whenever I revisit Jackson’s disturbing and thought-provoking tale, I’m reminded that the top terror comes from that which remains hidden.

Mariana Enríquez

An Eerie Story by a noted author

In this brief tale a couple travel to a common beach community where bells ring continuously, a perpetual pealing that is irritating and unexplainable. The first extremely terrifying scene happens at night, as they choose to walk around and they can’t find the ocean. There’s sand, there is the odor of putrid marine life and brine, surf is audible, but the water appears spectral, or another thing and worse. It is simply deeply malevolent and whenever I visit to a beach in the evening I remember this story which spoiled the ocean after dark for me – favorably.

The recent spouses – she’s very young, the man is mature – head back to the hotel and find out why the bells ring, during a prolonged scene of confinement, macabre revelry and mortality and youth meets grim ballet pandemonium. It’s an unnerving contemplation regarding craving and deterioration, a pair of individuals growing old jointly as a couple, the connection and aggression and gentleness within wedlock.

Not merely the most terrifying, but perhaps one of the best concise narratives available, and an individual preference. I experienced it en español, in the initial publication of this author’s works to be published in this country a decade ago.

A Prominent Novelist

Zombie from Joyce Carol Oates

I perused Zombie by a pool overseas in 2020. Even with the bright weather I experienced cold creep over me. I also felt the thrill of anticipation. I was composing a new project, and I faced a wall. I was uncertain if it was possible any good way to write certain terrifying elements 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 protagonist, based on an infamous individual, the criminal who slaughtered and dismembered 17 young men and boys in a city during a specific period. Infamously, this person was fixated with producing a compliant victim that would remain by his side and attempted numerous grisly attempts to accomplish it.

The deeds the story tells are horrific, but similarly terrifying is the psychological persuasiveness. Quentin P’s terrible, shattered existence is directly described with concise language, details omitted. You is sunk deep trapped in his consciousness, compelled to witness mental processes and behaviors that horrify. The alien nature of his mind resembles a tangible impact – or finding oneself isolated on a barren alien world. Entering this book is not just reading but a complete immersion. You are consumed entirely.

Daisy Johnson

A Haunting Novel from a gifted writer

When I was a child, I sleepwalked and later started experiencing nightmares. At one point, the fear involved a vision in which I was stuck within an enclosure and, upon awakening, I discovered that I had removed the slat from the window, trying to get out. That building was crumbling; when storms came the ground floor corridor filled with water, maggots dropped from above into the bedroom, and at one time a large rat climbed the drapes in the bedroom.

When a friend handed me this author’s book, I was residing elsewhere with my parents, but the tale regarding the building located on the coastline appeared known to me, longing at that time. It is a novel concerning a ghostly clamorous, atmospheric home and a female character who ingests limestone off the rocks. I loved the novel immensely and went back repeatedly to it, consistently uncovering {something