Horror Authors Share the Scariest Stories They've Ever Experienced
A Renowned Horror Author
The Summer People by Shirley Jackson
I discovered this story long ago and it has haunted me ever since. The titular “summer people” are a family urban dwellers, who lease an identical off-grid country cottage every summer. During this visit, in place of returning to the city, they choose to lengthen their stay a few more weeks – an action that appears to alarm all the locals in the surrounding community. Everyone conveys an identical cryptic advice that nobody has ever stayed by the water beyond the holiday. Even so, they are resolved to remain, and at that point things start to grow more bizarre. The man who supplies the kerosene won’t sell to them. Nobody is willing to supply groceries to the cottage, and as the family endeavor to travel to the community, their vehicle fails to start. A tempest builds, the power within the device diminish, and when night comes, “the aged individuals crowded closely inside their cabin and anticipated”. What are this couple expecting? What might the townspeople be aware of? Each occasion I read the writer’s disturbing and inspiring story, I recall that the top terror comes from the unspoken.
An Acclaimed Writer
An Eerie Story by Robert Aickman
In this brief tale a pair go to a common coastal village in which chimes sound the whole time, a constant chiming that is bothersome and unexplainable. The first extremely terrifying scene takes place at night, when they opt to walk around and they fail to see the water. The beach is there, there is the odor of putrid marine life and seawater, there are waves, but the sea appears spectral, or another thing and worse. It is truly deeply malevolent and each occasion I visit to the coast at night I think about this narrative that destroyed the ocean after dark for me – favorably.
The recent spouses – the wife is youthful, he’s not – head back to the hotel and learn the reason for the chiming, through an extended episode of enclosed spaces, necro-orgy and death-and-the-maiden encounters danse macabre chaos. It’s an unnerving meditation on desire and deterioration, a pair of individuals maturing in tandem as partners, the connection and violence and gentleness of marriage.
Not just the scariest, but probably one of the best short stories available, and an individual preference. I read it in Spanish, in the first edition of this author’s works to be published locally in 2011.
A Prominent Novelist
Zombie from an esteemed writer
I delved into this narrative beside the swimming area overseas recently. Despite the sunshine I felt a chill through me. Additionally, I sensed the thrill of anticipation. I was writing my latest book, and I faced an obstacle. I was uncertain if it was possible an effective approach to compose various frightening aspects the story includes. Going through this book, I saw that there was a way.
Released decades ago, the story is a grim journey into the thoughts of a young serial killer, Quentin P, based on a notorious figure, the serial killer who killed and cut apart 17 young men and boys in the Midwest over a decade. As is well-known, this person was consumed with creating a compliant victim that would remain with him and carried out several grisly attempts to do so.
The acts the book depicts are terrible, but equally frightening is its own emotional authenticity. The character’s dreadful, broken reality is directly described in spare prose, names redacted. The audience is plunged caught in his thoughts, obliged to observe ideas and deeds that horrify. The alien nature of his psyche feels like a tangible impact – or getting lost on a desolate planet. Entering this book feels different from reading and more like a physical journey. You are consumed entirely.
An Accomplished Author
A Haunting Novel from a gifted writer
During my youth, I walked in my sleep and subsequently commenced experiencing nightmares. On one occasion, the terror involved a dream in which I was trapped inside a container and, upon awakening, I found that I had removed a piece off the window, trying to get out. That house was decaying; during heavy rain the downstairs hall became inundated, fly larvae came down from the roof into the bedroom, and at one time a big rodent climbed the drapes in that space.
Once a companion handed me the story, I was residing elsewhere at my family home, but the narrative of the house perched on the cliffs seemed recognizable in my view, nostalgic as I was. It is a book concerning a ghostly clamorous, emotional house and a girl who consumes limestone off the rocks. I adored the book immensely and came back again and again to the story, always finding {something