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Andrew Michael Hurley

A Chilling Tale from a master of suspense

I encountered this story some time back and it has haunted me since then. The so-called vacationers are the Allisons urban dwellers, who occupy a particular isolated country cottage annually. During this visit, instead of heading back to the city, they opt to extend their stay for a month longer – something that seems to disturb each resident in the nearby town. Each repeats the same veiled caution that nobody has lingered by the water beyond the holiday. Regardless, they are determined to stay, and at that point things start to grow more bizarre. The individual who supplies oil refuses to sell to the couple. No one is willing to supply supplies to their home, and when the Allisons try to drive into town, the automobile won’t start. Bad weather approaches, the batteries within the device diminish, and when night comes, “the two old people huddled together inside their cabin and anticipated”. What might be this couple expecting? What might the locals be aware of? Every time I read Jackson’s chilling and influential narrative, I’m reminded that the finest fright comes from that which remains hidden.

An Acclaimed Writer

Ringing the Changes by Robert Aickman

In this brief tale two people journey to a common beach community where church bells toll constantly, a perpetual pealing that is annoying and puzzling. The initial very scary moment happens at night, at the time they choose to take a walk and they are unable to locate the water. The beach is there, the scent exists of rotting fish and brine, waves crash, but the water is a ghost, or another thing and even more alarming. It’s just deeply malevolent and each occasion I visit to the coast in the evening I recall this narrative which spoiled the beach in the evening in my view – positively.

The newlyweds – the wife is youthful, the man is mature – head back to the hotel and learn the cause of the ringing, through an extended episode of claustrophobia, gruesome festivities and death-and-the-maiden intersects with dance of death chaos. It is a disturbing contemplation on desire and decline, a pair of individuals aging together as partners, the bond and aggression and tenderness of marriage.

Not merely the most frightening, but perhaps one of the best concise narratives in existence, and an individual preference. I read it in the Spanish language, in the debut release of this author’s works to appear in this country a decade ago.

A Prominent Novelist

A Dark Novel by an esteemed writer

I read Zombie beside the swimming area in the French countryside recently. Despite the sunshine I felt cold creep within me. I also experienced the thrill of anticipation. I was working on my latest book, and I had hit a block. I was uncertain if there was a proper method to craft certain terrifying elements the story includes. Experiencing this novel, I realized that there was a way.

First printed in the nineties, the story is a grim journey within the psyche of a murderer, Quentin P, based on a notorious figure, the murderer who slaughtered and dismembered 17 young men and boys in Milwaukee between 1978 and 1991. As is well-known, this person was consumed with creating a compliant victim that would remain him and attempted numerous horrific efforts to achieve this.

The actions the novel describes are horrific, but just as scary is the psychological persuasiveness. Quentin P’s terrible, broken reality is simply narrated in spare prose, names redacted. You is sunk deep caught in his thoughts, obliged to witness ideas and deeds that shock. The alien nature of his psyche feels like a physical shock – or finding oneself isolated in an empty realm. Going into this book feels different from reading but a complete immersion. You are swallowed whole.

Daisy Johnson

A Haunting Novel from Helen Oyeyemi

During my youth, I walked in my sleep and subsequently commenced experiencing nightmares. On one occasion, the terror involved a vision in which I was trapped in a box and, upon awakening, I found that I had torn off a piece out of the window frame, seeking to leave. That home was falling apart; when storms came the entranceway became inundated, fly larvae fell from the ceiling on to my parents’ bed, and on one occasion a big rodent ascended the window coverings in that space.

When a friend presented me with Helen Oyeyemi’s novel, I was residing elsewhere at my family home, but the narrative about the home high on the Dover cliffs felt familiar to me, homesick as I was. It is a novel featuring a possessed noisy, atmospheric home and a girl who ingests calcium off the rocks. I cherished the book so much and returned again and again to its pages, always finding {something