Horror Authors Discuss the Scariest Stories They've Actually Read

A Renowned Horror Author

The Summer People by Shirley Jackson

I discovered this story long ago and it has haunted me ever since. The named vacationers turn out to be a family from New York, who rent the same off-grid country cottage annually. On this occasion, in place of going back to urban life, they choose to lengthen their holiday a few more weeks – a decision that to disturb everyone in the nearby town. All pass on a similar vague warning that nobody has lingered at the lake after Labor Day. Regardless, they are determined to remain, and that’s when events begin to get increasingly weird. The person who supplies the kerosene declines to provide to them. Nobody agrees to bring groceries to the cottage, and when the Allisons endeavor to travel to the community, the automobile won’t start. Bad weather approaches, the batteries in the radio die, and when night comes, “the two old people clung to each other inside their cabin and anticipated”. What could be they waiting for? What do the townspeople know? Whenever I revisit Jackson’s unnerving and influential tale, I’m reminded that the best horror comes from the unspoken.

An Acclaimed Writer

Ringing the Changes by Robert Aickman

In this brief tale two people go to a common seaside town in which chimes sound constantly, an incessant ringing that is bothersome and puzzling. The initial truly frightening moment occurs after dark, as they decide to go for a stroll and they can’t find the water. The beach is there, the scent exists of rotting fish and brine, there are waves, but the ocean seems phantom, or something else and even more alarming. It’s just insanely sinister and whenever I go to a beach after dark I remember this narrative which spoiled the beach in the evening to my mind – in a good way.

The young couple – she’s very young, he’s not – go back to the hotel and learn why the bells ring, through an extended episode of claustrophobia, gruesome festivities and death-and-the-maiden encounters dance of death pandemonium. It is a disturbing reflection on desire and decay, a pair of individuals maturing in tandem as partners, the attachment and aggression and tenderness within wedlock.

Not only the most frightening, but perhaps a top example of brief tales available, and a personal favourite. I read it in Spanish, in the debut release of this author’s works to appear in this country a decade ago.

Catriona Ward

Zombie from Joyce Carol Oates

I read this book by a pool overseas in 2020. Even with the bright weather I felt an icy feeling through me. I also experienced the thrill of anticipation. I was writing my third novel, and I faced a wall. I wasn’t sure if it was possible a proper method to compose various frightening aspects the book contains. Going through this book, I understood that it was possible.

Published in 1995, the story is a dark flight through the mind of a young serial killer, the main character, inspired by an infamous individual, the criminal who murdered and mutilated multiple victims in Milwaukee over a decade. Notoriously, Dahmer was consumed with producing a submissive individual who would never leave by his side and made many horrific efforts to do so.

The acts the book depicts are terrible, but equally frightening is the mental realism. The protagonist’s dreadful, shattered existence is simply narrated with concise language, details omitted. You is plunged trapped in his consciousness, compelled to see mental processes and behaviors that horrify. The alien nature of his psyche is like a bodily jolt – or being stranded on a desolate planet. Starting this story is not just reading than a full body experience. You are swallowed whole.

An Accomplished Author

A Haunting Novel from a gifted writer

In my early years, I was a somnambulist and subsequently commenced suffering from bad dreams. At one point, the fear involved a dream where I was trapped inside a container and, when I woke up, I realized that I had torn off a piece off the window, attempting to escape. That house was decaying; when it rained heavily the entranceway flooded, insect eggs dropped from above onto the bed, and once a sizeable vermin climbed the drapes in my sister’s room.

When a friend presented me with the story, I was residing elsewhere in my childhood residence, but the story about the home high on the Dover cliffs felt familiar to myself, longing as I was. It is a novel featuring a possessed noisy, atmospheric home and a female character who eats chalk off the rocks. I loved the novel so much and returned repeatedly to its pages, always finding {something