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A Renowned Horror Author

The Summer People by Shirley Jackson

I encountered this story long ago and it has stayed with me since then. The titular seasonal visitors turn out to be a couple from the city, who occupy the same remote country cottage each year. During this visit, instead of returning to the city, they choose to prolong their stay an extra month – a decision that to disturb all the locals in the nearby town. Each repeats a similar vague warning that not a soul has remained in the area after Labor Day. Even so, the couple are determined to not leave, and that is the moment things start to get increasingly weird. The individual who brings fuel refuses to sell to the couple. Not a single person is willing to supply supplies to the cottage, and at the time they attempt to go to the village, the automobile refuses to operate. A tempest builds, the batteries in the radio die, and when night comes, “the two old people huddled together inside their cabin and anticipated”. What are they anticipating? What do the locals be aware of? Every time I read the writer’s chilling and thought-provoking story, I remember that the best horror stems from that which remains hidden.

Mariana Enríquez

Ringing the Changes by a noted author

In this concise narrative a couple go to a common seaside town in which chimes sound the whole time, an incessant ringing that is annoying and puzzling. The initial truly frightening scene happens after dark, at the time they decide to go for a stroll and they are unable to locate the sea. There’s sand, there’s the smell of putrid marine life and salt, waves crash, but the sea is a ghost, or another thing and more dreadful. It is simply profoundly ominous and every time I travel to a beach after dark I think about this tale which spoiled the sea at night in my view – positively.

The recent spouses – she’s very young, he’s not – head back to the hotel and discover why the bells ring, during a prolonged scene of claustrophobia, gruesome festivities and mortality and youth meets danse macabre bedlam. It’s an unnerving reflection about longing and decay, a pair of individuals aging together as a couple, the bond and aggression and tenderness of marriage.

Not only the scariest, but likely among the finest concise narratives in existence, and an individual preference. I encountered it in the Spanish language, in the first edition of this author’s works to be published locally in 2011.

A Prominent Novelist

A Dark Novel from an esteemed writer

I perused Zombie near the water overseas a few years ago. Even with the bright weather I sensed cold creep through me. Additionally, I sensed the excitement of anticipation. I was composing my third novel, and I had hit a block. I wasn’t sure whether there existed any good way to write some of the fearful things the book contains. Experiencing this novel, I saw that it was possible.

Published in 1995, the novel is a grim journey into the thoughts of a criminal, Quentin P, modeled after Jeffrey Dahmer, the criminal who slaughtered and dismembered multiple victims in the Midwest over a decade. Notoriously, this person was consumed with making a submissive individual who would stay him and carried out several horrific efforts to accomplish it.

The actions the story tells are horrific, but equally frightening is its mental realism. The character’s awful, fragmented world is directly described with concise language, names redacted. The reader is plunged trapped in his consciousness, forced to witness ideas and deeds that appal. The foreignness of his thinking resembles a physical shock – or getting lost in an empty realm. Starting 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

In my early years, I walked in my sleep and later started suffering from bad dreams. Once, the horror included a vision during which I was trapped inside a container and, as I roused, I discovered that I had ripped a part out of the window frame, seeking to leave. That building was falling apart; during heavy rain the downstairs hall flooded, insect eggs fell from the ceiling onto the bed, and at one time a large rat climbed the drapes in that space.

Once a companion handed me the story, I was residing elsewhere with my parents, but the tale about the home located on the coastline appeared known to me, homesick as I was. It’s a novel concerning a ghostly noisy, atmospheric home and a female character who consumes limestone from the cliffs. I adored the book so much and went back repeatedly to the story, each time discovering {something