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A Renowned Horror Author

The Summer People by Shirley Jackson

I encountered this story years ago and it has stayed with me from that moment. The titular “summer people” turn out to be a couple urban dwellers, who rent a particular remote country cottage annually. On this occasion, in place of going back to urban life, they decide to extend their vacation for a month longer – an action that appears to unsettle everyone in the adjacent village. Everyone conveys a similar vague warning that no one has remained in the area beyond the end of summer. Even so, the Allisons are determined to stay, and at that point events begin to get increasingly weird. The person who delivers the kerosene declines to provide to the couple. No one is willing to supply groceries to their home, and when the family endeavor to go to the village, their vehicle won’t start. A storm gathers, the energy of their radio die, and with the arrival of dusk, “the elderly couple crowded closely in their summer cottage and waited”. What are they expecting? What could the locals be aware of? Each occasion I read this author’s unnerving and inspiring story, I’m reminded that the finest fright comes from that which remains hidden.

An Acclaimed Writer

Ringing the Changes from a noted author

In this short story two people travel to a common coastal village where church bells toll continuously, an incessant ringing that is irritating and puzzling. The opening extremely terrifying scene occurs during the evening, when they opt to walk around and they are unable to locate the sea. Sand is present, there’s the smell of putrid marine life and salt, there are waves, but the sea seems phantom, or something else and worse. It is truly insanely sinister and every time I go to the coast at night I remember this tale which spoiled the ocean after dark to my mind – favorably.

The recent spouses – the wife is youthful, the husband is older – go back to the hotel and find out the reason for the chiming, during a prolonged scene of enclosed spaces, gruesome festivities and demise and innocence meets grim ballet pandemonium. It is a disturbing contemplation on desire and deterioration, two people maturing in tandem as a couple, the connection and aggression and tenderness within wedlock.

Not only the most terrifying, but probably among the finest short stories available, and an individual preference. I experienced it en español, in the debut release of this author’s works to be published locally a decade ago.

A Prominent Novelist

Zombie by an esteemed writer

I read Zombie near the water in the French countryside a few years ago. Despite the sunshine I sensed an icy feeling within me. I also experienced the thrill of fascination. I was working on my third novel, and I encountered a block. I wasn’t sure if there was an effective approach to craft some of the fearful things the book contains. Going through this book, I understood that it could be done.

Published in 1995, the novel is a grim journey through the mind of a murderer, the main character, inspired by a notorious figure, the murderer who killed and mutilated multiple victims in a city during a specific period. Notoriously, Dahmer was consumed with producing a submissive individual who would never leave with him and carried out several macabre trials to do so.

The acts the story tells are horrific, but just as scary is the mental realism. The character’s dreadful, shattered existence is simply narrated with concise language, identities hidden. The audience is immersed trapped in his consciousness, forced to witness thoughts and actions that appal. The foreignness of his psyche is like a bodily jolt – or finding oneself isolated on a barren alien world. Starting this story is less like reading and more like a physical journey. You are consumed entirely.

An Accomplished Author

A Haunting Novel by a gifted writer

During my youth, I sleepwalked and eventually began experiencing nightmares. Once, the terror involved a vision during which I was stuck within an enclosure and, upon awakening, I realized that I had torn off the slat out of the window frame, seeking to leave. That house was crumbling; when it rained heavily the ground floor corridor filled with water, fly larvae dropped from above on to my parents’ bed, and at one time a big rodent scaled the curtains in that space.

When a friend gave me the story, I was residing elsewhere at my family home, but the story regarding the building high on the Dover cliffs seemed recognizable to myself, homesick as I was. This is a book concerning a ghostly noisy, sentimental building and a female character who ingests limestone from the shoreline. I cherished the story immensely and came back frequently to its pages, always finding {something