Horror Authors Reveal the Most Frightening Tales They have Actually Experienced

A Renowned Horror Author

The Summer People from a master of suspense

I discovered this story some time back and it has lingered with me ever since. The named “summer people” are the Allisons from New York, who occupy a particular remote country cottage each year. On this occasion, instead of returning home, they choose to lengthen their holiday a few more weeks – a decision that to alarm all the locals in the adjacent village. Each repeats a similar vague warning that nobody has remained in the area beyond Labor Day. Regardless, they are determined to stay, and at that point things start to grow more bizarre. The person who brings oil declines to provide for them. No one will deliver supplies to their home, and when the Allisons attempt to travel to the community, the automobile fails to start. A tempest builds, the batteries within the device fade, and as darkness falls, “the two old people huddled together in their summer cottage and anticipated”. What might be this couple anticipating? What could the residents know? Each occasion I peruse this author’s disturbing and inspiring narrative, I recall that the best horror originates in the unspoken.

Mariana Enríquez

An Eerie Story from a noted author

In this short story two people go to a common seaside town where bells ring continuously, a perpetual pealing that is irritating and inexplicable. The initial extremely terrifying episode occurs at night, at the time they opt to walk around and they fail to see the sea. The beach is there, there’s the smell of putrid marine life and brine, there are waves, but the ocean appears spectral, or another thing and even more alarming. It is truly deeply malevolent and every time I travel to a beach after dark I recall this story that destroyed the beach in the evening to my mind – favorably.

The newlyweds – the woman is adolescent, the husband is older – go back to their lodging and learn the reason for the chiming, during a prolonged scene of claustrophobia, macabre revelry and death-and-the-maiden encounters grim ballet pandemonium. It’s a chilling reflection on desire and decline, a pair of individuals maturing in tandem as spouses, the connection and brutality and tenderness of marriage.

Not just the scariest, but likely among the finest brief tales available, and a beloved choice. I encountered it in Spanish, in the initial publication of this author’s works to be published in Argentina a decade ago.

A Prominent Novelist

A Dark Novel from Joyce Carol Oates

I read this narrative beside the swimming area in France recently. Despite the sunshine I felt an icy feeling through me. I also experienced the thrill of excitement. I was composing my latest book, and I faced a wall. I didn’t know if it was possible an effective approach to compose some of the fearful things the story includes. Experiencing this novel, I saw that it was possible.

Published in 1995, the story is a grim journey within the psyche of a murderer, Quentin P, inspired by a notorious figure, the serial killer who murdered and dismembered 17 young men and boys in a city over a decade. As is well-known, the killer was obsessed with producing a compliant victim who would stay with him and made many macabre trials to accomplish it.

The actions the book depicts are terrible, but equally frightening is its psychological persuasiveness. The character’s terrible, broken reality is directly described using minimal words, names redacted. The audience is plunged stuck in his mind, forced to witness ideas and deeds that horrify. The strangeness of his mind is like a physical shock – or finding oneself isolated on a desolate planet. Going into Zombie is not just reading and more like a physical journey. You are absorbed completely.

An Accomplished Author

White Is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi

During my youth, I sleepwalked and later started having night terrors. At one point, the horror included a dream where I was stuck in a box and, as I roused, I found that I had torn off a part from the window, trying to get out. That house was decaying; when it rained heavily the entranceway flooded, maggots came down from the roof on to my parents’ bed, and once a big rodent ascended the window coverings in the bedroom.

After an acquaintance gave me Helen Oyeyemi’s novel, I had moved out in my childhood residence, but the narrative about the home located on the coastline appeared known in my view, longing as I was. It’s a book concerning a ghostly clamorous, emotional house and a young woman who ingests chalk off the rocks. I loved the novel deeply and came back repeatedly to its pages, always finding {something