Horror Writers Share the Scariest Tales They have Actually Read

A Renowned Horror Author

The Summer People by Shirley Jackson

I encountered this story years ago and it has haunted me ever since. The named “summer people” turn out to be the Allisons urban dwellers, who rent the same off-grid country cottage every summer. During this visit, instead of going back to urban life, they opt to extend their vacation a few more weeks – something that seems to disturb everyone in the surrounding community. All pass on a similar vague warning that nobody has remained in the area after the holiday. Nonetheless, they insist to stay, and that’s when situations commence to get increasingly weird. The person who supplies oil refuses to sell for them. Nobody will deliver supplies to the cottage, and when the Allisons attempt to go to the village, the car won’t start. Bad weather approaches, the batteries in the radio diminish, and as darkness falls, “the two old people crowded closely in their summer cottage and expected”. What might be they anticipating? What might the locals know? Each occasion I peruse Jackson’s disturbing and influential narrative, I’m reminded that the finest fright originates in that which remains hidden.

Mariana Enríquez

Ringing the Changes by a noted author

In this brief tale a couple travel to a common seaside town where bells ring the whole time, a perpetual pealing that is annoying and inexplicable. The first truly frightening scene happens during the evening, at the time they opt to go for a stroll and they fail to see the water. The beach is there, the scent exists of decaying seafood and salt, surf is audible, but the ocean seems phantom, or something else and worse. It’s just insanely sinister and each occasion I travel to a beach after dark I remember this tale which spoiled the ocean after dark to my mind – positively.

The newlyweds – she’s very young, he’s not – head back to the inn and discover the reason for the chiming, through an extended episode of enclosed spaces, macabre revelry and death-and-the-maiden intersects with danse macabre chaos. It is a disturbing contemplation about longing and decline, two bodies maturing in tandem as partners, the connection and brutality and tenderness in matrimony.

Not merely the scariest, but perhaps one of the best short stories in existence, and a beloved choice. I read it in the Spanish language, in the debut release of this author’s works to be published in this country in 2011.

A Prominent Novelist

A Dark Novel by an esteemed writer

I read this narrative by a pool overseas in 2020. Despite the sunshine I felt cold creep over me. I also experienced the thrill of fascination. I was writing my third novel, and I had hit a block. I wasn’t sure whether there existed a proper method to craft various frightening aspects the narrative involves. Reading Zombie, I saw that it could be done.

Released decades ago, the story is a bleak exploration through the mind of a criminal, Quentin P, inspired by an infamous individual, the murderer who slaughtered and dismembered multiple victims in Milwaukee between 1978 and 1991. Notoriously, Dahmer was consumed with producing a submissive individual who would never leave with him and made many grisly attempts to do so.

The acts the story tells are terrible, but just as scary is the mental realism. The protagonist’s terrible, fragmented world is plainly told using minimal words, details omitted. You is sunk deep stuck in his mind, forced to observe ideas and deeds that shock. The alien nature of his psyche is like a physical shock – or being stranded on a desolate planet. Entering Zombie feels different from reading than a full body experience. You are consumed entirely.

An Accomplished Author

White Is for Witching by a gifted writer

When I was a child, I walked in my sleep and eventually began suffering from bad dreams. On one occasion, the fear included a nightmare in which I was confined in a box and, when I woke up, I found that I had ripped a piece out of the window frame, trying to get out. That house was falling apart; when it rained heavily the downstairs hall filled with water, maggots dropped from above into the bedroom, and at one time a big rodent climbed the drapes in that space.

Once a companion presented me with the story, I had moved out at my family home, but the story about the home located on the coastline appeared known to me, nostalgic as I was. It’s a story featuring a possessed loud, sentimental building and a female character who eats calcium from the shoreline. I cherished the story deeply and returned again and again to the story, consistently uncovering {something