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Andrew Michael Hurley

A Chilling Tale by Shirley Jackson

I discovered this story some time back and it has lingered with me since then. The named seasonal visitors are a family from New York, who lease a particular off-grid rural cabin annually. On this occasion, instead of returning to the city, they decide to extend their holiday for a month longer – an action that appears to disturb everyone in the nearby town. All pass on a similar vague warning that not a soul has ever stayed in the area past the end of summer. Even so, the couple are determined to not leave, and at that point events begin to become stranger. The individual who supplies oil refuses to sell to them. Not a single person is willing to supply food to the cottage, and at the time the Allisons endeavor to travel to the community, their vehicle refuses to operate. A tempest builds, the batteries in the radio die, and when night comes, “the elderly couple clung to each other within their rental and waited”. What could be they waiting for? What could the residents be aware of? Whenever I peruse this author’s unnerving and thought-provoking story, I’m reminded that the best horror stems from what’s left undisclosed.

An Acclaimed Writer

An Eerie Story by Robert Aickman

In this brief tale two people travel to a common coastal village where church bells toll constantly, a perpetual pealing that is irritating and puzzling. The opening extremely terrifying episode takes place at night, when they choose to go for a stroll and they are unable to locate the water. The beach is there, the scent exists of rotting fish and seawater, surf is audible, but the ocean is a ghost, or a different entity and worse. It is truly deeply malevolent and whenever I travel to the shore in the evening I recall this tale which spoiled the beach in the evening for me – favorably.

The recent spouses – the wife is youthful, he’s not – head back to the hotel and discover the reason for the chiming, through an extended episode of claustrophobia, necro-orgy and death-and-the-maiden encounters dance of death pandemonium. It’s a chilling reflection on desire and deterioration, two bodies maturing in tandem as spouses, the bond and aggression and affection of marriage.

Not only the most terrifying, but perhaps one of the best brief tales in existence, and an individual preference. I encountered it en español, in the initial publication of these tales to be released locally in 2011.

A Prominent Novelist

Zombie from Joyce Carol Oates

I read Zombie by a pool in France a few years ago. Even with the bright weather I sensed a chill over me. I also felt the excitement of excitement. I was writing my latest book, and I had hit a block. I wasn’t sure if there was any good way to craft various frightening aspects the book contains. Reading Zombie, I realized that it could be done.

Published in 1995, the story is a bleak exploration within the psyche of a criminal, the main character, inspired by a notorious figure, the criminal who slaughtered and dismembered numerous individuals in a city during a specific period. As is well-known, this person was fixated with making a compliant victim who would never leave with him and made many macabre trials to accomplish it.

The deeds the story tells are appalling, but just as scary is the psychological persuasiveness. The protagonist’s awful, fragmented world is directly described in spare prose, details omitted. You is immersed caught in his thoughts, compelled to witness ideas and deeds that appal. The foreignness of his thinking resembles a physical shock – or getting lost on a barren alien world. Going into Zombie feels different from reading but a complete immersion. You are consumed entirely.

An Accomplished Author

White Is for Witching from a gifted writer

During my youth, I sleepwalked and eventually began having night terrors. On one occasion, the horror involved a nightmare in which I was trapped within an enclosure and, upon awakening, I found that I had ripped a piece out of the window frame, attempting to escape. That home was falling apart; when it rained heavily the ground floor corridor flooded, maggots fell from the ceiling onto the bed, and at one time a big rodent ascended the window coverings in that space.

When a friend presented me with this author’s book, I was residing elsewhere at my family home, but the narrative about the home perched on the cliffs appeared known to me, longing as I was. It’s a book concerning a ghostly clamorous, emotional house and a young woman who ingests calcium from the shoreline. I cherished the story so much and went back frequently to it, always finding {something