Horror Novelists Discuss the Scariest Stories They've Actually Encountered

A Renowned Horror Author

A Chilling Tale by Shirley Jackson

I read this story long ago and it has haunted me ever since. The titular vacationers happen to be the Allisons urban dwellers, who rent an identical remote country cottage every summer. During this visit, rather than heading back to the city, they decide to lengthen their stay an extra month – something that seems to disturb everyone in the nearby town. All pass on a similar vague warning that nobody has remained at the lake after the end of summer. Nonetheless, the couple are resolved to remain, and that’s when things start to get increasingly weird. The person who delivers oil refuses to sell to the couple. Not a single person is willing to supply food to the cottage, and as the Allisons attempt to travel to the community, the car won’t start. A storm gathers, the batteries within the device diminish, and with the arrival of dusk, “the aged individuals crowded closely within their rental and waited”. What might be the Allisons expecting? What could the locals understand? Whenever I revisit the writer’s unnerving and influential narrative, I recall that the best horror originates in that which remains hidden.

An Acclaimed Writer

An Eerie Story by a noted author

In this short story a couple go to an ordinary seaside town where bells ring the whole time, an incessant ringing that is irritating and inexplicable. The opening truly frightening episode takes place at night, at the time they opt to go for a stroll and they can’t find the sea. There’s sand, there is the odor of putrid marine life and salt, waves crash, but the sea appears spectral, or a different entity and even more alarming. It’s just deeply malevolent and whenever I go to a beach after dark I remember this narrative that destroyed the beach in the evening to my mind – in a good way.

The newlyweds – the wife is youthful, the husband is older – head back to the hotel and learn the reason for the chiming, in a long sequence of enclosed spaces, macabre revelry and mortality and youth encounters dance of death chaos. It’s an unnerving meditation on desire and deterioration, a pair of individuals maturing in tandem as a couple, the attachment and violence and tenderness in matrimony.

Not merely the most frightening, but likely one of the best short stories out there, and a beloved choice. I experienced it in the Spanish language, in the initial publication of these tales to be released in this country several years back.

Catriona Ward

A Dark Novel from Joyce Carol Oates

I perused Zombie near the water in France a few years ago. Even with the bright weather I sensed cold creep through me. Additionally, I sensed the excitement of excitement. I was composing my latest book, and I faced an obstacle. I wasn’t sure whether there existed an effective approach to compose some of the fearful things the book contains. Going through this book, I saw that it could be done.

Released decades ago, the novel is a bleak exploration within the psyche of a young serial killer, Quentin P, modeled after a notorious figure, the murderer who killed and cut apart 17 young men and boys in Milwaukee over a decade. Notoriously, this person was consumed with making a submissive individual that would remain with him and made many horrific efforts to achieve this.

The deeds the novel describes are terrible, but just as scary is the emotional authenticity. Quentin P’s terrible, fragmented world is plainly told in spare prose, details omitted. The audience is immersed trapped in his consciousness, obliged to observe thoughts and actions that appal. The strangeness of his thinking is like a tangible impact – or finding oneself isolated on a barren alien world. Going into this book is not just reading than a full body experience. You are absorbed completely.

An Accomplished Author

A Haunting Novel by Helen Oyeyemi

When I was a child, I walked in my sleep and subsequently commenced experiencing nightmares. At one point, the terror involved a dream where I was trapped in a box and, upon awakening, I realized that I had ripped the slat off the window, trying to get out. That house was falling apart; when it rained heavily the ground floor corridor became inundated, insect eggs dropped from above on to my parents’ bed, and at one time a big rodent climbed the drapes in the bedroom.

Once a companion gave me Helen Oyeyemi’s novel, I was residing elsewhere in my childhood residence, but the tale regarding the building perched on the cliffs felt familiar to me, nostalgic as I was. It’s a book about a haunted clamorous, sentimental building and a girl who ingests limestone from the cliffs. I cherished the story so much and returned repeatedly to it, each time discovering {something

Lori Benitez
Lori Benitez

A certified wellness coach and mindfulness expert with over a decade of experience in holistic health practices.