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Andrew Michael Hurley

A Chilling Tale from Shirley Jackson

I discovered this tale long ago and it has lingered with me from that moment. The named seasonal visitors happen to be a couple urban dwellers, who rent an identical isolated country cottage every summer. During this visit, instead of returning to urban life, they decide to extend their holiday a few more weeks – an action that appears to alarm everyone in the adjacent village. Everyone conveys the same veiled caution that not a soul has lingered by the water after the holiday. Regardless, the couple are resolved to not leave, and that is the moment things start to grow more bizarre. The man who brings oil declines to provide to them. Nobody agrees to bring food to the cabin, and at the time they try to drive into town, the car fails to start. Bad weather approaches, the batteries within the device die, and with the arrival of dusk, “the aged individuals huddled together inside their cabin and anticipated”. What could be this couple anticipating? What might the locals understand? Each occasion I read this author’s unnerving and thought-provoking tale, I recall that the finest fright stems from what’s left undisclosed.

An Acclaimed Writer

An Eerie Story by a noted author

In this concise narrative a couple journey to an ordinary seaside town where church bells toll constantly, a constant chiming that is bothersome and puzzling. The first truly frightening episode happens at night, as they opt to take a walk and they fail to see the ocean. The beach is there, the scent exists of decaying seafood and brine, waves crash, but the sea seems phantom, or a different entity and even more alarming. It is truly insanely sinister and whenever I travel to the shore at night I think about this story that destroyed the beach in the evening in my view – positively.

The young couple – she’s very young, the husband is older – return to their lodging and learn the cause of the ringing, during a prolonged scene of claustrophobia, macabre revelry and demise and innocence intersects with grim ballet pandemonium. It’s a chilling reflection regarding craving and decline, two bodies maturing in tandem as a couple, the connection and brutality and gentleness in matrimony.

Not only the most frightening, but likely among the finest concise narratives in existence, and a personal favourite. I experienced it in Spanish, in the debut release of this author’s works to be published in this country several years back.

A Prominent Novelist

A Dark Novel from Joyce Carol Oates

I read Zombie near the water overseas recently. Even with the bright weather I experienced a chill through me. I also felt the electricity of anticipation. I was composing a new project, and I faced a block. I didn’t know if there was any good way to craft some of the fearful things the book contains. Going through this book, I realized that it was possible.

Released decades ago, the book is a grim journey within the psyche of a young serial killer, the main character, based on a notorious figure, the serial killer who murdered and cut apart 17 young men and boys in Milwaukee over a decade. As is well-known, the killer was consumed with creating a compliant victim who would stay with him and carried out several horrific efforts to do so.

The actions the story tells are horrific, but equally frightening is its emotional authenticity. Quentin P’s awful, broken reality is plainly told in spare prose, details omitted. The audience is immersed stuck in his mind, forced to see ideas and deeds that shock. The alien nature of his psyche resembles a tangible impact – or being stranded on a desolate planet. Going into Zombie is less like reading than a full body experience. You are swallowed whole.

An Accomplished Author

A Haunting Novel by Helen Oyeyemi

During my youth, I sleepwalked and eventually began experiencing nightmares. On one occasion, the fear involved a nightmare during which I was stuck in a box and, when I woke up, I discovered that I had torn off a part from the window, trying to get out. That house was falling apart; when storms came the downstairs hall flooded, maggots fell from the ceiling onto the bed, and once a sizeable vermin ascended the window coverings in my sister’s room.

After an acquaintance gave me Helen Oyeyemi’s novel, I had moved out with my parents, but the tale regarding the building located on the coastline seemed recognizable to me, longing as I felt. It is a story concerning a ghostly loud, emotional house and a female character who eats calcium from the shoreline. I cherished the novel immensely and came back frequently to its pages, each time discovering {something