Scary Authors Share the Most Frightening Stories They've Ever Encountered

A Renowned Horror Author

The Summer People from a master of suspense

I encountered this narrative long ago and it has stayed with me from that moment. The named “summer people” turn out to be the Allisons urban dwellers, who occupy a particular isolated rural cabin annually. During this visit, instead of going back to urban life, they opt to lengthen their vacation a few more weeks – a decision that to disturb all the locals in the adjacent village. All pass on a similar vague warning that not a soul has ever stayed by the water after the end of summer. Regardless, they are determined to not leave, and at that point events begin to get increasingly weird. The man who brings the kerosene refuses to sell for them. Not a single person will deliver supplies to their home, and when the family attempt to travel to the community, their vehicle fails to start. A storm gathers, the batteries within the device die, and with the arrival of dusk, “the aged individuals clung to each other in their summer cottage and waited”. What could be they waiting for? What could the locals understand? Each occasion I peruse the writer’s disturbing and influential tale, I remember that the top terror stems from the unspoken.

An Acclaimed Writer

An Eerie Story by Robert Aickman

In this short story a pair journey to a typical coastal village where church bells toll constantly, a perpetual pealing that is irritating and unexplainable. The initial very scary scene occurs during the evening, when they choose to walk around and they can’t find the ocean. Sand is present, there’s the smell of putrid marine life and salt, surf is audible, but the water appears spectral, or a different entity and even more alarming. It is truly deeply malevolent and each occasion I visit to the shore at night I recall this story that destroyed the sea at night to my mind – positively.

The newlyweds – she’s very young, the man is mature – return to their lodging and find out the cause of the ringing, in a long sequence of enclosed spaces, gruesome festivities and death-and-the-maiden meets grim ballet pandemonium. It’s an unnerving reflection on desire and deterioration, two people maturing in tandem as a couple, the bond and violence and gentleness of marriage.

Not only the most frightening, but perhaps among the finest brief tales out there, and a beloved choice. I experienced it in the Spanish language, in the first edition of this author’s works to be published locally a decade ago.

A Prominent Novelist

Zombie from Joyce Carol Oates

I perused this narrative beside the swimming area in the French countryside recently. Despite the sunshine I felt a chill over me. I also felt the electricity of excitement. I was composing my third novel, and I faced an obstacle. I was uncertain whether there existed an effective approach to craft some of the fearful things the book contains. Experiencing this novel, I saw that it was possible.

Published in 1995, the book is a dark flight into the thoughts of a criminal, the main character, based on an infamous individual, the serial killer who slaughtered and mutilated multiple victims in Milwaukee between 1978 and 1991. As is well-known, this person was consumed with producing a compliant victim who would stay him and carried out several grisly attempts to achieve this.

The deeds the novel describes are appalling, but similarly terrifying is its own psychological persuasiveness. The protagonist’s dreadful, broken reality is directly described with concise language, identities hidden. The audience is plunged trapped in his consciousness, compelled to witness mental processes and behaviors that shock. The alien nature of his psyche is like a tangible impact – or finding oneself isolated on a desolate planet. Going into this book feels different from reading but a complete immersion. You are absorbed completely.

An Accomplished Author

White Is for Witching by a gifted writer

During my youth, I was a somnambulist and subsequently commenced having night terrors. At one point, the fear involved a dream where I was stuck inside a container and, upon awakening, I found that I had removed the slat off the window, seeking to leave. That house was crumbling; when it rained heavily the entranceway filled with water, fly larvae came down from the roof on to my parents’ bed, and once a large rat scaled the curtains in the bedroom.

Once a companion presented me with Helen Oyeyemi’s novel, I had moved out with my parents, but the narrative of the house high on the Dover cliffs seemed recognizable to myself, nostalgic at that time. This is a novel about a haunted loud, sentimental building and a young woman who consumes chalk from the cliffs. I cherished the story deeply and came back again and again to the story, each time discovering {something