Horror Writers Share the Most Terrifying Stories They've Ever Encountered

A Renowned Horror Author

A Chilling Tale from a master of suspense

I discovered this story long ago and it has haunted me since then. The so-called “summer people” happen to be the Allisons from New York, who lease the same isolated lakeside house annually. On this occasion, instead of heading back home, they choose to lengthen their holiday for a month longer – a decision that to alarm everyone in the surrounding community. Each repeats an identical cryptic advice that not a soul has ever stayed at the lake after Labor Day. Even so, they are resolved to stay, and that is the moment events begin to get increasingly weird. The person who brings the kerosene declines to provide to the couple. No one is willing to supply food to their home, and at the time they attempt to travel to the community, the car fails to start. A tempest builds, the energy of their radio fade, and when night comes, “the two old people clung to each other within their rental and anticipated”. What might be they anticipating? What could the residents know? Each occasion I revisit Jackson’s disturbing and inspiring narrative, I recall that the top terror stems from what’s left undisclosed.

Mariana Enríquez

Ringing the Changes from Robert Aickman

In this brief tale a couple go to an ordinary beach community in which chimes sound the whole time, a constant chiming that is irritating and puzzling. The opening extremely terrifying episode occurs after dark, at the time they opt to go for a stroll and they fail to see the ocean. Sand is present, the scent exists of decaying seafood and seawater, surf is audible, but the sea appears spectral, or another thing and even more alarming. It is truly profoundly ominous and each occasion I go to the coast in the evening I recall this story which spoiled the beach in the evening for me – positively.

The recent spouses – she’s very young, the man is mature – return to their lodging and discover the cause of the ringing, during a prolonged scene of confinement, necro-orgy and demise and innocence encounters dance of death pandemonium. It is a disturbing reflection on desire and decay, two bodies maturing in tandem as partners, the connection and aggression and gentleness within wedlock.

Not only the most frightening, but perhaps among the finest concise narratives in existence, and an individual preference. I encountered it en español, in the first edition of these tales to be released in this country a decade ago.

Catriona Ward

A Dark Novel by Joyce Carol Oates

I delved into Zombie near the water in France in 2020. Despite the sunshine I sensed a chill within me. I also felt the excitement of anticipation. I was writing a new project, and I had hit an obstacle. I was uncertain if it was possible any good way to craft some of the fearful things the book contains. Going through this book, I saw that there was a way.

First printed in the nineties, the novel is a bleak exploration through the mind of a criminal, the protagonist, based on a notorious figure, the murderer who killed and mutilated numerous individuals in the Midwest between 1978 and 1991. As is well-known, this person was obsessed with producing a submissive individual that would remain him and attempted numerous macabre trials to do so.

The deeds the book depicts are horrific, but just as scary is the psychological persuasiveness. The character’s dreadful, fragmented world is simply narrated in spare prose, details omitted. The audience is plunged caught in his thoughts, obliged to witness mental processes and behaviors that shock. The alien nature of his mind feels like a bodily jolt – or finding oneself isolated on a barren alien world. Entering this story is not just reading but a complete immersion. You are absorbed completely.

An Accomplished Author

A Haunting Novel from a gifted writer

During my youth, I walked in my sleep and eventually began having night terrors. Once, the fear involved a nightmare where I was stuck within an enclosure and, when I woke up, I discovered that I had ripped a piece out of the window frame, attempting to escape. That house was falling apart; during heavy rain the entranceway filled with water, maggots came down from the roof into the bedroom, and once a large rat scaled the curtains in my sister’s room.

Once a companion presented me with the story, I was no longer living at my family home, but the narrative of the house located on the coastline appeared known in my view, longing as I felt. It is a book featuring a possessed loud, sentimental building and a young woman who ingests calcium from the shoreline. I loved the story deeply and returned again and again to it, consistently uncovering {something