Frightening Authors Discuss the Scariest Stories They have Ever Experienced

A Renowned Horror Author

A Chilling Tale from a master of suspense

I discovered this tale some time back and it has lingered with me ever since. The named “summer people” turn out to be a family urban dwellers, who lease a particular remote country cottage annually. During this visit, in place of going back to urban life, they decide to extend their vacation for a month longer – a decision that to alarm each resident in the nearby town. Each repeats the same veiled caution that no one has lingered in the area after the end of summer. Regardless, the couple are resolved to remain, and that’s when things start to get increasingly weird. The man who delivers fuel declines to provide for them. No one is willing to supply food to the cabin, and as the Allisons try to travel to the community, the car fails to start. A storm gathers, the power in the radio fade, and when night comes, “the two old people huddled together within their rental and expected”. What are this couple expecting? What do the residents know? Whenever I peruse this author’s disturbing and inspiring narrative, I remember that the best horror stems from what’s left undisclosed.

An Acclaimed Writer

Ringing the Changes from a noted author

In this concise narrative a pair journey to a typical beach community where church bells toll the whole time, an incessant ringing that is irritating and inexplicable. The first extremely terrifying moment occurs during the evening, as they choose to go for a stroll and they are unable to locate the sea. Sand is present, there’s the smell of putrid marine life and seawater, surf is audible, but the ocean is a ghost, or another thing and even more alarming. It is simply deeply malevolent and every time I visit to a beach after dark I think about this tale which spoiled the sea at night in my view – in a good way.

The newlyweds – the woman is adolescent, the husband is older – go back to the inn and discover why the bells ring, during a prolonged scene of enclosed spaces, gruesome festivities and death-and-the-maiden intersects with danse macabre bedlam. It’s an unnerving contemplation regarding craving and deterioration, two people growing old jointly as partners, the attachment and aggression and gentleness within wedlock.

Not just the most terrifying, but perhaps among the finest brief tales in existence, and a beloved choice. I encountered it in Spanish, in the initial publication of this author’s works to be published in this country several years back.

Catriona Ward

Zombie from an esteemed writer

I read Zombie by a pool in France a few years ago. Despite the sunshine I sensed a chill over me. I also felt the electricity of fascination. I was composing my third novel, and I encountered a wall. I was uncertain if there was an effective approach to compose certain terrifying elements the book contains. Experiencing this novel, I understood that it was possible.

Released decades ago, the novel is a grim journey through the mind of a criminal, Quentin P, modeled after an infamous individual, the criminal who slaughtered and mutilated numerous individuals in a city during a specific period. Notoriously, this person was fixated with producing a zombie sex slave who would stay with him and attempted numerous horrific efforts to achieve this.

The acts the book depicts are appalling, but equally frightening is the emotional authenticity. The character’s dreadful, fragmented world is plainly told using minimal words, identities hidden. You is immersed trapped in his consciousness, forced to see mental processes and behaviors that horrify. The alien nature of his mind resembles a bodily jolt – or finding oneself isolated in an empty realm. Going into this story feels different from reading than a full body experience. You are swallowed whole.

Daisy Johnson

A Haunting Novel from Helen Oyeyemi

In my early years, I was a somnambulist and eventually began experiencing nightmares. On one occasion, the fear included a nightmare during which I was stuck within an enclosure and, upon awakening, I found that I had torn off the slat off the window, seeking to leave. That house was crumbling; during heavy rain the ground floor corridor became inundated, fly larvae came down from the roof onto the bed, and on one occasion a big rodent climbed the drapes in my sister’s room.

Once a companion 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 in my view, homesick as I was. It’s a novel featuring a possessed loud, sentimental building and a female character who eats calcium off the rocks. I adored the book so much and went back again and again to the story, always finding {something