Scary Writers Discuss the Most Terrifying Stories They have Actually Encountered

A Renowned Horror Author

A Chilling Tale from a master of suspense

I read this tale long ago and it has lingered with me from that moment. The named “summer people” are the Allisons from New York, who lease the same off-grid lakeside house annually. During this visit, in place of going back to the city, they choose to extend their stay a few more weeks – a decision that to alarm everyone in the nearby town. All pass on a similar vague warning that nobody has remained in the area after the holiday. Nonetheless, the Allisons are determined to remain, and that’s when situations commence to grow more bizarre. The individual who delivers the kerosene declines to provide to them. Not a single person will deliver supplies to the cabin, and as the Allisons attempt to go to the village, their vehicle won’t start. A storm gathers, the power of their radio die, and when night comes, “the two old people crowded closely inside their cabin and anticipated”. What might be they expecting? What could the townspeople understand? Whenever I revisit Jackson’s chilling and inspiring tale, I’m reminded that the best horror stems from that which remains hidden.

Mariana Enríquez

An Eerie Story by a noted author

In this brief tale a couple journey to a typical coastal village where church bells toll continuously, a perpetual pealing that is annoying and puzzling. The first very scary scene happens during the evening, as they decide to go for a stroll and they can’t find the ocean. The beach is there, the scent exists of decaying seafood and salt, waves crash, but the water seems phantom, or another thing and worse. It is simply insanely sinister and every time I travel to the shore in the evening I remember this story that ruined the sea at night for me – positively.

The young couple – the wife is youthful, the husband is older – go back to the inn and find out the reason for the chiming, in a long sequence of enclosed spaces, macabre revelry and demise and innocence intersects with dance of death bedlam. It is a disturbing reflection on desire and decay, two bodies maturing in tandem as spouses, the bond and violence and tenderness of marriage.

Not only the most terrifying, but perhaps a top example of short stories in existence, and a beloved choice. I read it in the Spanish language, in the first edition of Aickman stories to be published in Argentina a decade ago.

A Prominent Novelist

A Dark Novel by an esteemed writer

I perused Zombie beside the swimming area in France a few years ago. Even with the bright weather I experienced a chill through me. I also felt the electricity of anticipation. I was writing a new project, and I faced a block. I wasn’t sure if it was possible an effective approach to write various frightening aspects the story includes. Experiencing this novel, I realized that it was possible.

Published in 1995, the novel is a grim journey within the psyche of a young serial killer, the main character, modeled after an infamous individual, the murderer who slaughtered and cut apart 17 young men and boys in the Midwest during a specific period. As is well-known, Dahmer was obsessed with producing a submissive individual who would never leave by his side and attempted numerous macabre trials to achieve this.

The acts the story tells are terrible, but just as scary is the mental realism. The character’s terrible, fragmented world is plainly told using minimal words, names redacted. The reader is sunk deep caught in his thoughts, compelled to witness mental processes and behaviors that shock. The foreignness of his psyche is like a bodily jolt – or being stranded on a barren alien world. Starting Zombie feels different from reading than a full body experience. You are absorbed completely.

An Accomplished Author

White Is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi

When I was a child, I was a somnambulist and eventually began experiencing nightmares. On one occasion, the terror featured a nightmare in which I was trapped in a box and, as I roused, I found that I had ripped a piece off the window, attempting to escape. That home was decaying; during heavy rain the entranceway filled with water, fly larvae fell from the ceiling on to my parents’ bed, and on one occasion a large rat climbed the drapes in the bedroom.

After an acquaintance gave me the story, I was no longer living in my childhood residence, but the narrative regarding the building perched on the cliffs felt familiar to me, longing as I felt. It’s a book about a haunted loud, emotional house and a girl who eats chalk from the shoreline. I adored the novel immensely and went back repeatedly to the story, consistently uncovering {something

Kristina Larson
Kristina Larson

A passionate storyteller and digital content creator, Elara crafts engaging narratives that captivate readers worldwide.