Frightening Writers Share the Most Terrifying Tales They've Ever Experienced

A Renowned Horror Author

A Chilling Tale by a master of suspense

I encountered this narrative long ago and it has haunted me since then. The named seasonal visitors happen to be a family from New York, who rent a particular isolated country cottage each year. This time, rather than going back to the city, they opt to prolong their vacation an extra month – an action that appears to disturb each resident in the surrounding community. Each repeats a similar vague warning that no one has remained by the water past the end of summer. Even so, they are resolved to not leave, and that’s when things start to become stranger. The man who brings fuel refuses to sell to them. No one agrees to bring supplies to the cabin, and when the Allisons attempt to go to the village, the automobile fails to start. A storm gathers, the batteries of their radio fade, and when night comes, “the aged individuals huddled together within their rental and expected”. What might be they waiting for? What could the townspeople be aware of? Whenever I revisit this author’s chilling and thought-provoking tale, I recall that the finest fright stems from that which remains hidden.

Mariana Enríquez

An Eerie Story by Robert Aickman

In this brief tale a pair go to an ordinary beach community where bells ring constantly, a perpetual pealing that is bothersome and unexplainable. The first extremely terrifying episode happens during the evening, as they decide to take a walk and they can’t find the sea. Sand is present, the scent exists of putrid marine life and brine, surf is audible, but the ocean appears spectral, or a different entity and even more alarming. It is truly profoundly ominous and whenever I visit to a beach after dark I recall this story which spoiled the sea at night to my mind – favorably.

The newlyweds – the wife is youthful, he’s not – go back to their lodging and discover why the bells ring, during a prolonged scene of confinement, macabre revelry and demise and innocence encounters grim ballet chaos. It’s a chilling meditation on desire and deterioration, two bodies growing old jointly as a couple, the bond and violence and affection of marriage.

Not only the most terrifying, but probably one of the best brief tales in existence, and a personal favourite. I encountered it en español, in the first edition of this author’s works to be published in this country a decade ago.

Catriona Ward

Zombie from Joyce Carol Oates

I delved into Zombie beside the swimming area in the French countryside in 2020. Although it was sunny I experienced a chill within me. I also experienced the electricity of fascination. I was working on my latest book, and I faced a wall. I wasn’t sure if it was possible any good way to write certain terrifying elements the book contains. Going through this book, I saw that it could be done.

Published in 1995, the novel is a dark flight through the mind of a young serial killer, Quentin P, inspired by Jeffrey Dahmer, the murderer who slaughtered and cut apart multiple victims in Milwaukee between 1978 and 1991. Notoriously, this person was consumed with producing a zombie sex slave who would never leave by his side and made many horrific efforts to accomplish it.

The acts the story tells are horrific, but just as scary is the psychological persuasiveness. The character’s dreadful, shattered existence is directly described in spare prose, identities hidden. The reader is plunged stuck in his mind, forced to witness ideas and deeds that shock. The strangeness of his thinking resembles a tangible impact – or getting lost in an empty realm. Going into this book feels different from reading than a full body experience. You are absorbed completely.

Daisy Johnson

A Haunting Novel from Helen Oyeyemi

In my early years, I walked in my sleep and eventually began suffering from bad dreams. On one occasion, the fear involved a dream in which I was confined inside a container and, when I woke up, I discovered that I had removed the slat out of the window frame, attempting to escape. That house was decaying; when it rained heavily the ground floor corridor filled with water, maggots dropped from above into the bedroom, and on one occasion a big rodent climbed the drapes in my sister’s room.

Once a companion presented me with Helen Oyeyemi’s novel, I had moved out at my family home, but the tale of the house located on the coastline felt familiar to myself, longing as I felt. It’s a novel concerning a ghostly clamorous, atmospheric home and a young woman who eats limestone off the rocks. I adored the book immensely and came back again and again to its pages, always finding {something