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Andrew Michael Hurley

The Summer People from Shirley Jackson

I discovered this story some time back and it has haunted me since then. The named seasonal visitors are a couple from New York, who rent an identical isolated country cottage annually. On this occasion, in place of heading back home, they opt to prolong their stay a few more weeks – an action that appears to unsettle each resident in the adjacent village. Everyone conveys an identical cryptic advice that nobody has lingered in the area past the end of summer. Regardless, they insist to stay, and that’s when things start to become stranger. The man who delivers the kerosene won’t sell to the couple. Nobody will deliver supplies to the cottage, and as they attempt to go to the village, the automobile won’t start. A tempest builds, the power of their radio fade, and when night comes, “the two old people huddled together in their summer cottage and anticipated”. What are they anticipating? What could the residents be aware of? Every time I revisit this author’s unnerving and inspiring narrative, I recall that the best horror comes from what’s left undisclosed.

An Acclaimed Writer

An Eerie Story by Robert Aickman

In this short story a pair go to a common seaside town where church bells toll continuously, an incessant ringing that is irritating and puzzling. The first truly frightening moment happens during the evening, as they choose to go for a stroll and they are unable to locate the water. The beach is there, there is the odor of decaying seafood and brine, waves crash, but the water is a ghost, or a different entity and worse. It’s just insanely sinister and whenever I travel to the coast after dark I remember this story that destroyed the ocean after dark to my mind – in a good way.

The newlyweds – the woman is adolescent, the man is mature – head back to their lodging and discover the reason for the chiming, through an extended episode of claustrophobia, macabre revelry and demise and innocence intersects with danse macabre pandemonium. It is a disturbing contemplation about longing and decay, a pair of individuals maturing in tandem as partners, the attachment and violence and tenderness of marriage.

Not only the most frightening, but likely one of the best short stories in existence, and a personal favourite. I read it in the Spanish language, in the initial publication of these tales to be released locally several years back.

A Prominent Novelist

A Dark Novel by an esteemed writer

I perused Zombie near the water overseas recently. Despite the sunshine I felt cold creep over me. I also experienced the excitement of excitement. I was composing my third novel, and I had hit a wall. I was uncertain if it was possible any good way to craft some of the fearful things the narrative involves. Going through this book, I saw that it could be done.

First printed in the nineties, the novel is a dark flight through the mind of a young serial killer, the protagonist, based on Jeffrey Dahmer, the murderer who murdered and mutilated numerous individuals in a city during a specific period. As is well-known, this person was obsessed with creating a compliant victim who would never leave with him and made many horrific efforts to achieve this.

The actions the book depicts are terrible, but similarly terrifying is its emotional authenticity. Quentin P’s awful, broken reality is plainly told using minimal words, names redacted. You is sunk deep caught in his thoughts, compelled to see ideas and deeds that appal. The foreignness of his thinking resembles a tangible impact – or finding oneself isolated on a barren alien world. Going into Zombie is less like reading but a complete immersion. You are swallowed whole.

An Accomplished Author

White Is for Witching from Helen Oyeyemi

During my youth, I was a somnambulist and subsequently commenced having night terrors. Once, the terror involved a dream in which I was trapped in a box and, when I woke up, I found that I had ripped a piece off the window, seeking to leave. That building was decaying; when storms came the downstairs hall filled with water, insect eggs fell from the ceiling on to my parents’ bed, and at one time a large rat climbed the drapes in that space.

After an acquaintance presented me with the story, I was residing elsewhere at my family home, but the story regarding the building high on the Dover cliffs seemed recognizable to me, nostalgic as I felt. This is a story concerning a ghostly clamorous, sentimental building and a girl who ingests calcium off the rocks. I loved the story deeply and went back frequently to the story, always finding {something