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Andrew Michael Hurley

The Summer People by Shirley Jackson

I discovered this narrative some time back and it has lingered with me ever since. The titular “summer people” happen to be a family from New York, who lease an identical off-grid rural cabin every summer. On this occasion, rather than going back to urban life, they decide to extend their stay an extra month – an action that appears to alarm everyone in the surrounding community. Each repeats a similar vague warning that no one has lingered in the area after the holiday. Regardless, they are determined to not leave, and that’s when situations commence to get increasingly weird. The man who delivers oil won’t sell to the couple. No one is willing to supply supplies to their home, and when the Allisons try to travel to the community, their vehicle refuses to operate. A tempest builds, the energy of their radio diminish, and as darkness falls, “the aged individuals huddled together inside their cabin and expected”. What could be this couple expecting? What do the residents understand? Every time I read the writer’s chilling and thought-provoking tale, I recall that the top terror originates in that which remains hidden.

An Acclaimed Writer

Ringing the Changes from a noted author

In this concise narrative two people journey to a common coastal village where bells ring constantly, a constant chiming that is bothersome and unexplainable. The initial extremely terrifying scene takes place after dark, as they opt to go for a stroll and they fail to see the ocean. Sand is present, the scent exists of putrid marine life and seawater, surf is audible, but the sea seems phantom, or something else and even more alarming. It is simply deeply malevolent and whenever I travel to the coast at night I remember this tale which spoiled the sea at night in my view – favorably.

The young couple – the woman is adolescent, the husband is older – return to their lodging and discover the reason for the chiming, in a long sequence of confinement, gruesome festivities and mortality and youth encounters grim ballet pandemonium. It’s an unnerving contemplation on desire and deterioration, two people growing old jointly as a couple, the bond and aggression and tenderness within wedlock.

Not only the most frightening, but probably among the finest concise narratives available, and a beloved choice. I encountered it en español, in the initial publication of this author’s works to appear in this country several years back.

A Prominent Novelist

Zombie by an esteemed writer

I read this narrative by a pool overseas a few years ago. Despite the sunshine I experienced cold creep over me. I also experienced the electricity of fascination. I was composing my third novel, and I encountered a block. I didn’t know whether there existed an effective approach to compose some of the fearful things the story includes. Going through this book, I realized that there was a way.

First printed in the nineties, the book is a grim journey into the thoughts of a young serial killer, the main character, based on a notorious figure, the serial killer who killed and dismembered numerous individuals in Milwaukee during a specific period. As is well-known, this person was obsessed with making a compliant victim who would stay with him and made many grisly attempts to achieve this.

The deeds the book depicts are appalling, but just as scary is its own mental realism. The protagonist’s awful, broken reality is simply narrated using minimal words, identities hidden. The reader is sunk deep trapped in his consciousness, forced to witness mental processes and behaviors that appal. The alien nature of his psyche feels like a tangible impact – or getting lost on a barren alien world. Going into Zombie feels different from reading but a complete immersion. You are consumed entirely.

An Accomplished Author

A Haunting Novel from a gifted writer

When I was a child, I was a somnambulist and eventually began having night terrors. Once, the fear involved a vision where I was stuck within an enclosure and, upon awakening, I discovered that I had ripped a piece off the window, seeking to leave. That building was falling apart; during heavy rain the downstairs hall filled with water, fly larvae dropped from above into the bedroom, and on one occasion a sizeable vermin ascended the window coverings in the bedroom.

Once a companion presented me with the story, I was residing elsewhere at my family home, but the tale regarding the building located on the coastline felt familiar to myself, nostalgic at that time. It is a book featuring a possessed clamorous, atmospheric home and a female character who consumes limestone from the shoreline. I loved the book immensely and returned repeatedly to the story, each time discovering {something