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

A Renowned Horror Author

The Summer People from Shirley Jackson

I discovered this story long ago and it has lingered with me since then. The titular “summer people” turn out to be the Allisons urban dwellers, who rent the same remote lakeside house each year. On this occasion, rather than heading back home, they decide to prolong their vacation an extra month – an action that appears to alarm all the locals in the adjacent village. Each repeats a similar vague warning that nobody has lingered at the lake after Labor Day. Nonetheless, the Allisons are resolved to remain, and at that point things start to become stranger. The man who delivers fuel declines to provide to them. Nobody is willing to supply groceries to their home, and as the family try to drive into town, their vehicle fails to start. A tempest builds, the batteries in the radio fade, and as darkness falls, “the aged individuals huddled together inside their cabin and waited”. What might be this couple expecting? What do the residents be aware of? Every time I peruse this author’s disturbing and influential story, I’m reminded that the finest fright comes from the unspoken.

An Acclaimed Writer

Ringing the Changes from a noted author

In this concise narrative a couple go to a common seaside town where bells ring continuously, a perpetual pealing that is bothersome and puzzling. The first extremely terrifying moment takes place at night, when they decide to go for a stroll and they can’t find the ocean. Sand is present, there is the odor of rotting fish and salt, there are waves, but the ocean appears spectral, or a different entity and more dreadful. It is simply insanely sinister and each occasion I travel to a beach after dark I think about this story which spoiled the beach in the evening in my view – favorably.

The recent spouses – the wife is youthful, he’s not – return to the hotel and learn why the bells ring, during a prolonged scene of enclosed spaces, macabre revelry and death-and-the-maiden intersects with dance of death bedlam. It is a disturbing meditation about longing and deterioration, a pair of individuals maturing in tandem as a couple, the bond and aggression and tenderness of marriage.

Not only the most frightening, but probably one of the best short stories available, and a personal favourite. I encountered it in Spanish, in the initial publication of these tales to appear locally several years back.

A Prominent Novelist

A Dark Novel from Joyce Carol Oates

I read this narrative by a pool in France in 2020. Despite the sunshine I experienced cold creep over me. I also felt the thrill of fascination. I was composing a new project, and I encountered a wall. I wasn’t sure whether there existed a proper method to write certain terrifying elements the book contains. Going through this book, I understood that there was a way.

Released decades ago, the book is a grim journey into the thoughts of a murderer, the protagonist, based on a notorious figure, the murderer who murdered and mutilated multiple victims in Milwaukee during a specific period. Infamously, Dahmer was consumed with producing a submissive individual who would never leave with him and attempted numerous grisly attempts to do so.

The deeds the story tells are appalling, but equally frightening is the psychological persuasiveness. Quentin P’s awful, shattered existence is plainly told in spare prose, identities hidden. The audience is plunged stuck in his mind, compelled to witness mental processes and behaviors that appal. The strangeness of his psyche is like a tangible impact – or getting lost on a desolate planet. Going into this book feels different from reading but a complete immersion. You are consumed entirely.

Daisy Johnson

A Haunting Novel by a gifted writer

During my youth, I walked in my sleep and later started experiencing nightmares. Once, the fear featured a nightmare in which I was trapped within an enclosure and, as I roused, I realized that I had removed a piece off the window, attempting to escape. That home was crumbling; during heavy rain the entranceway filled with water, maggots dropped from above onto the bed, and once a big rodent climbed the drapes in that space.

After an acquaintance gave me Helen Oyeyemi’s novel, I was residing elsewhere with my parents, but the story regarding the building perched on the cliffs felt familiar to me, longing as I felt. This is a story about a haunted clamorous, emotional house and a young woman who eats limestone from the shoreline. I cherished the story immensely and came back frequently to it, consistently uncovering {something