Scary Authors Reveal the Most Terrifying Tales They have Ever Experienced

A Renowned Horror Author

A Chilling Tale from a master of suspense

I encountered this tale years ago and it has haunted me from that moment. The so-called “summer people” turn out to be a family from New York, who rent the same remote lakeside house every summer. On this occasion, rather than returning home, they opt to extend their holiday an extra month – something that seems to disturb all the locals in the nearby town. All pass on a similar vague warning that not a soul has remained in the area past Labor Day. Regardless, they are resolved to remain, and that’s when situations commence to get increasingly weird. The man who brings oil refuses to sell for them. Nobody will deliver food to the cabin, and at the time they attempt to travel to the community, the automobile fails to start. A tempest builds, the energy within the device die, and when night comes, “the elderly couple huddled together within their rental and expected”. What might be this couple expecting? What might the residents know? Whenever I peruse Jackson’s disturbing and inspiring tale, I’m reminded that the finest fright originates in that which remains hidden.

Mariana Enríquez

An Eerie Story by a noted author

In this short story two people go to a common beach community where church bells toll constantly, a constant chiming that is bothersome and puzzling. The opening extremely terrifying moment occurs at night, at the time they decide to walk around and they fail to see the water. There’s sand, there’s the smell of rotting fish and seawater, there are waves, but the ocean seems phantom, or something else and more dreadful. It’s just profoundly ominous and every time I travel to the shore in the evening I remember this story which spoiled the ocean after dark in my view – favorably.

The young couple – the woman is adolescent, he’s not – go back to the inn and find out why the bells ring, in a long sequence of confinement, macabre revelry and demise and innocence intersects with danse macabre pandemonium. It’s a chilling meditation on desire and decline, two people growing old jointly as spouses, the attachment and violence and gentleness in matrimony.

Not merely the scariest, but likely one of the best brief tales available, and a beloved choice. I experienced it en español, in the debut release of Aickman stories to be released in Argentina a decade ago.

A Prominent Novelist

Zombie from Joyce Carol Oates

I read Zombie beside the swimming area in the French countryside recently. Despite the sunshine I experienced an icy feeling within me. I also experienced the excitement of anticipation. I was working on my third novel, and I faced a block. I wasn’t sure if it was possible an effective approach to write various frightening aspects the book contains. Going through this book, I saw that it was possible.

Published in 1995, the book is a grim journey through the mind of a young serial killer, Quentin P, based on a notorious figure, the criminal who murdered and dismembered numerous individuals in the Midwest during a specific period. Infamously, this person was obsessed with creating a zombie sex slave who would never leave with him and carried out several macabre trials to accomplish it.

The acts the story tells are horrific, but similarly terrifying is its own emotional authenticity. Quentin P’s awful, shattered existence is directly described in spare prose, names redacted. You is sunk deep trapped in his consciousness, compelled to witness ideas and deeds that shock. The foreignness of his psyche feels like a bodily jolt – or being stranded in an empty realm. Going into Zombie is not just reading than a full body experience. You are consumed entirely.

Daisy Johnson

A Haunting Novel from a gifted writer

In my early years, I was a somnambulist and subsequently commenced experiencing nightmares. Once, the terror featured a nightmare in which I was stuck within an enclosure and, as I roused, I discovered that I had torn off a part out of the window frame, attempting to escape. That home was decaying; when it rained heavily the entranceway filled with water, insect eggs fell from the ceiling onto the bed, and at one time a large rat climbed the drapes in my sister’s room.

When a friend handed me this author’s book, I had moved out with my parents, but the tale regarding the building high on the Dover cliffs seemed recognizable to me, longing as I felt. It is a novel featuring a possessed noisy, sentimental building and a girl who ingests chalk from the cliffs. I adored the story so much and came back repeatedly to it, each time discovering {something

Jason Myers
Jason Myers

A passionate storyteller and digital creator, sharing unique narratives and life experiences to inspire readers worldwide.