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Andrew Michael Hurley

The Summer People by Shirley Jackson

I encountered this story years ago and it has lingered with me since then. The titular vacationers happen to be a couple urban dwellers, who lease a particular off-grid country cottage each year. On this occasion, in place of returning to the city, they decide to lengthen their holiday for a month longer – a decision that to alarm all the locals in the adjacent village. Everyone conveys the same veiled caution that no one has lingered in the area beyond the holiday. Even so, they are determined to remain, and that is the moment things start to grow more bizarre. The person who brings fuel won’t sell to the couple. No one is willing to supply supplies to their home, and as the Allisons attempt to drive into town, the automobile won’t start. A tempest builds, the power in the radio diminish, and as darkness falls, “the aged individuals crowded closely within their rental and expected”. What might be the Allisons anticipating? What could the locals know? Each occasion I revisit the writer’s disturbing and inspiring tale, 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 travel to an ordinary beach community where church bells toll constantly, a constant chiming that is annoying and unexplainable. The opening very scary episode happens after dark, at the time they opt to take a walk and they fail to see the sea. The beach is there, the scent exists of putrid marine life and brine, waves crash, but the sea is a ghost, or a different entity and worse. It is truly deeply malevolent and whenever I go to the shore after dark I think about this tale which spoiled the sea at night to my mind – in a good way.

The newlyweds – the woman is adolescent, the man is mature – return to the inn and discover the cause of the ringing, during a prolonged scene of confinement, gruesome festivities and demise and innocence meets dance of death pandemonium. It is a disturbing contemplation regarding craving and decline, two people growing old jointly as spouses, the connection and violence and affection of marriage.

Not just the scariest, but probably one of the best concise narratives in existence, and a beloved choice. I read it in the Spanish language, in the first edition of Aickman stories to be released in this country a decade ago.

A Prominent Novelist

A Dark Novel from an esteemed writer

I read this narrative beside the swimming area in the French countryside in 2020. Even with the bright weather I sensed an icy feeling within me. I also experienced the electricity of excitement. I was writing my latest book, and I had hit a wall. I was uncertain if it was possible an effective approach to write some of the fearful things the narrative involves. Going through this book, I saw that there was a way.

Released decades ago, the story is a bleak exploration into the thoughts of a murderer, Quentin P, modeled after a notorious figure, the serial killer who slaughtered and cut apart multiple victims in Milwaukee during a specific period. As is well-known, the killer was fixated with making a zombie sex slave who would stay with him and attempted numerous horrific efforts to accomplish it.

The deeds the book depicts are appalling, but equally frightening is the psychological persuasiveness. Quentin P’s dreadful, broken reality is simply narrated in spare prose, names redacted. The reader is immersed trapped in his consciousness, obliged to witness mental processes and behaviors that horrify. The strangeness of his psyche resembles a tangible impact – or finding oneself isolated in an empty realm. Going into this story feels different from reading and more like a physical journey. You are consumed entirely.

An Accomplished Author

A Haunting Novel by a gifted writer

In my early years, I sleepwalked and eventually began having night terrors. On one occasion, the terror featured a dream where I was confined in a box and, upon awakening, I realized that I had torn off a part off the window, trying to get out. That home was crumbling; during heavy rain the downstairs hall filled with water, fly larvae came down from the roof into the bedroom, and at one time a big rodent ascended the window coverings in the bedroom.

Once a companion handed me this author’s book, I was residing elsewhere at my family home, but the tale regarding the building located on the coastline appeared known to me, nostalgic at that time. It’s a book featuring a possessed noisy, sentimental building and a female character who eats limestone off the rocks. I cherished the book immensely and returned repeatedly to the story, consistently uncovering {something