Pure fear in two classic tales

By "pure fear" I mean stories stripped of all the frills of fantastical manifestations or even those surreal touches calculated to provoke unease. Stories that confront us directly with the raw animal emotion that all those horror yarns and ghostly tales are striving for. The effect is rarely more intense or more disturbing than in William Sansom's "The Vertical Ladder" (1969) or its close cousin, Marghanita Laski's "The Tower" (1955), narrated above.

Find William Sansom's work on Amazon here and a collection of Marghanita Laski's short fiction here. Some other stories that could provide a Halloween chill or two are listed here.

The Vertical Ladder

by William Sansom

How simple a thing dread is, in the hands of a master. Read it here.