Nahh, it just need a good narrator able to catch the complete attention of the audience so much that they ignore the environment and any sudden rumor can make people jump and shiver.
I disagree, a scary story will always have more resonance if told at night or in the dark and somewhere remote. A scary story told on a beach in the middle of the day in high summer is unlikely to carry the same weight. There's a reason most scary films and stories aren't generally set on sunlit beaches.
Yes indeed, I'm even having a hard time thinking of a story (film, book, comic, whatever) which succeeds at bringing you a very very captivating dark narrative that completely clashes with the ambience... Sounds like a lot of cognitive dissonance to me in any case. Moreover, even if it is not strictly necessary (for Nobel prize winning writers perhaps, maybe), it seems ludicrous to argue against the idea that a story is positively enhanced by trying to tie it into a matching or at least attempted logically related atmosphere and setting.
