The top ghost stories ranked for Halloween – in every genre from short story to novel | Books | Entertainment

Three scenes, five characters, the single setting of an ordinary suburban house – this classic tale of wishes coming true in a horribly warped fashion retains the power to chill the blood well over a century after it was written.

To sustain a feeling of mounting horror over 400 pages is no mean feat, but Maclean manages to mix nostalgia and nightmare by taking tropes from classic 1970s ghost stories and twisting them into a gnarled knot of simmering tension which finally unravels in one of the most terrifying pursuits in literature.

Stephen King hated this adaptation of his equally brilliant novel, but generations of cinema-goers feel very different.

The opulent but logic-defying sets which Kubrick constructed in Elstree studios, Hertfordshire, to serve as his all-American Overlook Hotel add to the stifling sense of oppression which finally overwhelms Jack Nicholson, whose possessed performance is even more terrifying than the ghosts that lurk around every corner.

Stephen Mallatratt turned Susan Hill’s story of a vengeful spirit into a two-man, one-ghost theatrical tour-de-force, which reduces its audience to jelly with one of the greatest jump-scares of all time.

This “mockumentary” remains infamous for the complaints which flooded in from viewers who mistook it for the real thing – and it’s unsurprising given how note-perfectly it sticks to the conventions of early 90s TV, with real-life presenters Michael Parkinson, Sarah Greene and Craig Charles seemingly unaware of the horrors viewers begin to glimpse in the background of their studio and outside broadcast operation.

Writer and director Julian Simpson takes the canon of horror works produced by H.P. Lovecraft in the early 20th century and gives them a very 21st century spin, as a pair of podcasters stumble into his terrifying universe – which Simpson ingeniously links to a host of “real-life” supernatural incidents too.

Graphic novelist Adam Ellis produces brilliantly spooky comics, but the most effective story he has written is the one he teased out over hundreds of Tweets alongside his usual social media output, detailing the ostensibly-genuine haunting of his New York apartment by the ghost of a mutilated toddler. Blurry photos, videos and sound recordings add to the ambiguity.