Share your favourite spooky books for Halloween to win a box set of new edition Harry Potter books

[RachelMumsnet]

We're wanting you to share your favourite spooky tales / terrifying horror stories for both adults and children so we can put together a compilation of the best books for Halloween. Let us know which books send shivers down your spine by posting on this thread before the end of Friday 17 October. Everyone who contributes will be entered into a draw to win a beautiful boxed set containing all seven Harry Potter novels in new edition paperback.

It's a classic so I'll get in there first and mention it- Steven King's IT.

Truly terrifying. I can't bring myself to read it again!

Best kids halloween book would be THe Worst Witch series- theres nothing scarier than school!

There is a really creepy in a not at all obvious way short story by Steven King, called The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet. It's not like one of his 'normal' horror stories, it's about a normal person going mad and imagining tiny creatures living in his typewriter... or is he? It really plays with the reader and leaves a very unsettled feeling.

I love The Mist by Steven King, and the Rats trilogy by James Herbert.

A book that has always stayed with me is called In the Shadow of the Cat, about a woman who could be an evil witch, but doesn't realise until after her mum dies and she realises that all is not as it seems, particularly her fiance. A very spooky book.

For kids spooky stories, can I confess to a weakness for the R.L. Stine Point Horror novels? For adults... Christine by Steven King springs to mind.

PS - I've just googled and Caroline B Cooney also deserves an honourable mention for the short story "Where the Deer are" in the Point Horror series. I mistrust deer to this day!

I loved Dark Matter by Michelle Paver. So atmospheric, I was sucked right in.

Edgar Allen Poe. Tales of Mystery.

I read them when I was about 12 and staying with my granny. Couldn't sleep for about a week.

There's one about being buried alive

The Shining Stephen King

The Pit and the Pendulum, Edgar Allen Poe,

Stephen King's, "Survivor Type" isn't a ghost story, but it is as creepy as a hag-filled night in Hell.

A better one for a tale around the fireside on a dark evening, is also King - Breathing Method. Seriously spine tingling.

For children, 'Coraline' by Neil Gaiman has ghosts and a monster and is a great read.

Coraline is a Halloween must for us. This is as spooky as we can get as sometimes my 3 year old finds Bubbleguppies and Octonaughts a bit to scary!

We love reading the goosebumps books, I remember them from being a child and my two eldest dc's are totally gripped eyes wide with terror while we read them together!

Night Fall by Joan Aiken. In a young adult novel. Really enjoyed it; good level of suspense and mystery. Like books which are scary but with the fear rooted in the rational and everyday.

Jonathan Aycliffe's Naomi's Room is a very scary read for adults. It's a really good ghost story.

I remembered loving a book called The Tailypo when I was a child. I managed to get a copy and it's a brilliant and scary book for kids. I read it to my two boys when they were 5 and 7. They loved it but did sleep in the same bed for a couple of nights!

Pretty much anything by Susan Cooper or Alan Garner, but top of the terrifying heap has to be Elidor.

Mr McFadden's Halloween by rumer godden. Really lovely one for kids - bit shivery spooky but has a brilliant heroine. She's so brave and good. I loved it as a child and it still stands up to being read now at 39!

Another Stephen King vote, I used to love his stuff when I was younger. Pet Sematary for me, although It would be a close runner up.

Now I'm lying here in bed in the dark thinking about it and wish I wasn't!

'Marianne Dreams' is another creepy book for children.

The secret of Crickley hall...shivers every time..

Firstly for children The Brother Grimms "Grimms Fairy Tales" are just that....grim and all too realistically horror inducing. I still remember being quite speechless with shock at the thought of the woodcutter intentionally leaving his children to starve out in the forest because his new wife didn't want them and Cinderella's awful step-sisters cutting off parts of their feet to fit into the glass slipper. Definitely not for the very young but scary indeed!

I loved Stephen King as a teenager and could thoroughly recommend many of his books for that obvious scare factor his writing engenders, however I found Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories (a compilation of stories, not one of them written by Roald Dahl) far more subtly terrifying. After reading only half way through the book, I felt more than a little uncomfortable on my own in the dark. A sure sign that the stories made an impression and perfect for some Halloween fun!

I loved Louise Cooper's Heart of Dust. I'd already read some of her other books for children and adored them, and Heart of Dust was brilliantly atmospheric, with just the right level of mystery and spookiness.

Cujo terrified me as a teenager. I've never really trusted dogs....

Not now Bernard still spooks me!

Dracula spooks me out too...but not as much as Not now Bernard!

Wait Till Helen Comes by Mary Downing Hahn. I read it once as a child and later as an adult. Quite scary both times!

As a child I loved ghost in the water.