Anne Rice: ‘I have not, to this day, read Dracula in its entirety’

Two scenes come to mind immediately. As a child I tried to read the original Dracula but a scene in the early pages with the vampires absolutely horrified me: where the count drives his vampire brides away from the helpless mortal, Jonathan Harker. It’s then that a sack is revealed and inside it a wailing, half-smothered child, which the count gives to these vampire women. This so scared, so shocked, so horrified me, that I abandoned the book and took it back to the library. I have not, to this day, read Dracula in its entirety.

The second was in Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, when Matt overhears his overnight guest Mike say to someone, “Yes. Come in,” in the upstairs bedroom. And then Matt hears the sound of the window hasp being turned and the sound of the window opening. Now, this is an upstairs window. Matt knows a vampire has entered the house via the window and by invitation from Mike. He’s is obviously terrified. And so was I.

• Anne Rice is the author of Interview With the Vampire.

‘An extraordinary gift’ ... Frances Hardinge. Photograph: Frantzesco Kangaris/The Guardian

Sarah Lotz: ‘It is guaranteed to put kids off of Barbies for life’

With their painted mouths and uncanny valley eyes, porcelain dolls have always creeped me out, but after reading Cuckoo Song by Frances Hardinge, they are now firmly in the “Oh God, no” category alongside clowns-in-drains, Arctic ghosts and mysterious whistles on deserted east coast beaches. A deliciously twisty spin on a changeling story, Cuckoo Song is aimed at young readers. But thanks to Hardinge’s extraordinary gift for atmospheric storytelling, it scared the crap out of this fortysomething – most notably when the troubled protagonist’s dolls come to life and start screaming. Yes, screaming. Here’s a taster: “Its glass eyes seemed to come into proper focus, and then the doll flinched and started to shake. Its mouth fell open, emitting a low, eerie mewl …”

Buy it for the kid in your life now. It’s a win-win: guaranteed to put them off Barbies for life, while developing a taste for brilliant, imaginatively written fiction.

• Sarah Lotz’s latest book is Missing Person.

Andrew Michael Hurley: ‘Two friends losing their way on a lonely stretch of canal is unsettling enough’

For me, one of the most disquieting scenes is in Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Three Miles Up. The premise of two friends losing their way on a lonely stretch of canal is unsettling enough, but it’s the more subtle moments of eeriness that give the story its power. The deeper Clifford and John guide the narrowboat into the wilderness, the further they drift from reality. They find a strange girl sleeping on the banks and take her aboard; the cottages by the towpath disappear overnight; the elderly man with the scythe who gives them directions to the village “three miles up” they meet again further along as a little boy.

But the very end of the story is the most chilling …

• Andrew Michael Hurley’s latest book is Starve Acre.

From graphic novel Through the Woods by Emily Carroll. Photograph: Simon & Schuster

Lauren Beukes: ‘This graphic novel gives Junji Ito and HP Lovecraft a run for their money’

Emily Carroll’s Through the Woods is rich with malevolence and horrifying endnotes, using a muted palette shot through with crimson. All the stories are unsettling, but it’s a scene from the story The Nesting Place that is nested inside me – and gives Junji Ito and HP Lovecraft a run for their money. Bell’s mother raised her on stories of monsters – the fog with a thousand mouths, the not-a-man with the piano key teeth, and the worst of all, the burrowing kind: “The sort that crawled into you and made a home there. The sort you couldn’t name, the sort you couldn’t see. The monster that ate you alive from the inside out.” So when the teenage Bell visits her brother and his fiance at their country house, she recognises the signs, as does the reader. The terrible reveal of the creature’s face, or rather what lies behind her face, inside her skin, hot and red and writhing and full of need, was creepy as hell.

• Lauren Beukes is the author of Broken Monsters and The Shining Girls.

Ramsey Campbell: ‘Adam Nevill is among MR James’s living inheritors’

MR James immediately comes to mind - the bag that puts its arms around your neck in the dark, the mouth that waits for you to find it under your pillow, the dog whose head you pat only to realise that it has a human face that shouldn’t be alive. In refining the tale of supernatural horror to its essence, James increased the terror, and among his living inheritors is Adam Nevill, who is at least equally committed to intensity of dread. The entire first section of his novel No One Gets Out Alive feels like a nightmare that grows ever more relentless, from which we may never waken, and that’s my choice for sheer unrelieved fear.

• Ramsey Campbell is the author of more than 30 novels and hundreds of short stories.

‘Terrifying’ ... Stephen King. Photograph: Steve Schofield

Sarah Pinborough: ‘Vampire fiction was responsible for me not opening a window at night until I was about 25’

The scene that springs to mind for me is from Salem’s Lot by Stephen King. Vampires are like sharks for me – equally fascinating and terrifying, despite the fact that, in reality, neither is likely to bite me. But still, vampire fiction was responsible for me not opening a window at night until I was about 25, and this scene still frightens me if I’m awake at night. It is when young and very dead Danny Glick turns up at his friend Mark Petrie’s second floor window, tapping on the glass and asking to be let inside, his skin pale and teeth long and sharp. And now I’ve brought that back up in my memory, I’ll be sleeping with the hall light on tonight!

• Sarah Pinborough’s latest book is Cross Her Heart.

• Which book’s scenes scared you most? Share yours in the comments.