I was just reading the replies to a post called “Books that you read when you were young that shocked/disturbed you” or, something like that, and I saw that a lot of the replies were for scary stories (particularly Alvin Schwartz and Stephen Gammel’s Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark). So, anyway, if you reply, I’d like you to answer these questions: What do you think is the scariest story ever? and, What is your personal favorite scary story? Go at it!
C’mon guys… Anyway, I think one of the scariest stories I’ve read is 'Salem’s Lot, by Stephen King. It really wasn’t that scary, but the thing that got to me was when the non-vampires would walk about, and they would know that there are vampires hiding about, but not do anything…
Also, I’d like to pick up Stephen Gammel(sp?)'s illustrations in Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark. They looked like he’d just splattered paint around, but those things were creepier than the stories…
Definitely the illustrations in the Scary Stories series. I’m nineteen years old now and I still can’t bring myself to look through one of those books.
*yeah, so i’m a wussy. shut up. *
Oh yeah, those scared me, too. Especially the young lady with the long stringy hair and the empty eye sockets and the GLAVIN!! Good lord. And the “Thing”- the illustration accompanying the story of two boys who meet a skeleton like creature, who touches one of them, who ends up dying a year later, and looking like it. The poltergeist one scared me too, not because of the pictures but because it was “true.” Oh, and the one about the girl and her mother at a strange hotel, where the mother died- I think it’s made me paranoid and vulnerable to conspiracy theories. 
Okay, well, enough of that. Stories that also scared me were Roald Dahl ones. His adult short stories in particular, but the novel The Witches always got to me…Ugh. I don’t know why, but I don’t think I’d ever be able to reread it. I’d just feel uncomfortable. shudder
Did anyone else read John Bellairs’ books when they were younger? The first one I read (The Lamp From The Warlock’s Tomb), I put on a bookshelf in the basement and then developed a near-pathological fear of the basement itself… there’s something about the mental image of a little kid walking along the street at night, and seeing something that looks like a piece of paper blowing towards him, that turns out to be a death mask…
I also second (third? Fourth?) the Scary Stories vote. The pictures in that are revolting.
Probably “It.” No, not the Stephen King version, but rather the Theodore Sturgeon short story. There’s a moment of pure horror that has never been topped, since Sturgeon knew it was scarier if you had no idea what the monster would do.
Second would be Lovecraft’s “The Rats in the Walls.”