It's Halloween - an odd time of year, which sees people dressing up in shabby clothes, drinking, and asking other people for food. But while people play hobo for the night, I treat the macabre occasion (it's not a holiday) the same way I treat the rest of life: as an excuse to watch more films.

But everyone already knows that The Exorcist and The Shining are probably the two scariest films ever made, so who needs another list of top horror films? Instead, play Scream: The Video Game or something equally gruesome.

If point-and-click MS-DOS games based on Wes Craven films aren't your thing, though, then try something a little more old-school. Here are some horror movie actors (and, erm, Christopher Walken) doing what they do best when they're out of work around the winter season: telling terrifying ghost stories.

Inevitably, most of them are by Edgar Allan Poe (I'm still waiting for John Cusack and Werner Herzog to release a Poe audiobook).

Christopher Lee reads The Raven

Things don't get much spookier than Dracula himself reading Poe's greatest work.

Vincent Price reads The Tell-Tale Heart

The Hammer Horror legend picks another of Poe's spooky stories.

Robert Powell reads Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You

M. R. James is the author of choice for those after classic chills. Who knew Robert Powell had it in him?

Christopher Walken reads The Raven

Quoth the Raven, NEEDS MORE COWBELL.

Daniel Radcliffe reads The Woman in Black

He does Susan Hill's novel quite well - I continue to have high hopes for Hammer's The Woman in Black next year.

For more scary stuff, read out interview with James Watkins, director of The Woman in Black.