What makes a horror story really horrifying? What separates the classics from the wannabes and the hackwork? What still brings on the chills after the first encounter?

Shabby shockers come and go, from overwrought Victorian tales to last season's batch of "Twilight" clones, now resting on remainder tables in bookstores everywhere. The best supernatural tales — the ones that stay in print and continue to lurk in some portion of our brains for decades — have originality, good writing, internal logic and characterizations that rise above the stereotypical.

If you'd like to spend your Halloween with a genuinely chilling story, consider one of lasting appeal. Here are three that have stuck with me: one Victorian, one mid-20th century and one new release. Any one of them can be read in a single sitting, particularly on a dark and stormy night.

'Dracula' by Bram Stoker (1897; available in many editions)

On opening the 27th young adult vampire novel to arrive in the mail in recent weeks — with the 27th glossy jacket cover bearing an image of a beautiful undead adolescent with a trickle of blood at his reddened lips — I thought back to the last truly scary vampire novel I'd read.

It wasn't like the dreadful Twilight Saga, with its sparkly vampire tribes and misogynistic message. It wasn't one of the Anne Rice books, although "Interview with a Vampire" had its moments.

Although earlier tales provided inspiration for it, all of the subsequent vampire stories are built on the foundation provided by Bram Stoker's "Dracula."

"Dracula" is written in the form of journals, letters and newspaper clippings. The first four chapters may be the most disturbing, as the reader shares in the terror of young Jonathan Harker, sent to Transylvania to assist Count Dracula in his move to England, and his growing understanding of the nature of the Count and the female creatures who share his crumbling castle:

"Something made me start up, a low, piteous howling of dogs somewhere far below in the valley, which was hidden from my sight. Louder it seemed to ring in my ears, and the floating motes of dust to take new shapes to the sound as they danced in the moonlight. I felt myself struggling to awake to some call of my instincts.

"Quicker and quicker danced the dust. The moonbeams seemed to quiver as they went by me into the mass of gloom beyond. More and more they gathered till they seemed to take dim phantom shapes. And then I started, broad awake and in full possession of my senses, and ran screaming from the place."

Stoker drew on earlier authors' work, particularly Sheridan Le Fanu's "Carmilla" (1871), whose protagonist, as a lesbian vampire, is especially transgressive. Stoker put in some authentic Balkan history, but the characters and situations are his own creation, and so is the terror.

'The Haunting of Hill House' by Shirley Jackson (1959; available in paperback and hardcover editions)

Few modern writers have matched the skill and artistry of Shirley Jackson (1919-1965) in combining literary merit with wit, timing and just the right dose of the unholy. Her chilling short story "The Lottery" is still studied in English classes, but Jackson's range ran from the supernatural to psychological drama to humorous stories about her family life.

"The Haunting of Hill House" may be her masterpiece. (Forget the movie versions.) Dr. John Montague, a professor of anthropology, has an abiding interest in the paranormal. He has leased Hill House, reputed to be haunted, for three months and assembled a team of live-in assistant researchers.

Each of them has experience with "abnormal events"; all are invited to spend three months there to investigate.

Those who accept include Eleanor Vance, 32, on whom the evil in the house settles, as the most vulnerable and whose fate provides the decidedly modern conclusion to the book.

I found "Hill House" in my mother's bookcase at the age of 12 and read it straight through; it always holds up with each reading. The horrors of the book are subtle and surprising, and leavened with humor.

To this day, these words from the opening produce a certain happy frisson of anticipatory dread: "Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within — and whatever walked there, walked alone."

Clare B. Dunkle: 'The House of Dead Maids' (2010; Henry Holt and Co.; 160 pages; ages 10 and up; $15.99)

Everyone who's read Emily Brontë's classic "Wuthering Heights" has theories about the origins of Heathcliff and such supernatural elements as Cathy's ghost. Author Clare B. Dunkle has turned her theories into an intriguing, enthralling prequel.

Tabitha Aykroyd at age 11 is taken from an orphanage to serve as a nursemaid to a strange, wild boy in a most peculiar house in a village without a church. Tabby soon learns that other young girls have been brought here, including Izzy, another girl from Ma Hutton's house. Tabby quickly learns that, although dead, those girls have not departed:

"She stood very still in the dusky passage where the light was poorest. Like me, she wore the black dress that proclaimed her a maid of the house, but whereas mine was new, hers was spoiled by mildew and smears of clay. Thin hair, dripping with muddy water, fell to her shoulders in limp, stringy ropes. This was my companion of the night before, and she was dead."

As Tabby learns more about the place, its ghostly inhabitants and its customs, she determines to save herself and the nameless little boy who is to share her fate. Tabby grows up to become the Brontë family's housekeeper and source of ghostly tales. He grows up to become Heathcliff.

"House of Dead Maids" may be a prequel, but it's an original in its own right, and you don't have to have read "Wuthering Heights" to appreciate it. Beautifully written and compelling, it loses a little steam at midpoint but quickly picks up again. Tabby's tale will carry you along to its chilling end.