The Most Terrifying Ghost Scenes
			The Innocents One of the greatest ghost stories ever told, Jack Clayton's The Innocents – like The Haunting – draws strength from what it doesn't show you. But its' most memorable moment comes when, during a seemingly innocuous game of hide and seek, Deborah Kerr's governess, who has hidden behind some curtains, is startled by the sudden appearance of a face at the window behind her. It's out of the blue and beautifully misdirected by Clayton – like the rest of the film, it's creepy as hell.
			The Blair Witch Project It's the ending that gets you. Not the snot-dripping monologue to camera by Heather Donahue, but the ending when it all goes haywire, Mike and Heather stumble upon that house while looking for Josh, and get more than they bargained for. From the handprints on the wall, to the perfectly-pitched escalation of terror from Mike as he hears Heather's screams, to the way that they find Josh, standing, staring into the corner (dead? Possessed?) and of course the freaky way that the camera moves in one direction while the sound moves in another, the ending is the movie's trump card, a combination of disturbing images and sound that justifies the shaky-cam overload of the previous 80-odd minutes.
			Ringu No list of great ghosty moments would be complete without the ending of Hideo Nakata's J-horror, in which it's finally revealed how vengeful ghost Sadako manages to get close to all of her victims: she crawls through the TV set, with unnatural, herky-jerky movements, and then scares them to death with her unspeakable fizzog. Of course, the Japanese original is much more subtle – we only ever see her hate-filled eye, ringed by a shock of standard-issue black hair, whereas in Gore Verbinski's US remake, Martin Henderson is scared to death by a dodgy prosthetics job. But again, it's the violation of a trusted, domesticated object – TV is our friend, is it not? - by a vessel of evil that really makes the hairs stand up on the back of the neck.
			The Woman In Black A little-known TV movie, based on a play which was in turn based on a novel, The Woman In Black is a hidden gem that deserves a re-release on DVD. A haunting and morose ghost story about a solicitor haunted by the ominous title character, the big moment comes near the end when the solicitor awakes from a nightmare to find the Woman In Black – who previously has never been seen in anything other than a long shot – hovering above his bed and screaming into his face, her eyes black pools of hatred, her face a pallid, white sheet. Pure, undistilled terror.
			Poltergeist If there's one thing that movies have taught us, it's that clowns are not to be trusted. They wear make-up – what are they hiding? They drive cars that fall apart – who would do that? And, crucially, they're not funny. And they're also utterly, utterly terrifying – and never more so than in the standout scene from Tobe Hooper's 1981 belter. And, for a movie filled with great scenes, it takes something special to stand out. And that's exactly what the attack of the clown doll – the malevolent little bastard that comes to life and attacks Robby Freeling at the end of the movie, when the Freelings and the audience have been assured that their possessed house “is clean” - is. From the horrible, insane leer on the clown's plastic face, to its deranged laughter as it tries to strangle young Robby, it's the stuff of nightmares... especially when it lunges at him from under the bed, that favoured hiding place of boogeymen and ghosts.
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