Scariest ghost stories I've heard of?
Very much off the top of my head (and I'll maybe try and look for more details and sources later):
A figure that chased a young mother out of her house in Stockport, its flesh appearing to be in the process of falling from its body - I think some time in the 70's.
The horribly bloated and putrescent, yet apparently conscious, figure of a woman that threatened a man working alone in the basement of an antiques shop somewhere in the Lanes area of Brighton.
The figure of a man standing impossibly atop a derelict building's facade, who smiled at a young boy passing by, put his arms out in front of him, stepped off the very high wall, and 'floated' down to the ground. (Sheffield, some time in the 1950's, I think.)
The man who walks into his bedroom in a quiet hotel to see the figure of a very old lady lying in the bed he knows should be empty - so vivid and lifelike that he assumes it to be an errant occupant of the nursing home next door. (That doesn't sound quite so terrifying as some, but I have a feeling that other disconcerting details may have made it stick in my mind.)
But, who am I kidding? About three quarters of the stories I've come across would necessitate my doubling up on underpants, and possibly the use of some sort of portable commode.
I wonder if anyone else differentiates between 'scary' and 'spooky'. To me, the former represents a kind of immediate visceral reaction that often fades once the initial shock value has worn off. The latter is almost the reverse: an initially odd, but not necessarily frightening experience, that somehow quietly buries its hooks in your consciousness and actually seems to grow in power over time.
In trying to think of an example the nearest second hand experience I can think of is one I mentioned years ago on this thread:
'That man's name is...'. Not at all shityerpants scary, but I've always found it somehow very eerie.