Creaky floorboards? Child sucked into the TV? Ectoplasm clogging the drain? All signs of a haunting, whether in your house, office, hotel room or some decrepit building you happen to spend time in. And great fodder, too, for Hollywood, which never tires of things that go bump in the night:

THE CHANGELING (1980): Not to be confused with Clint Eastwood's missing-child drama (at no point does anyone shout, "HE'S NOT MY SON!"), this mini-classic of Canuxploitation finds George C. Scott grappling with evil made manifest. Director Peter Medak's nimble ghost yarn eschews cheap jolts and rapid-fire shocks for seductive dread.

THE HAUNTING (1963): Forget the abysmal 1999 remake with Liam Neeson and Catherine Zeta-Jones (trust me, it's not hard). Robert Wise's spine-tingling atmospheric original still generates shivers by cunningly weaponizing the imagination.

THE ORPHANAGE (2007): Spanish helmer -- and Guillermo del Toro protege -- Juan Antonio Bayona is rumoured to be directing the third Twilight film, Eclipse. Although you can't begrudge him a payday, his work on the gorgeous, terrifying The Orphanage -- about a family who moves into a former orphanage where the young son discovers "imaginary friends" -- makes it clear he's capable of so much more.

POLTERGEIST (1982): "They're heeeeere," announces the angelic little girl awash in television static. Although it hasn't aged terribly well, this effects-driven blockbuster about a quintessentially Spielbergian family (led by Craig T. Nelson and JoBeth Williams) menaced by restless sinister souls remains enough of a slick, muscular entertainment to recommend.

THE OTHERS (2001): A welcome modern-day anomaly: A classically Gothic spellbinder with some seriously dark psychological underpinnings. Nicole Kidman stars as a frosty single mother raising two children in a rambling country mansion in post-Second World War England.

SESSION 9 (2001): It's not a house but an abandoned mental hospital that frays the nerves -- and sanity -- of an asbestos cleaning crew (David Caruso and Josh Lucas among them). Director Brad Anderson (The Machinist) successfully crawls under your skin and into your mind.

THE SHINING (1980): Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Stephen King's chiller about the unhinged caretaker of the Overlook Hotel is choked with mood and energized by Jack Nicholson's cagey madness. Yet the film was disowned by the author. To which we say, can you really trust the opinion of the guy who directed Maximum Overdrive?

BEETLEJUICE (1988): Michael Keaton's "bio-exorcist" is enlisted by just-deceased Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis to rid their beloved home of an insufferable human clan. Tim Burton's signatures are all here: macabre wit, an empathy for all things ghoulish (and likewise a suspicion of normalcy) and wicked style galore.

WHAT LIES BENEATH (2000): Robert Zemeckis' big-budget production about a Vermont couple (Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer) bedeviled by a spectre is better enjoyed as a supernatural mystery than straight-ahead horror thriller.

GHOSTBUSTERS (1984): Hollywood has never shown much aptitude for splicing together genres, which makes Ivan Reitman's supernatural comedy a minor miracle. Its secret? Treating its story and characters with conviction, despite the collective smirk.