I thought last week that I’d discovered the book-related prize that I’d most like to win – free reading material for the rest of my life, courtesy of London’s Heywood Hill bookshop. But I fear it may have been topped, thanks to Bram Stoker’s great-grand-nephew Dacre Stoker, who has teamed up with Airbnb to offer two people the chance to spend the night of 31 October in Dracula’s Castle in Transylvania.

“Nestled in the Carpathian mountains, high in the heart of Transylvania, lies the home of the most chilling tale of the 19th century. Are you brave enough to test the myth?” asks the prize’s description. “A secret passage on the first floor leads to the grand dining room, where an intimate candlelit dinner will await, prepared exactly as described in Bram Stoker’s novel. Following the hearty, blood-enriching meal, you will be left to sleep in luxurious velvet-trimmed coffins in the seclusion of the Count’s crypt.”

Sleeping in coffins! Velvet-trimmed coffins! Irresistible. As this is Airbnb, it’s made clear that the only amenities are the essentials, the accommodation is not “family/kid friendly” and there are “no garlic or garlic-scented items allowed”. To win, you just have to best answer the question of what you would say to the Count “if you were to come face-to-fang with him in his own castle”.

This sounds so ludicrous – and so much fun – that I don’t think I can resist applying. Vampires I can deal with – I love a bit of Salem’s Lot or The Passage, but this particular incarnation doesn’t particularly scare me. Offer me a night in a haunted house, though, or one linked in any way to stories of possession, and I would run a mile. Just the thought of Shirley Jackson’s Hill House makes me tremble, I couldn’t sleep for nights after reading The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby, and I was late filing my review of Paul Tremblay’s A Head Full of Ghosts because I was too frightened to read it when home alone. (It didn’t help that the main character, whose sister is possessed – or is she? – was called Merry, just like my daughter.)

So here goes my application for a night in Dracula’s castle – scary enough, but not too scary. If you’re a fellow fan of horror fiction, then where would you like to spend your Halloween? Given the clown-related hysteria currently on the loose, it’s probably best to steer clear of any sewers in Maine.