Here are 23 of their top (and most terrifying!) response:
Warning: Spoilers ahead!
1.
“Stranger Things Season 4, Episode 1, ‘The Hellfire Club.’ It starts off harmless — yay, everyone’s back — and then Vecna takes hold of sweet Chrissy and breaks her body so horribly that I stopped breathing when I saw it for the first time.”
2.
“Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 4, Episode 10, ‘Hush.’ It was the first Buffy episode I ever saw, and it certainly made an impression. The Gentlemen still creep me out over 20 years later.”
3.
“The last episode of Veronica Mars Season 1, ‘Leave It To Beaver.’ Some of the images are burned into my brain.”
4.
“Psych Season 3, Episode 15, ‘Tuesday the 17th’ was too much for a comedy. I’m not great at scary movies or scary stuff at all, but I want to watch the nice, entertaining bits, so I literally have to put my head down and cover my ears each time it’s about to get bad.”
5.
“I’m aging myself here, but it’s the reveal episode of Twin Peaks — Season 2, Episode 7, ‘Lonely Souls.’ I was 11, and it literally gave me nightmares from that night forward, for almost a year.”
6.
“Everyone talks about ‘Blink,’ but no one talks about the Doctor Who episode ‘Midnight’ [Season 4, Episode 10]. We never find out what it was, and it also shows what fear can do to people.”
7.
“This is an old one — the ‘talking Tina doll’ on The Twilight Zone [Season 5, Episode 6 ‘Living Doll’].”
8.
“My vote has to go to one of those Twilight Zone episodes that don’t really have a message, just some freaky stuff happening for no reason. Season 1, Episode 11 ‘And When the Sky Was Opened’ freaked me out as kid.”
9.
“Season 4, Episode 2 of The Dick Van Dyke Show, ‘The Ghost of A. Chantz,’ when the Petries and friends go to a resort in the Catskills and end up staying in an old cabin. Scary things happen (furniture moves, a fire starts in the fireplace, a face appears in a mirror) and one by one, Buddy, Sally, and Laura disappear until only a very frazzled Rob is left.”
10.
“Episode 5 of The Haunting of Hill House, ‘The Bent-Neck Lady.’ I had to read the rest of the series on Wikipedia.”
11.
“The storm episode from The Haunting of Hill House [Episode 6, ‘Two Storms’]!”
12.
“I remember ‘Black Museum’ (Black Mirror Season 4, Episode 6) being so damn disturbing. When the doctor guy was addicted to the pain machine thing, I couldn’t stop thinking about that storyline for weeks. It was so fucked up.”
13.
“Once the Borg entered into the picture in Star Trek: The Next Generation [in Season 2, Episode 16 ‘Q Who’], I had to stop watching. That stuff freaked me out!”
14.
“‘The Perils of Punky!!!!’ Aka, the ‘cave episode’ of Punky Brewster [Season 2, Episodes 6 and 7] — nightmare fuel even decades later.”
15.
“The ‘Rabbit Ears’ episode [Season 14, Episode 4] of American Dad is cool and creepy with Chris Pine as a guest voice.”
16.
“Carnivàle Season 1, Episode 5, ‘Babylon’— when they end up in the haunted mining town.”
17.
“The third episode from The Amazing Digital Circus [‘The Mystery of Mildenhall Manor’] might not be scary to others, but I quit watching it, not even halfway! I didn’t even see that much of the haunted mansion!”
18.
“‘Please Remain Calm,’ Episode 2 of Chernobyl — mainly the scene as they enter to drain the reservoirs, and the flashlights go out.”
19.
“X-Files Season 1, Episode 3, ‘Squeeze.’ Still can’t watch it.”
20.
“‘The Jersey Devil,’ Season 1, Episode 5 of The X-Files. I was at that age where I was getting into Bigfoot. We lived near bush and would hear animals walking around all night, which was terrifying enough for a young boy with a wild imagination. So, sitting down to watch that episode immediately before having to let the dogs out for their nightly wee and then going to bed had me absolutely rattled.”
21.
“The X-Files Season 1, Episode 20, ‘Darkness Falls.’ My cousin was babysitting me, and I refused to go to bed. So he said he was going to watch his show, and I’d better not get scared if I was going to stay up. I was terrified. These swarms of bugs were wrapping people up in cocoons in the forest and sucking them dry. I went straight to bed after.”
22.
“The ‘Home’ episode of The X-Files [Season 4, Episode 2]. I watched it mostly with a blanket over my head.”
23.
And finally, “‘Hellbound’ from The X-Files [Season 9, Episode 8]. It involves skinning people alive. There’s a scene in which the agents investigate one of the skinned victims hanging upside-down in a meat processing plant, and as soon as one of them goes to examine the body, the victim’s eyes pop open, and it’s revealed he’s not actually dead.”
What’s the scariest TV episode you’ve ever seen? What made it feel so unnerving? Share your thoughts in the comments!
