I have a history of visual and auditory hallucinations. Not in some post-modern remembrances-of-history way, to be clear - this isn’t that type of write-up. What I mean is that I See Horror Movie Monsters In Dark Rooms Sometimes. As a result, I am perhaps the most qualified person in the entire world to comment on what is actually scary and what is honestly? not all that bad. 

Considering that it’s Halloween, there is no better time for this. I, Daniel Conor Adjutor Boyd (confirmation name), will be giving you the only correct and true guide to which Halloween monsters and events would scare the living fuck out of you - backed by real-ish experience! We’re going to start with the best-known, the monsters that the youngsters dress up as when it’s really their parents making the costume decisions. 

Oh, I’ll also be rating said monsters on a scale of 1-10 in terms of how much they would Freak Me The Fuck Out if I saw them in my apartment at night. So that’s how this’ll be scored.

Part 1: The Classics

The Mummy - Although a striking image, the Mummy is not all that terrifying of a monster unless you’re close-up. Flesh and bone visible through the wraps, all that. From far away, this guy is slow, shambling, vaguely-magical, and not all that scary. Getting closer is slightly spookier (aforementioned flesh and bone, etc.) but still mediated by the fact that the vast majority of the monster is wrapped. Points for modesty, though. 2/10.

Zombie - Similar to the Mummy, but with added gore and blood and rotting flesh. How scary this guy is really depends on what version you roll. The Walking Dead? 3/10, and only because of the viscera. Train to Busan? 5/10 - much faster. The Last of Us? 8/10. Those dudes are fucked up. The

Ghost - is similar, because it’s heavily dependent on which ghost you have. I’m also not including malevolent entities or assorted curses here, mostly because I want to talk about The Wailing (2016) later. You either get Not Scary Ghost (2-4/10) or Scary Ghost (6-8/10) with little in-between. It’s leaky faucets or bone-breaking, man-eating possessions.

Frankenstein’s Monster - Boring. I dunno. I think the patchwork thing really just doesn’t do it for me. 2/10.

Part 2: The Ones I Actually Want To Talk About

The subterraneans from The Descent (2005) - It’s worth noting that the first three-quarters of this movie are a masterclass in horror. Sadly, the tension comes not from the monsters themselves, but the environment the movie is set in. The monsters are scary-ish, but kind of generic - hairless molepeople who go ahhhhhh! and eat you. I don’t think this reflects badly on the movie, but it does somewhat mediate my desire to gasp and sprint away if I see one in a dark alley in the Bronx. 4/10.

Various Guys That Are Tall With Really Long Arms - Fuck these guys. I am terrified of them. SCP-096, the tall man from I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2016), Slenderman, the Babadook, or anyone else that might vaguely fit this category. Absolutely no shot. I think it’s the feeling of human-approximation, that something was there that has gone wrong. I have indeed seen these fellows in real life and have lost my mind over it more often than not. 9/10 if clothed, 10/10 otherwise. 

The spirit/demon from The Wailing (2016) - This is an interesting one. The spirit itself isn’t scary, so it really depends on whether whatever you’re seeing is more broad in interpretation or just the static monster. Just the monster? 1/10. If your experience of this one includes all of the omens, images, and events that are included in the movie, the scary-level changes drastically. I’d put it at either a very high 8 or low 9/10.

Moder from The Ritual (2017) - One of the few movie monsters that, in my opinion, gets even scarier after being revealed. Moder is a beautifully-designed monster and one of the few woodland-horror villains to ever feel genuine. Genuine isn’t quite the right word, but it’s close enough. Watch the movie (it’s amazing) and you’ll see what I mean. 10/10. Scared the shit out of me when I saw it in the woods of the Poconos a few times last summer.

The Blair Witch from, well - Similar situation to The Wailing’s monster, but a lot more directly scary. I’d give it a 6/10 alone, but the full movie-style experience would be a 10. Woods are goddamn terrifying, man.

The Overlook from The Shining (1980) and Doctor Sleep (2019) - Barely a ‘monster’ in the conventional sense, the Overlook is classic sentient house-horror. One of you wise-asses might critique that statement because you know ooooooh-so-much about Stephen King and the characterization of the hotel, but I sometimes get convinced that my house is sentient and slowly torturing me before it brutally kills me and you don’t. So you’re wrong. 7/10. The whole ‘sentient environment’ thing also sets up very nicely for my final selection, which - in my personal, experienced, humble, all-knowing opinion - is the Scariest Scary Thing Of Them All To Ever Have To Deal With:

Part 3: The Endless (2017)

Yes, I know, it’s cosmic horror. It’s always been cosmic horror and it will always be cosmic horror. [Aside: Read Robert Chambers or some of the newer cosmic horror authors instead of Lovecraft. A lot of the newer writers draw from Lovecraft’s writings, but you can glean what you need to know without having to read his work.] The eldritch stuff is fine and good, but I’ve always been more focused on the ‘thing’ as it presents itself to the world. I think, really, what draws me to this again and again is how gradual the terror is. 

So much cosmic horror focuses on the idea that the ‘monster’ is not anything that could ever be understood. It manifests in oblique ways - a figure newly-appeared in a painting you’ve had on the wall for years, the sky seeming just a slight bit bluer than it normally is, a series of circles on the wall that no one else seems to see. It is, of course, madness, but it’s madness of a sort that starts small, works its way from paintings to face-meltings:

I, like many of you, was once a sophomore in high school. Just after my school’s Christmas break, I had a dream in which I woke up in the middle of the night and watched a painting across from my bed sink into the wall, leaving a square black void in its place. The next morning, I woke up convinced that something was in some way ‘wrong’ with reality. I got dressed and went to school, suspicious of every person I talked to and every detail of every room. Then, I went to bed.

In bed, I dreamed. In the dream, I woke up and went to school, and then went to bed, and then woke up and went to school, and then went to bed, and then woke up and went to school, and then went to bed. Then, I woke up and went to school. I was living days in my dreams - full days, in which I learned nonsensical math and chemistry that I would later have to unlearn. Full days, in which I had conversations with dream-friends that were unusual, strange, or off-putting. I became more and more convinced that the world was different. I saw patterns in the air, marks on people’s skin, and found objects on the ground which I was sure had some cosmic significance. This went on for about a week in real-time, which mapped to about four in my head, until I ‘figured it out’ while in conversation with my father and watched his face melt off in front of me. The sky outside brightened, the room I was in went grayscale, and I started seeing patterns in the air once more. I went upstairs, and went to bed. And it was over. 

This brief period of madness, or psychosis, or whatever you’d like to call it, was by far the most severe I’ve ever experienced. Despite my questionable grip on what is real at certain points in time, I do think that this is fantastic evidence for why something like The Endless is the Scariest Possible Scary Event. Like I said, expert opinion. Don’t ever fuck around with what-is-real stuff. The slow, lumbering terror of being unable to understand something is difficult to place and even more difficult to deal with in any way that will leave you feeling good or chill or okay. It will get your dumbass, and it will get you good. Certainly got me. Final rating: ???/10