If your dream weekend involves subjecting your eyeballs to abject horror and a-never-leaving-your-bed situation, a) are you okay? and b) you have ARRIVED. As bone-chilling and terrifying as some scary TV shows can be, they’re just so good you can’t possibly turn them off. In no particular order, and with the understanding that you can’t blame me if you never sleep again, here are the 32 scariest, bloodiest, most disturbing, nightmare-inducing (sorry, I don’t mean to belabor a point, it’s just…accurate) TV shows that you can stream right now. “Enjoy,” lol.
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This is the perfect combination of supernatural thriller and family drama that will leave you mildly terrified of everyone and everything. It’s about a Welsh cellist whose mother commits suicide and as she’s going through her mother’s possessions, she’s lead down a spooky path that has her questioning her own identity.
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If you haven’t seen You by now, then what have you even been doing?! Yes, Penn Badgley’s piercingly-dark-but-also-somehow-totally-dead eyes will haunt your nightmares, but watching his cute crush turn into something wildly sinister is like a car wreck that you just can’t look away from. And with a third season coming out this month, there’s plenty to binge…if you can handle it.
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What could be more perfect for a psychological thriller than a show involving a scary psychiatrist? Louise, a single mom who’s working at a psychiatrist’s office, starts an affair with her boss. She then also becomes good friends with his wife. Messy, right?? Well, things only get darker from there as the love triangle intensifies and secrets start to come out.
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If The Purge movies didn’t terrify you to your core (or if you’re into that sort of thing) then the TV show is a must-watch. The first season follows several people as they navigate the 12-hour period where all crime (including murder!) is legal. The second season then goes through the aftermath and it’s…bleak.
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Sarah Paulson absolutely kills it as Nurse Ratched in this origin story of how the unhinged, creepy nurse from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest came to be. You get to see her take a job at a spooky psychiatric hospital that does some not-so-ethical experiments on people, and she slowly devolves into the monster we know she eventually becomes.
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If real life crime stories aren’t scary enough, then this Spanish show will do it for you. It’s about a man who, after being framed for his sister’s murder and spending 18 years in prison, is on a mission to find the real culprit and get some long-awaited revenge.
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There’s a new virus outbreak spreading, but this one causes people to turn into evil vampires. A team is called in to investigate and are then tasked with having to save humanity. This show was scary before but after last year, it’s even scarier.
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Aka the reason you haven’t been sleeping since October 2018. Based on the Shirley Jackson novel of the same name, the series centers around a group of siblings who grew up in what would become the most famous haunted house in the country. Truly, this show will make you think twice the next time you enter a giant old mansion (you know, in case that’s something you do on the regular).
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Netflix’s follow-up to The Haunting of Hill House is loosely based on Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, and stars many of the same cast—including Victoria Pedretti. Bly Manor (also about a haunted house, naturally) is sliiiiiiiiightly less hide-under-your-covers-in-fear levels of scary, but I still don’t recommend watching it alone unless you don’t value things like “sleep” and “sanity.”
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Oh this? Just Hulu’s terrifying new anthology horror series, which is as creepy as it is atmospheric. Every story features a different ~monster~ but my personal favorite stars Taylor Schilling and Roberta Colindrez as a couple whose relationship…uh…disintegrates, if you will.
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Remember Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest? Well, this show is all about her origin story from a nurse at a psychiatric hospital to a straight. up. monster. Also, because it’s Ryan Murphy, everything is super stylish and I kinda want to live in this wold? You know, minus all the horror.
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No spoilers, but this ingeniously plotted series from executive-producer Jordan Peele follows Atticus Freeman as he contends with both racial horrors and supernatural horrors (in the form of very scary monsters). The show is brilliant, the cast is brilliant, the season finale is wild, and while yes—it’s scary—it’s a must watch.
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Netflix rebooted this classic show, which is scary for several reasons including but not limited to the fact that these are TRUE CRIMES that are UNSOLVED. I had to stop watching after episode 1 due to being an actual baby, but good luck!
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If your tolerance for scary shows is, like, that of a fearful middle schooler (me), then you might as well ty Locke & Key. Like Netflix’s Haunting shows, it’s *also* about kids in a creepy old house—but the vibe is slightly more PG-13 than Rated FML.
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Before Black Mirror, there was The Twilight Zone, one of the original anthology series that first aired in the late 1950s. Three revivals have been done since, most recently, the genius Jordan Peele’s 2019 remake, which dropped its eerie second season this summer.
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No one does horror better than Stephen King, so Hulu went ahead and adapted his Castle Rock stories for your terrifying viewing pleasure. Again, no spoilers because you should definitely watch the show, but it’s all kinds of small-town eerie and yes, it involves murder and a creepy kid.
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You know how there are certain shows that are so damn scary you have to watch them in broad daylight? And then give yourself a palate cleanser with several therapeutic episodes of The Office in order to come down from your horror high? True Detective is one of those shows. To this day, I can’t look at Matthew McConaughey without screaming.
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Penny Dreadful features vampires, reanimated corpses, and various creatures from the underworld—so unless that delightful assortment sounds totally mild to you, yeah. It’s scary as f*ck. Like, would I prefer to watch a TV show where people aren’t murdered and possessed every episode? Probably! But here we are.
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Hi and welcome to the show where Fifty Shades of Grey’s very own Jamie Dornan plays a serial murderer. Terrifying, but Gillian Anderson saying lines like this make it easier to stomach: “We’ve chosen to work in a masculine, paramilitary, patriarchal culture. Let’s not let it beat us.” CLAP-CLAP-CLAP.
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Yes, the special effects in Buffy might seem a liiiiiiittle dated in 2020, but trust. That does not make the show any less terrifying. I learned this the hard way by innocently sitting down for an episode while home alone the other evening. Haven’t slept since due to being pretty sure vampires are coming to eat me.
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Here’s the thing about Mindhunter Seasons 1 & 2. All those serial killers whose minds are being hunted? They’re real-life people, some of whom are sitting behind bars right now for torturing, killing, and assaulting their victims. It’s basically impossible to watch this show without staying up all night terrified, so have fun, bye.
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This show is a contemporary prequel to Psycho, but it’s about so much more than the film’s nearly 60-year-old shower scene (and TBH, you don’t have to watch the film to feel the effects of the show’s disturbing revelations). If there’s anything scarier than the twisted plots and surprises Bates Motel lays out over five seasons, it’s knowing what’s in store for the mother-and-son duo by the time they catch up to the events of the famous Hitchcock movie.
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Fans of ‘80s horror have had a smorgasbord of goodies to devour ever since Stranger Things premiered on Netflix in 2016. Three seasons later (and with a fourth on the way…hopefully), it’s still unclear what’s more terrifying: the Shadow Monster (who’s been getting impatient in the Upside Down), how Will can’t seem to catch a break, or the fact that Lucas’ sister Erica is about to unleash more roasts on her victims.
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To date, the first season of AHS is the best, hands down. This could be due to all the jump scares, the existence of Queen Jessica Lange, or the insane way Murder House wrapped with the surviving Harmon twin. The ninth (and latest) season, titled 1984, is inspired by slasher movies from the—you guessed it—’80s. Think: Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Halloween. Oof, I’m already sweating.
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The post-apocalyptic series, based on Robert Kirkman’s comic books of the same name, forever changed the standards of the zombie horror genre when it premiered in 2010. The pilot of The Walking Dead remains one of the greatest episodes of television. Honestly, with all the sheer terror that’s gone down since, it makes one miss the good ‘ol days of season one, when no one had a clue what was going on, and when Glenn was still alive. Love you forever, Glenn.
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The German series has been called Stranger Things for grown-ups, but we all know horror does not have an age requirement! Following the disappearance of two children in a small town, four families are the center of attention, along with their dark pasts, relationships, and yes, double lives. The show divides its time between 2019, 1986, and 1953 (time travel FTW), but now is not the time for excitement. Have you learned nothing from Hawkins, Indiana? Wormholes are dangerous!
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Drawing from popular creepypastas of the world (horror-themed stories/things shared on the internet, naturally), the Syfy anthology series has covered everything from a creature made up of teeth to a hidden cellar door that reveals the worst of anyone’s nightmares.
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When popular student Laura Palmer is found naked and wrapped in plastic in the fictional town of Twin Peaks, Washington, FBI special agent Dale Cooper is put in charge of solving the mystery—only to uncover another world of super messed-up people and things that may or may not be there. The character of Bob alone is enough to haunt you for weeks.
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If you’ve seen Rihanna’s “Bitch Better Have My Money” music video, you know that Mads Mikkelsen thrives when blood and horror are involved. As Hannibal Lecter, Mikkelsen makes a, uh, case for the serial killer. No, really: you will question why you feel the way you feel whenever he’s killing, cooking, and eating his victims. And to think the show got away with this stuff on NBC. Brilliant!
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Beyond the most talked-about episode, “San Junipero,” Black Mirror has been the home to several, high quality scare-fests. I’m still recovering from “Playtest,” the choose-your-own-adventure episode, not to mention “Metalhead,” in which robotic guard dogs decide it’s time to hunt humans.
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More sci-fi than horror, The X-Files still had a strong foot in the horror door. Mulder and Scully’s paranormal cases often came with gruesome non-alien creatures, too—like that demon who had a crush on Scully in season seven.
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Vampire horror is a tricky genre to master, but True Blood made it look bloody easy (HAH). No, really: the show was pretty much a blood-fest. When everyone wasn’t “fang-banging,” engaged in orgies, or getting fairies pregnant, the fictional town of Bon Temps was the bloodiest place to be.
