Scariest TV episodes of all Time

[QuasarVM]

If I had to venture a guess...I'd say (in no particular order):

1. The Fluke Man episode of X-Files
2. Night Gallery: Pickman's Model, Green Fingers or The Caterpiller
3. Twilight Zone: The Doll (Talky Tina)
4. The Outer Limits: The Guests or The Form of Things Unknown


Those are the ones that immediately spring to mind...

 

[Mr Light]

Millennium Season Two's "The Curse of Frank Black". On Halloween night Frank is silently stalked by the devil, who is fleetingly glimpsed in the background with an awesome costume/suit. Most of the episode is silent with weird creepy stuff happening to him. And it ends with the dead spirit of the insane WWII vet who scared him as a kid trying to make a deal with him for the devil. Great stuff.

 

[nevermore]

I'd put the first part of It at the top of the list. If there's anything scarier that's been made for TV, I'm blocked the traumatic memory out of my consciousness.

I agree, it's scarier than Home. The first time I wacthed it was at boarding school in 9th grade, and Pennywise scared the shit out of me. The scene with the blood-covered bathroom and Pennywise is calling from the pipes. We all float down here. Yikes.

Was the "Home" episode of The X-Files really scary or just hilariously disgusting and depraved? I have a feeling that there were scarier episodes of that show.

Parts of it were pretty fucking scary. The scene at the Sheriff's house with that creepy-ass song playing in the background?

I like the list, but it is a crime imo to leave out anything from Twin Peaks, which at times was a surreal nightmare.

Certainly the finale as a whole qualifies as one of the more disturbing things on television, and the Murder of Maddy in ep. 14 was very brutall.

Any time that shot of Killer Bob crouched at the foot of the bed comes on I have to look away. That probably rates as the most consistently frightening shot of anything on TV for me.


Anyway, my top 3 would be

1) Any episode of Twin Peaks featuring that shot of Killer Bob. Probably the one where Mrs. Palmer has the vision while Donna is visiting;
2) First part of IT; and
3) Home.

I thought one of The X-Files from Season Two was pretty darn scary--"Irresistible"--the one with the serial killer Donnie Phaster...he's chilling. And goes after Scully. And it was set in Minneapolis. That made for many, many sleepless nights for me!

This is a good one and should have made the list somewhere.

 

[Goji]

The scariest episode of The X-Files for me was "Folie a Deux", especially the end with the bug monster creeping across the ceiling in Mulder's hospital room. A highly underrated episode.

I was far more disgusted by "Home" than frightened by it. That's surely what they were going for, so they definitely succeeded, but it's not an episode I will revisit any time soon.

Other than that, I don't have much to add. I don't watch a lot of (intentionally) frightening television.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

I'm gonna agree with whoever said Ghostwatch, I'd also add Threads, I don't really get scared of movies or TV shows so I would find it hard to make a list, but there was an episode of Apparitions that I found rather creepy too.

 

[RoJoHen]

I used to get pretty freaked out by "Are You Afraid of the Dark" and "Ghostwriter."

 

[Kirkman1987]

I'm gonna agree with whoever said Ghostwatch, I'd also add Threads, I don't really get scared of movies or TV shows so I would find it hard to make a list, but there was an episode of Apparitions that I found rather creepy too.

Yes, Threads!

I was a bit freaked out watching that a few years ago. I can't imagine having seen that during the cold war. Intense.

 

[Gary Mitchell]

I'd also give a vote to "The Cemetery," from the premiere episode of Night Gallery.

Is that the one where the painting keeps changing? Because I watched that on a Sunday afternoon probably thirty years ago, and I'm still freaked out about it.

That's the one.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

I thought one of The X-Files from Season Two was pretty darn scary--"Irresistible"--the one with the serial killer Donnie Phaster...he's chilling. And goes after Scully. And it was set in Minneapolis. That made for many, many sleepless nights for me!

Yeah that was pretty freaky!

Is that the one where the painting keeps changing? Because I watched that on a Sunday afternoon probably thirty years ago, and I'm still freaked out about it.

YES! Me too!

The worst thing is how stuff like that used to be (still is?) aired in the afternoons where kids can stumble across it inbetween infomercials and Barney Miller reruns...

 

[WillsBabe]

Could you be thinking of the two-parter from Season Three "Nisei" and "731"? I'm pretty sure that's when Scully meets the other women and Mulder's trapped aboard the train car with an alien and a bomb...scary good.

Could be. I don't remember what was happening to Mulder in the episode, though!

There is another X Files episode that creeped me out. I think it's Millenium where Mulder is trapped in the cellear with the corpses.

 

[David cgc]

I seem to remember Torchwood's "Countrycide" freaking me out, but that could just be because I'm not that big a horror fan, so I wasn't inured to how cliche it may have been.

 

[1001001]

Reading the thread title, I automatically thought of "Home." That was the creepiest and most depraved thing I've ever seen made for broadcast television.

That was the very first thing that occurred to me too.

Not really Horror-film scary, but still...

 

[Random_Spock]

Reading the thread title, I automatically thought of "Home." That was the creepiest and most depraved thing I've ever seen made for broadcast television.

Agreed. I saw it the second time that it aired and it creeped me out... BIG time... O_O It wasn't so much scary as it was depraved.

As for the whole scary factor persay... I'd have to go with 'Eve' -- the two homicidal twin girls just scared the heck out of me.

 

[Turd Ferguson]

"Conversations With Dead People" from Buffy was pretty creepy. The stuff in the cemetery with the vampire psychoanalyzing Buffy was funny, but the creature haunting Dawn and the lightning flashes to her dead mother with the whited-out eyes and the shadow-monster was pretty creepy.

 

[Winged Victory]

Could you be thinking of the two-parter from Season Three "Nisei" and "731"? I'm pretty sure that's when Scully meets the other women and Mulder's trapped aboard the train car with an alien and a bomb...scary good.

Could be. I don't remember what was happening to Mulder in the episode, though!

There is another X Files episode that creeped me out. I think it's Millenium where Mulder is trapped in the cellear with the corpses.

Love all the good but scary memories of X-Files!!

I just remember Mulder chasing after this train car and he gets trapped with guest star Roy Thinnes, an alien, and a bomb.

Millennium was a pretty good scare; those zombies/corpses were fantastic. I think it was the first episode where Mulder and Scully really locked lips...oh, to be a teenager again, sigh!