The Enfield Haunting may be the scariest thing on TV this week, but where does it stand in television’s spookiest moments? We look at terrifying TV frights.
The X Files: Duane Barry
There were so many creepy episodes of The X Files, but few were as gripping and terrifying as Duane Barry.
The episode revolved around whether or not he was telling the truth about being subjected to alien experiments.
Pretty standard stuff from The X Files, but when the episode shows him in his bed, surrounded by little green men, it really stepped things up a notch.
When you’re not even safe in your own bed, you know you’re in trouble. A terrifying episode!
Strange But True: The Enfield Poltergeist
Sky Living’s horrifying The Enfield Haunting may be the scariest show in town now, but it’s far from the first telling of the tale.
Another frightening dramatisation of the Enfield Poltergeist was done by Strange But True, first aired in 1995.
Complete with its documentary-style format and witness testimony, this had a real air of truth to it.
The special effects leave a lot to be desired (especially the moving rocking chair), but it was definitely an eerie episode.
Twin Peaks: Anything that Bob is doing
Undoubtedly the creepiest and strangest thing about Twin Peaks (and there’s plenty of both throughout the series) is Bob.
He’s a demonic figure who feasts on the pain and suffering of others.
Scaring everyone watching him on screen too was just a bonus.
Ghostwatch
The BBC drama was one of those magical moments when the audience isn’t sure whether they can believe their eyes (or the special effects).
The show was all acting but at times based on real-life testimony, and the mockumentary gripped people on Halloween 1992.
So much so that when TV viewers discovered it was all for show, they complained in their thousands.
The BBC was flooded with complaints, which the corporation’s Points of View show dealt with.
Watch them in action along with clips from the show.
The Twilight Zone: Little Girl Lost
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ebLRn0YyeBQ
When it comes to horror, children are scary. That’s a given.
But The Twilight Zone focused on something even more terrifying losing a child.
Little Girl Lost features a couple whose daughter has been trapped in another dimension.
The fear in this 1962 episode comes from being able to hear her cries and calls through the walls, along with the edgy music and disorientating (no doubt cutting-edge) sound effects.
Doctor Who: The Empty Child
What is it about children that are so frightening???
As Doctor Who monsters go, Daleks, Cybermen, Sea Devils, men rolling around in sleeping bags pretending to be Space Worms…they’re all fine.
But a child in a gas mask asking if you’re his mummy horrifying!
Christopher Eccleston did well to hide his own horror in this classic hide-behind-the-sofa episode.
Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Hush
Buffy’s scariest characters were undoubtedly the Gentlemen.
Their nightmarish grins and painfully polite mannerisms were creepy enough, but their ability to rob entire communities of their voices was terrifying.
Victims would be disemboweled, which is always unpleasant. But it was their ability to take away the very human need to scream that made them a truly frightening foe.
The Enchanted Castle: the one with the Ugly-Wuglies
https://youtube.com/watch?v=D4QtHGlJMcY
Sometimes it’s the TV programmes for children that are the strangest and the scariest.
That was certainly true of the Ugly-Wuglies.
Back in 1979 the childrens’ series The Enchanted Castle was always fraught with anxiety, but nothing could have prepared audiences for the arrival of the Ugly-Wuglies.
The creatures were the creations of the children themselves, making them from old clothes, shoes and mops.
That might not seem like much compared to alien invasions, Twin Peaks’ murderous demonic Bob or even a child with a gas mask on.
Well, watch this video and pretend you’re nine.
“If they get out they’ll kill us”.
Yep.
Stephen King’s It: TV movie
This one’s a bit of a cheat it’s a film rather than a TV show.
But it is a TV film, and it’s terrifying!
Ask a dozen people what scares them, and you’ll almost definitely get ‘clowns’ as an answer.
Stephen King masterfully played out irrational fears of clowns (and exacerbated them) with IT in 1990.
The spider-clown Pennywise has become the thing of nightmares and is still talked about by many today.
Have we missed out the TV moment that scared you the most? Tell us about it in the comments below or on Facebook.
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