When it comes to spooky season, it feels like everyone is always trying to capitalize on the idea of fear. You can hook an audience by tapping into what scares them the most, but what happens when you're not really a scary TV show?

How can you scare an audience?

Today, I want to look at 10 scary episodes of TV that came from shows not really known for their big scares. I want to look at why they actually were scary and how they fit into the tone of the series as well.

Let's dive in.


1. Atlanta — "Teddy Perkins" (Season 2, Episode 6)

  • Directed by: Hiro Murai
  • Written by: Donald Glover
  • Cast: Lakeith Stanfield, Donald Glover, Derrick Haywood
Atlanta is a hilarious show that did pretty zany things week in and out. And then this episode happened, and it was kind of terrifying. In the episode, Darius (Stanfield) is attempting to pick up a free piano when he finds himself trapped in a decaying mansion with the bizarre and tragic Teddy Perkins (Glover, uncredited and in prosthetics), a pale, soft-spoken man with a disturbing past. This is like a deconstruction of the myth of Michael Jackson.

2. Doctor Who — "Blink" (Series 3, Episode 10)

  • Directed by: Hettie MacDonald
  • Written by: Steven Moffat
  • Cast: Carey Mulligan, Finlay Robertson, David Tennant, Freema Agyeman

Even though Doctor Who plays with a plot of science fiction and suspense, it never goes full horror. But this episode was different. We follow Sally Sparrow (Mulligan) as she uncovers a mystery involving the Weeping Angels, quantum-locked predators that can only move when you are not looking at them. That is such a scary prospect, and it was perfect for creatures creeping up on people and literally arousing your fears. The episode's central core is the idea of "Blink and you're dead." So, you have a simple rule that drives the entire story.

3. The X-Files — "Home" (Season 4, Episode 2)

  • Directed by: Kim Manners
  • Written by: Glen Morgan & James Wong
  • Cast: David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Tucker Smallwood, Karin Konoval

Okay, so the X-Files was meant to be thrilling, but this took on a straight humanistic horror in a way the show had never done before. This episode focused on the all-too-human horror of the Peacocks, an isolated, inbred family straight out of classic horror tropes. There's actually a ton of graphic violence in this one, especially the infamous booby-trap scene (set to the song "Wonderful! Wonderful!"), that it became the first network TV episode to receive a "viewer discretion advised" warning. The episode was even banned from reruns!

4. Buffy the Vampire Slayer — "Hush" (Season 4, Episode 10)

  • Directed by: Joss Whedon
  • Written by: Joss Whedon
  • Cast: Sarah Michelle Gellar, Alyson Hannigan, Nicholas Brendon, Anthony Stewart Head, Doug Jones
Again, there are horror elements in this show, but it really was a coming-of-age story more than that. This Emmy-nominated episode features "The Gentlemen" (led by Doug Jones), who are a group of floating, fairytale ghouls in Victorian suits who steal the entire town's voices. The residents are stalked by these grinning monsters who cut out their hearts. Since their voices are gone, the episode is told through nearly complete silence, which puts audiences on edge. It was a visceral experience and took the show to another level.

5. Boy Meets World — "And Then, There Was Shawn" (Season 5, Episode 17)

  • Directed by: Jeff McCracken
  • Written by: Jeff Menell
  • Cast: Rider Strong, Ben Savage, Danielle Fishel, Will Friedle, Jennifer Love Hewitt

A classic kids' show that was not afraid to dig into bigger themes or just confront social issues. But in this episode, they just wanted to make their own slasher movie contained in detention. The episode masterfully mimics the tropes of films like Scream (including a cameo from I Know What You Did Last Summer's Jennifer Love Hewitt). You even get a mysterious masked killer, startling jump scares, and the main characters being "killed" off one by one. It stayed funny, but as you went through, you saw some really well-planned twists and red herrings that made the story pop.

6. Chernobyl — "Open Wide, O Earth" (Miniseries, Episode 3)

  • Directed by: Johan Renck
  • Written by: Craig Mazin
  • Cast: Jared Harris, Stellan Skarsgård, Emily Watson, Adam Nagaitis, Alex Ferns

What's scarier than the impending nuclear holocaust coming for everyone as a meltdown takes the lives of people working? Sometimes you just need real life to send chills down your spine. This episode contains no monsters or jump scares, only the unblinking, scientific reality of acute radiation syndrome (ARS) and how it destroys the body and mind. The clinical, factual depiction of this decay is one of the most visceral and horrifying sequences ever put on television, and what made it all the more terrifying was that all this really happened.

7. Doctor Who — "Midnight" (Series 4, Episode 10)

  • Directed by: Alice Troughton
  • Written by: Russell T Davies
  • Cast: David Tennant, Lesley Sharp, Rakie Ayola, David Troughton

We couldn't just have one Doctor Who episode, especially from a show that has been on the air so long. This episode follows The Doctor (Tennant) when he's trapped on a shuttle with a group of tourists as an unseen, unknown entity possesses one of them, Sky Silvestry (Sharp). Hello, psychological thriller! The entity begins to repeat their words, then speaks in perfect unison with them, and finally, begins stealing the Doctor's voice. The whole thing is grounded in paranoia, where you have no idea who's telling you what, so you just have to make bets on how well you know people and hope.

8. Grey's Anatomy — "Sanctuary" / "Death and All His Friends" (Season 6, Episodes 23 & 24)

  • Directed by: Stephen Cragg ("Sanctuary"), Rob Corn ("Death and All His Friends")
  • Written by: Shonda Rhimes
  • Cast: Ellen Pompeo, Sandra Oh, Chandra Wilson, Patrick Dempsey, Michael O'Neill

A medical show has things that scare you, but this was the first time I felt like they were tapping into another genre. This two-part season finale transforms the familiar hospital setting into a warzone during an active-shooter crisis. If you're an American, you know that's a fear we deal with every day. It would be nice if someone did something to help us, but it never happens. Anyway, in this story, a grieving widower (O'Neill) stalks the halls, methodically hunting the doctors he blames for his wife's death. There is nothing more scary or visceral than that.

9. Star Trek: The Next Generation — "Night Terrors" (Season 4, Episode 17)

  • Directed by: Les Landau
  • Written by: (Teleplay by) Pamela Douglas & Jeri Taylor, (Story by) Shari Goodhartz
  • Cast: Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis, Brent Spiner, Gates McFadden

I love this Star Trek show so much because they really take a lot of risks with episodes and lean into the fun. The crew here gets trapped in a spatial anomaly and finds they are unable to enter REM sleep, leading to a complete mental breakdown of everyone on the crew. The episode is a slow burn as the crew descends into paranoia and sometimes terrifying hallucinations. The episode can be summed up in its most famous scene, where Dr. Crusher (McFadden) in the morgue sees all the corpses sit up on their slabs. It's a great jump scare.

10. Twin Peaks — "Lonely Souls" (Season 2, Episode 7)

  • Directed by: David Lynch
  • Written by: Mark Frost
  • Cast: Kyle MacLachlan, Sheryl Lee, Ray Wise, Frank Silva

I mean, David Lynch on TV was always going to be creepy. But this was a mystery show that kept getting darker and darker. After a season and a half of surreal mystery, this is the episode that finally reveals Laura Palmer's killer. So, everyone was already on edge. Set to the haunting "The World Spins," the killer's slow, agonizing, and supernaturally-charged murder of Maddy Ferguson (Lee) is one of the most disturbing and traumatic scenes in television history. This show was gone too soon.

11. SpongeBob SquarePants — "Rock Bottom" (Season 1, Episode 17)

Admit it, when you saw that SpongeBob SquarePants was on the list, you thought we were going to talk about the Hashslinging Slasher episode. Wrong! "Rock Bottom" is actually scary. SpongeBob is literally stranded at the bottom of the ocean in the middle of the night, all alone — that is, until deep-sea creatures show up to make the whole situation all the more spooky.

12. Bob's Burgers — "Pig Trouble in Little Tina" (Season 10, Episode 4)

Bob's Burgers is full of references and homages to famous horror movies, from Jaws to The Shining, but they're not very good for a scare. You have to watch the Halloween episodes for that. There are so many episodes that could make the cut, including that super eerie scene from "Apple Gore-chard! (But Not Gory)" that gives straight-up Midsommar vibes, but the episode where Tina is haunted by the spirit of a dead fetal pig (which spoofs Nightmare on Elm Street)is actually unwatchable if you don't like horror.

Seriously, the scene with the bursting pig guts is nauseating.

Summing It All Up 

Horror is one of those genres that brings us all together for a little fright night. It bonds us and can keep the viewers on the edge of their seats.

These were all the episodes I could think of that fit this category, but I bet you have some I need to add or check out.

Let me know what you think in the comments.

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