Scariest TV Episodes: Our 12 Picks
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American Horror Story: Asylum, "The Origins of Monstrosity"
"Just when I thought basement stairs couldn't get any more unsettling, along comes a mangled Chloe Sevigny to confirm that, yes, they can. I have to imagine at least half of the children in that scene were also traumatized." –Andy Swift
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Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "Hush"
"Skeletal-looking, harshly grinning floating demons who take away your voice so you can't scream when they rip out your heart? These Gentlemen are so not polite!" –Vlada Gelman
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Doctor Who, "Blink"
"How threatening can some old stone statues actually be? Ummm... try next-level terrifying in this standalone episode featuring future Oscar nominee Carey Mulligan facing off against alien creatures who can only attack when you take your eyes off 'em. Granted, the Weeping Angels don't kill — they merely feed off your energy and send you reeling back into a different time — but 'Blink' is still a nail-biting reminder that what you can't see can hurt you." –Michael Slezak
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Twin Peaks, "Lonely Souls"
"The sight of Leland looking in that mirror and seeing BOB starring back at him has haunted me for more than two decades. Thanks David Lynch and Mark Frost." –Michael Ausiello
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Fringe, "Night of Desirable Objects"
"This sci-fi series' spine-tingliest episodes often involved a nondescript, remote house inhabited by an unremarkable person. And then Peter and Olivia get to snooping around, and... whammo. Should someone want to cue this Season 2 outing up on Netflix, I wouldn't dare spoil the nature of the MOW. But it is a super... scary one." —Matt Webb Mitovich
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Lost, "Pilot"
"Shannon's frantic translation, the French woman's whispered distress call, Sayid's hasty calculations — all of it ending in Charlie's, 'Guys, where are we?' Never before or since has such an innocuous question caused the hair on my arms to stand up straight." –Kimberly Roots
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Sesame Street, "Dancing Dog"
"I'm not sure if it was the wonky, old-school animation or just the generally terrifying concept of a shadowy alligator invading my bedroom, but Sesame Street's 'Dancing Dog' segment gave me endless nightmares as a child." –Andy Swift
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Star Trek, "The Enemy Within"
"Horror comes in many different forms, and this episode of the series I worshipped as a young'un poked at my fear of losing the 'good' Captain Kirk. For as much as I love, love, love doppelgänger twists, each of the countless times I watched this rerun I felt such agita that maybe, this time, Evil Kirk won't be found out. And don't get me started on what happened to the poor space poodle they ran the transporter test on." —Matt Webb Mitovich
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Supernatural, "Bloody Mary"
"To this day, it remains the only episode of the series I have not seen in its entirety because the urban legend has made me too afraid to even look at the bathroom mirror during a nighttime trip to the loo." –Vlada Gelman
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True Detective, "Form and Void"
"Errol Childress' house of horror will haunt me forever, from the fly-covered corpse to the stained bedding to the Carcosa nightmare out back, not to mention the decades of abuse and rot piling up like Errol's Cary Grant VHS tapes. The light may be winning, but it's really hard to tell from here." –Kimberly Roots
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The X-Files, "Home"
"It begins with Mulder and Scully looking into the death of a badly deformed baby — and climaxes with the discovery of (gulp) the limbless Mrs. Peacock... who's been stored under the bed and used to breed future generations of her reclusive family. Did we mention her adult sons are the ones who've been siring her progeny? The visuals are undeniably horrific, but the psychological themes — incest! booby traps! what's lurking under the bed! — are just as hard to shake." –Michael Slezak
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Santa Barbara, "Episode 1909."
"On Feb. 24, 1992, I got the scare of my life when I tuned into the Greatest Daytime Drama in History and discovered that new headwriter Pamela K. Long had dumped everything that made the show special (the Shakespearean-dialogue, the cutting-edge score, the epic romance) and replaced it with a bunch of tired, boring, soap cliches (the photo to the left tells you everything you need to know). It was a horror show. Santa Barbara was cancelled a year later but, as far as I'm concerned, 2/24/1992 was the actual date of death." —Michael Ausiello