Ghosts have always been a part of horror movie history, from actors wearing floaty white dresses and dark circles under their eyes to modern-day sculpted and CGI creations. Ghosts can be vengeful, unresolved, or trying to help the living avoid their fate. However, the proliferation of ghosts in media has taken the sting out of the scare in many cases.
Given how often ghosts appear in horror there are still many on-screen spirits that can scare. Whether it's a wronged spirit looking for revenge, a creepy kid, or an otherworldly harbinger, these are truly terrifying horror movie ghosts that always get the scare.
Toshio - Ju-on: The Grudge
Technically the third film in the franchise, Ju-On: The Grudge was the first to be released theatrically and the film that brought the series to attention in the West. In the film, six separate stories play out centered around a cursed house and its spectral inhabitants. Throughout the film the inhabitants of the house, all experience hauntings as the curse take hold and the ghosts living in the home make their presence known.
The hauntings are punctuated with horrible death rattles and cat screeching and the victims of the haunting are often found dead. There is more than one ghost in the cursed house, but Toshio wins the scariest specter by being a creepy kid. The ghosts of children are always scary but Toshio's stark white appearance and accompanying cacophony of cats screeching up his fright factor to maximum.
The Man Who Can't Breathe - Insidious: Chapter 3
The Man Who Can't Breathe, also known as the Wheezing Demon, is arguably the Insidious franchise's scariest supernatural entity. The third entry to the series is a prequel to the original two films and sees Lin Shaye's Elise trying to help a single-parent family deal with a particularly malevolent entity. After young Quinn tries to contact her recently deceased mother through a meeting with Elise. When Elise attempts to make contact she senses a malevolent force trying to get to Quinn and urges her not to try again.
Of course, Quinn does try to contact her mother again and instead draws The Man Who Can't Breathe to her. He begins to appear to her, causing her to get hit by a car and become housebound, leaving her helpless as he begins to torment her. A terrifying, wheezing spirit, corpse-like in appearance and wearing an oxygen mask, The Wheezing Man steals Quinn's astral body and keeps her as a pet in the Further. The image of the withered man stroking the hair of an incapacitated Quinn is haunting and creepy in equal measure.
Candyman - Candyman
In Candyman, graduate student Helen Lyle is researching urban legends when she learns of the Cabrini-Green-centric Candyman legend. In life, an artist and the son of a slave, Candyman fell in love with and impregnated a white woman whose father sent a lynch mob to murder him. They smeared him with honey and let bees sting him to death before burning his corpse and spreading his ashes on the land that became Cabrini-Green.
Angered by Helen's lack of belief in him, Candyman appears to her and tells her she must spill innocent blood to perpetuate his legend. What follows is a story filled with gore and violence as murders happen around Helen, perhaps even perpetrated by a possessed or insane Helen. Tony Todd delivers a career-defining performance as Candyman, both beguiling and frightening with a distinctive voice and look to accompany him.
The Entity - It Follows
It Follows features a haunting entity that is transmitted via sexual intercourse. The Entity begins following whoever becomes infected by it, at a distance at first but slowly and relentlessly catching up. The Entity can take any form, making it easy to miss it in a crowd. Jamie finds this out the hard way when a date with her new boyfriend ends with The Entity being passed on to her, unfortunately only the person infected can see it. Now she has to convince her friends that she is in real danger.
The slow burn pace of the film only adds to the tension as The Entity slowly and relentlessly stalks Jamie as she struggles with whether she should pass it on to someone else. Those caught by the thing are brutally killed, and once they are The Entity reverts to chasing the person who gave them the infection. All the forms taken by The Entity are terrifying, from an old woman to a red-headed child but by far the scariest is the giant.
Reverend Kane - Poltergeist 2
Reverend Henry Kane was the leader of a doomsday cult in life, and a malicious and evil spirit in death. In the first Poltergeist, the Freeling family discovered that their house was built on an ancient burial ground and the spirits of the dead wish to claim the Freeling's daughter Carol Anne for their own. In the sequel, it's discovered that Kane and his followers were entombed under the Freeling's original house as well and Kane is not giving up on Carol Anne yet.
An absolutely terrifying man, Kane appears to Carol Anne and her family and frequently sings 'God is in, His Holy Temple' when he approaches. Kane tries his best to influence the family to gain access to Carol Anne and succeeds in tricking patriarch Steven and temporarily possesses him through the worm in a bottle of tequila.