25 of the Most Haunting Movies of All Time

Horror movies tend to get lumped in together as “stabby, stabby, slice, slice,” but there are as many subcategories as cliques in a high school movie, and they get along about as well. You can’t mix the high-energy slashers with the atmospheric ghost stories or the horror-comedies with the torture porn. They’ll just end up in detention.

Of course, they can all fit into the same building of your school-mind, but it all depends on what you’re going for. One of the best things horror does, for example, is make you frighteningly aware of the bleak nature of the world around you, and when you want that sweet, sweet existential terror, a summer camp serial killer just isn’t gonna do it.

“To me, it’s not about dark visuals and jump scares or being like ‘oooh, there is a GHOST’ or some shit,” Redditor linkenski told r/Movies, explaining that they like “genuinely haunting horror movies” like “The Shining or Jacob's Ladder, movies where the filmmaking and visuals stick with you just as much in a ‘WTF’ or ‘AAH what is THAT EW!?’ (way) at the same time as they hit you on an emotional level.”

They then asked, “What are your favorite and most haunting horror movies?” and their fellow Redditors couldn’t have been more terrifying.