37 Scary Quotes To Haunt You

There's something irresistibly intriguing about the eerie and unsettling—the goosebumps that emerge on your skin, the shiver that crawls down your spine. Whether it's the ominous creak of a door opening on its own or the chilling whisper of something unseen, we've all experienced moments where reality brushes up against the fantastical and frightening. In this post, we've gathered 37 of the most spine-tingling scary quotes that will send chills down your spine and linger in your thoughts long after you've read them. So, dim the lights, pull up your favorite blanket, and prepare to be haunted by words that echo with fear and fascination.

1. “Sometimes a light glimmered out of the physician's eyes, burning blue and ominous, like the reflection of a furnace, or, let us say, like one of those gleams of ghastly fire that darted from Bunyan's awful doorway in the hill-side, and quivered on the pilgrim's face.” - Nathaniel Hawthorne

2. “I realized how truly hard it was, really, to see someone you love change right before your eyes. Not only is it scary, it throws your balance off as well.” - Sarah Dessen

3. “People should either be caressed or crushed. If you do them minor damage they will get their revenge; but if you cripple them there is nothing they can do. If you need to injure someone, do it in such a way that you do not have to fear their vengeance.” - Niccolo Machiavelli

4. “Within its gates I heard the soundOf winds in cypress caverns caughtOf huddling tress that moaned, and soughtTo whisper what their roots had found.(“A Dream of Fear”)” - George Sterling

5. “I'm telling you, the gorgeous of the world can actually look pretty intimidating when they scowl. Imagine a snow-white swan with a scary tattoo holding a chain saw. There's just no way to really prepare for that.” - Jim Benton

6. “This inhuman place makes human monsters.” - Stephen King

7. “If you watch a scary movie together, then the scariness is cut in half!” - Hidekaz Himaruya

8. “Sometimes the things in our heads are far worse than anything they could put in books or on film!!” - CK Webb

9. “Oh, my sweet summer child," Old Nan said quietly, "what do you know of fear?Fear is for the winter, my little lord, when the snows fall a hundred feetdeep and the ice wind comes howling out of the north. Fear is for the longnight, when the sun hides its face for years at a time, and little childrenare born and live and die all in darkness while the direwolves grow gaunt andhungry, and the white walkers move through the woods” - George R.R. Martin

10. “If you focus on the humanity of your stories, your characters, then the horror will be stronger, scarier. Without the humanity, the horror becomes nothing more than a tawdry parlor trick. All flash and no magic, and worst of all, no heart.” - Don Roff

11. “In the jumbled, fragmented memories I carry from my childhood there are probably nearly as many dreams as images from waking life. I thought of one which might have been my earliest remembered nightmare. I was probably about four years old - I don't think I'd started school yet - when I woke up screaming. The image I retained of the dream, the thing which had frightened me so, was an ugly, clown-like doll made of soft red and cream-coloured rubber. When you squeezed it, bulbous eyes popped out on stalks and the mouth opened in a gaping scream. As I recall it now, it was disturbingly ugly, not really an appropriate toy for a very young child, but it had been mine when I was younger, at least until I'd bitten its nose off, at which point it had been taken away from me. At the time when I had the dream I hadn't seen it for a year or more - I don't think I consciously remembered it until its sudden looming appearance in a dream had frightened me awake. When I told my mother about the dream, she was puzzled.'But what's scary about that? You were never scared of that doll.' I shook my head, meaning that the doll I'd owned - and barely remembered - had never scared me. 'But it was very scary,' I said, meaning that the reappearance of it in my dream had been terrifying. My mother looked at me, baffled. 'But it's not scary,' she said gently. I'm sure she was trying to make me feel better, and thought this reasonable statement would help. She was absolutely amazed when it had the opposite result, and I burst into tears.Of course she had no idea why, and of course I couldn't explain. Now I think - and of course I could be wrong - that what upset me was that I'd just realized that my mother and I were separate people. We didn't share the same dreams or nightmares. I was alone in the universe, like everybody else. In some confused way, that was what the doll had been telling me. Once it had loved me enough to let me eat its nose; now it would make me wake up screaming. ("My Death")” - Lisa Tuttle

12. “Ms. Fang is the nicest, sweetest teacher at Scary School. She only ate twelve kids last year.” - Derek The Ghost

13. “It hungers, always.It takes shape after shape as its own, and each body it puts on is as hungry as the last.” - Adam Slater

14. “So what, ghosts can't hurt you. That's what I thought then.” - Stephen King

15. “It’s scary telling someone you care about, someone you love who you really are.” - Eric Jerome Dickey

16. “Feathers!" spluttered Sargatanas. "Feathers are for the birds, my boy. Flaking, peeling, scale-ridden wings, now that's what real beings wear. I'll tell you a secret." He said, and drew me closer. "The eternal pain at having known Paradise and lost it is priceless. I wouldn't swap it for anything.” - George Pendle

17. “That's the real excellent scary part, that feeling, and that feeling won't come if the lady from next door is there and your mom won't ride the ride, because what brings on that feeling most is when your mom rides wedged in tight with you and your brother on nights like this, when your mom will scream the excellent scream, the scream that people you see in snatches on the boardwalk stop and stare for, the scream that stops the ride next door, the scream that tells us to our hearts the bolts have finally broken.” - Mark Richard

18. “Bodies lay in the sun. Bodies stood in the sun.” - N.J. Hallard

19. “And we've read scary books and watched scary movies and TV shows together. He's met monsters, ghouls, and demons on the page and on the screen. There's nothing like watching Anaconda with your best friend or lying in bed next to your mother reading Roald Dahl, because that way you get to explore dark stuff safely. You get to laugh with it, to step out on the vampire's dance floor and take him for a spin, and then step back into your life. When you make friends with fear, it can't rule you.” - Anne Lamott

20. “S is for SCARY! Fear is driven out by action! Bad habits are overcome by good habits.” - Lucas Remmerswaal

21. “It was darker in the tower than any place Devnee had ever been. The dark had textures, some velvet, some satin. The dark shifted positions.The dark continued to breathe. The breath of the tower lifted her clothing like the flaps of a tent, and sounded in her ears like falling snow.It's the wind coming through the double shutters, Devnee told herself.But how could the wind come through? There were glass windows between the inside and outside shutters.Or were there?The windows weren't just holes in the wall, were they?What if there was no glass? What if things crawled through those open louvers, crept into the room, blew in with the cold that fingered her hair? What creatures of the night could slither through those slats?She had not realized how wonderful glass was, how it protected you and kept you inside.She knew something was out there.” - Caroline B. Cooney

22. “Don’t get all gothic and emo on me now. - Tory” - Matthew Leeth

23. “I’m not a big fan of Halloween. Except for the dressing up part. I love picking out a costume. - Tory” - Matthew Leeth

24. “The dead aren't scary. They are just sad.” - Rick Riordan

25. “The dead weren’t scary. It was the living you had to watch out for.” - Eileen Wilks

26. “But, though I was very much in lust with him, I knew from the start we were nothing like "forever." Maybe because forever is such a scary place.” - Ellen Hopkins

27. “Minds that have withered into psychosis are far more terrifying than any character of fiction.” - Christian Baloga

28. “Even for the very clever it can be like breaking bones to stand back from something that’s been in front of you all your life.” - Paul Hoffman

29. “Love is supposed to be scary. If it was easy, everyone would do it.” - Susan Mallery

30. “Here's a scary thought: What if God called you to give beyond your comfort level? Would you be afraid? Would you try to explain it away or dismiss it as impractical? And in the process, would you miss out on a harvest opportunity for which God had explicitly prospered you in the first place?” - Andy Stanley

31. “Just remember,” he told her. “If you run from me, I will pursue.” - Nenia Campbell

32. “I’m getting the feeling that you two don’t like me. - Kristy” - Matthew Leeth

33. “You’re forgetting… we never get in trouble in that class. Remember I gave Mr. Hendry that lap dance last year. I’m thinking he’s expecting one this year as well. - Carol” - Matthew Leeth

34. “I’ve been thinking that you, me and Kristy should all have a sleepover or something like that. Wouldn‘t that be so cool! - Carol” - Matthew Leeth

35. “She turned back to the door fishing her key out of her purse. Once the key was in the lock, the door flew open revealing darkness. All she had time for was a squeak before she was abruptly pulled in the house by her shirt. The door slammed shut and locked behind her with a clank of sliding metal.” - Nicole Rae

36. “The minister paused in his narrative. At that moment there came a tremendous blast of wind which shook the windows of the manse, and burst open the hall door, and caused the candles to flicker and the fire to go roaring up the chimney. It is not too much to say that, what with the uncanny story, and the howling storm, we all felt that creeping sort of uneasiness which so often seems like the touch of something from another world - a hand stretched across the boundary-line of time and eternity, the coldness and mystery of which make the stoutest heart tremble. ("Sandy The Tinker")” - Charlotte Riddell

37. “He smelled like alcohol and a bad dream.” - Nenia Campbell