Fear lurks in the shadows. And monsters? Well, they live under your bed. At least in scary horror movies and books, anyway. They also exist in our imaginations, which, frankly, just might be the most terrifying place of all.
After all, there’s no way to escape serial killers like Michael Myers, who stalk you in your dreams once the lights go out. And perhaps, that's just the way you like it.
If that's the case, then you’ve come to the right place, because we’ve conjured up a collection of scary quotes guaranteed to run chills up your spine.
Whether you're on the prowl for a Halloween Instagram caption from beyond the grave or a spooky Halloween greeting that promises to deliver goosebumps, we think you’ll find whatever you're looking for in this compilation of unsettling, scary quotes.
In fact, we’ve dug up all kinds of creepy quotes, from scary classics like “The Exorcist,” Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” and the master of horror himself, Stephen King.
Who can forget King’s terrifying tagline, “Sometimes dead is better,” from “Pet Sematary"? Or his memorable quote from “The Stand” saying, “He’s not like us. He smiles a lot. But I think there might be worms inside him, making him smile.”
Get ready to pull the covers over your eyes, because these scary quotes are a real scream.
Scary Quotes
- “We are the things that others fear.” — Anne Rice, “The Vampire Lestat”
- “At night the fog was thick and full of light, and sometimes voices.” — Erin Bow, “Plain Kate”
- “Life itself is but the shadow of death, and souls departed but the shadows of the living.” — Thomas Browne, “Garden of Cyrus”
- “When I sleep, my spirit slips away from my body and dances naked with the devil.” — Thomasin, “The Witch”
- “The basis of all human fears, he thought. A closed door, slightly ajar.” ― Stephen King, “Salem’s Lot”
- “Because dead people are just like you and me, they still want things. They look at us all the time, and they miss being alive.” ― Peter Straub, “The Throat”
- “I delight in what I fear.” ― Shirley Jackson
- “By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.” — Ray Bradbury, “Something Wicked This Way Comes”
- “No man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and dear to his heart and eye the morning can be.” ― Bram Stoker, “Dracula”
- “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” ― H.P. Lovecraft
- “Everybody is a book of blood; wherever we’re opened, we’re red.” ― Clive Barker, “Books of Blood: Volumes One to Three”
- “It’s better to face madness with a plan than to sit still and let it take you in pieces.” ― Josh Malerman, “Bird Box”
- “What an excellent day for an exorcism.” — Demon, “The Exorcist”
- “Vampires, werewolves, fallen angels and fairies lurk in the shadows, their intentions far from honorable.” — Jeaniene Frost
- “If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
- “Beware the dark pool at the bottom of our hearts. In its icy, black depths dwell strange and twisted creatures it is best not to disturb.” — Sue Grafton, “I is for Innocent”
- “Am I walking away from something I should be running away from?” — Shirley Jackson, “The Haunting of Hill House”
- “Sometimes dead is better.” — Stephen King, “Pet Sematary”
- “I was a newborn vampire, weeping at the beauty of the night.” — Anne Rice, “Interview with the Vampire”
- “All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.” — Edgar Allan Poe
- “Unfathomable to mere mortals is the lore of fiends.” — Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Young Goodman Brown”
- “Love will have its sacrifices. No sacrifice without blood.” — J. Sheridan Le Fanu, “Carmilla”
- “Everybody is a book of blood; wherever we’re opened, we’re red.” — Clive Barker, “Books of Blood”
- “Where there is no imagination, there is no horror.” — Arthur Conan Doyle
- “Would you like to see a magic trick?” — The Grabber, “The Black Phone”
- “Horror is like a serpent; always shedding its skin, always changing. And it will always come back.” — Dario Argento
- “There is something at work in my soul which I do not understand.” — Mary Shelley, “Frankenstein”
- “I’m scared to close my eyes, I’m scared to open them. We’re gonna die out here.” — Heather Donahue, “The Blair Witch Project”
- “Is there someone inside you?” — Psychiatrist, “The Exorcist”
- “I know of witches who whistle at different pitches, calling things that don’t have names.” — Helen Oyeyemi, “White is for Witching”
- “This is all it takes for people to plunge into insanity: one night alone with themselves and what they fear the most.” — Thomas Olde Heuvelt, “Hex”
- “They’re here.” — Carol Anne, “Poltergeist”
- “Come, dear. It’ll be easier for you than it was for Jason.” — Mrs. Voorhees, “Friday the 13th”
- “I knew nothing but shadows and I thought them to be real.” -Oscar Wilde, “The Picture of Dorian Gray”
- “Let’s talk, you and I. Let’s talk about fear.” — Stephen King, “Night Shift”
- “Dementors are vicious creatures. They will not distinguish between the one they hunt and the one who gets in their way.” — Albus Dumbledore, “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban”
- “Evil thenceforth became my good.” — Mary Shelley, “Frankenstein”
- “Evil has only the power that we give it.” — Ray Bradbury, “Something Wicked This Way Comes”
- “When shall we meet again? In thunder, lightening, or in rain?” — William Shakespeare, “Macbeth”
- “I’m not gonna hurt ya. You didn’t let me finish my sentence. I said, ‘I’m not gonna hurt ya. I’m just going to bash your brains in!’” — Jack Torrance, “The Shining”
- “I shall never forget the afternoon when first I stumbled upon the half-hidden house of the dead.” — H.P. Lovecraft, “The Tomb”
- “Once upon a time, there was a girl and the girl had a shadow.” — Red, “Us”
- “I don’t know who he is, but he’s burned, and he wears a weird hat and a red and green sweater, really dirty. And he uses these knives, like giant fingernails.” — Nancy Thompson, “A Nightmare on Elm Street”
- “In this town, Michael Myers is a myth. He’s the Boogeyman. A ghost story to scare kids. But this Boogeyman is real. An evil like his never stops, it just grows older. Darker.” — Laurie Strode, “Halloween (2018)”
- “Out for a little walk … in the moonlight, are we?” — Severus Snape, “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban”
- “People who cease to believe in God or goodness altogether still believe in the devil. I don’t know why. No, I do indeed know why. Evil is always possible.” — Anne Rice, “Interview with the Vampire”
- “They look exactly like us. They think like us. They know where we are. We need to move and keep moving. They won’t stop until they kill us ... or we kill them.” — Adelaide Wilson, “Us”
- “A deep sleep fell upon me — a sleep like that of death.” — Edgar Allan Poe, “The Pit and the Pendulum”
- “Every fairytale had a bloody lining. Every one had teeth and claws.” — Alice Hoffman, “The Ice Queen”
- “There’s a monster outside my room. Can I have a glass of water?” — Bo Hess, “Signs”
- “Someone once told her that the stars were merely sewing pins, holding the black sky up so that it did not come down on the world and suffocate it.” — Alma Katsu, “The Deep”
- “He’s not like us. He smiles a lot. But I think there might be worms inside him, making him smile.” — Stephen King, “The Stand”
- “I would die for her. I would kill for her. Either way, what bliss.” — Gomez, “The Addams Family”
- “It is only when a man feels himself face to face with such horrors that he can understand their true import.” — Bram Stoker, “Dracula”
- “One, two, Freddy’s coming for you. Three, four, better lock your door.” — Children, “A Nightmare on Elm Street”
- “A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.” — Hannibal Lecter, “The Silence of the Lambs”
- “But the most frightening thing of all was the wind howling among the trees. Ichabod was sure that it was the sound of the Headless Horseman out looking for his head.” — Washington Irving, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
- “It’s probably wrong to believe there can be any limit to the horror which the human mind can experience ...and the most terrifying question of all may be just how much horror the human mind can stand and still maintain a wakeful, staring, unrelenting sanity.” — Stephen King, “Pet Sematary”
- “Now, sink into the floor.” — Missy Armitage, “Get Out”
- “I am the writing on the walls. I am the sweet smell of blood on the street. The buzz that echoes in the alleyways.” — Anthony McCoy, “Candyman (2021)”
- “When the music stops, you’ll see him in the mirror standing behind you.” — April, “The Conjuring”
- “It was a death cry, rising until it seemed it could go no higher, then dwindling into a mournful, hopeless, ghastly farewell.” — Louise Morgan, “A Secret History of Witches”
- “A witch never gets caught. Don’t forget that she has magic in her fingers and devilry dancing in her blood.” — Roald Dahl, “The Witches”
- “Hate the smell of dampness, don’t you? It’s such a, I don’t know, creepy smell.” — Norman Bates, “Psycho”
- “I see dead people.” — Cole Sear, “The Sixth Sense”
- “I looked upon the sea; it was to be my grave.” — Mary Shelley, “Frankenstein”
- “Where are you, beautiful? Come out, come out, wherever you are!” — Frank, “Hellraiser”
- “Be warned: I sleep as the earth sleeps beneath the night sky or the winter’s snow; and once awakened, I am servant to no man.” — Anne Rice, “The Mummy”
- “You ever feel prickly things on the back of your neck?”— Cole Sear, “The Sixth Sense”
- “Something bumped into me — something soft and plump. It must have been the rats; the vicious, gelatinous, ravenous army that feast on the dead and the living.” — H.P. Lovecraft, “The Rats in the Walls”
- “Hell is empty and all the devils are here.” — William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”
- “Souls and memories can do strange things during trance.” — Bram Stoker, “Dracula”
- “The Further is a world far beyond our own, yet it’s all around us. A place without time as we know it. It’s a dark realm filled with the tortured souls of the dead. A place not meant for the living.” — Elise Reiner, “Insidious”
- “He knew what the wind was doing to them, where it was taking them, to all the secret places that were never so secret again in life.” — Ray Bradbury, “Something Wicked This Way Comes”
- “A black cat crossed my path, and I stopped to dance around it widdershins and to sing the rhyme, Ou va-ti mistigri? Passe sans faire de mai ici.” — Joanne Harris, “Chocolat”
