A strange creaking sound in the middle of the night. An odd shape in the darkness. A weird whisper in an otherwise empty house. This is where the story almost always begins, but sooner or later that sound, that shape, that whisper becomes a terrifying figure smashing around the home screaming. Ghosts are always serious business when it comes to movies.
Since the early days of film when Georges Méliès was experimenting with the art form to today's special effects-filled horror movies, ghosts have been a mainstay of movie theaters almost from the day the first theater opened, and with good reason - the whole idea of ghosts is undeniably creepy. The dead still going about the world of the living, sometimes lashing out and attack others while being otherwise intangible, and it always happens in the middle of the night, making it all that much more frightening.
10 Large Marge (Pee-Wee's Big Adventure)
Starring Paul Reubens as the titular character and directed by Tim Burton, Pee-Wee's Big Adventure is filled with strange imagery, including the creepy clowns that appear in Pee-wee's nightmares, but the truly horrifying moment comes from a trucker with a frightening story that begins with "On this very night, ten years ago..." and ends with her head exploding into a horrific yet funny image.
Large Marge opened the door to horror for many kids. Her strange tale and scary face was enough to freak out kids in just the right way, not giving them horrible nightmares for weeks on end, but just enough to make them want to see more spooky spirits in movies.
9 The Librarian (Ghostbusters)
Ghostbusters rides the line between fear and comedy in a way few movies ever have, and the Librarian is the perfect example of that. The first ghost in the movie, the Librarian starts off as a rather kindly looking free-floating apparition that makes Peter, Egon, and Ray very excited until she changes from a pleasant old woman into a horrific hag, proving that the Ghostbusters are afraid of some ghosts.
More importantly, without the Librarian the three scientists would never have come up with the idea to form Ghostbusters just in time to take on Gozer the Gozerian and save the world from what would certainly have been the apocalypse. Oddly enough, the Ghostbusters never bothered to go back to the library to capture the Librarian.
8 Kyra Collins (The Sixth Sense)
M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense is filled with lots of creepy ghosts, and poor young Cole Sear, played by Haley Joel Osment, is the only person who can see them. The one ghost that really stands out from the rest is Kyra Collins, a young girl who has recently died.
What makes Kyra so terrifying is the way that she died. As Cole learns, Kyra had been ill for a long time before passing on, and as her ghost helps him discover, her illness wasn't natural. Kyra's mother slowly poisoned her for weeks, leading to the child's death.
7 The Dagmars (We Are Still Here)
To try and move past the death of their son, Anne and Paul Sacchetti move into a new home, only to discover that it is haunted by the rather nasty looking Dagmar family. Ted Geoghegan's modern horror classic We Are Still Here has three of the creepiest looking ghosts to ever show up on film.
The Dagmars, as it turns out, were murdered by the townspeople as a sacrifice to an evil entity that lives under the house. Now, with the entity demanding a new sacrifice and the Sacchetti's moving in, the Dagmars have returned, but are they there to help the entity or Anne and Paul?
6 The Man Who Can't Breathe (Insidious: Chapter 3)
The Insidious movies are filled with some scary spirits, and while the Red-Faced Demon and the Bride in Black are the most recognizable, the Man Who Can't Breathe from Insidious: Chapter 3 is the creepiest. Dressed in a dirty hospital gown that shows off plenty of his burnt skin, and wearing an old oxygen mask on his face, the Man Who Can't Breathe has taken the spirits of an apartment building hostage and is pulling the living into the Further so he can eat their life-force.
With his heavy breathing and shuffling gait, the Man Who Can't Breathe jumps ahead of the other ghosts in the Insidious series because he isn't targeting any specific person, choosing instead to feed off of every living person while torturing the other spirits who are trapped there.
5 Kayako Saeki (Ju-On)
Kayako Saeki is one of three ghosts that Ju-On and the films that followed it focus on. When she was living, Kayako was, she believed, happily married to Takeo Saeki with whom she had a son named Toshio. When Takeo became convinced that Kayako was cheating on him, he brutally murdered her before killing their son and then himself.
Kayako became an Onryō - a vengeful spirit - who would attack anyone who came into the Saeki House. While all three ghosts in Ju-On are creepy, Kayako, crawling around covered in blood while creepily repeating her death rattle and cracking her neck, is one of the greats.
4 Madeline O'Malley (The Innkeepers)
Written and directed by Ti West, The Innkeepers is a slow burn horror movie that greatly rewards anyone who takes the time to watch it. In the movie, Claire and Luke - played by Sara Paxton and Pat Healy are the last two employees at the once-great Yankee Pedlar Inn, which is due to close its doors forever.
The duo are ghost hunting enthusiasts who believe that the inn is haunted and are trying to capture evidence of the ghost of Madeline O'Malley. As the final weekend of the inn progresses, Claire and Luke get more evidence than they could have hoped for.
3 Johnny Bartlett (The Frighteners)
The only thing scarier than a serial killer is the ghost of a serial killer who is still out there upping their body count. In Peter Jackson's The Frighteners, that's exactly what Johnny Bartlett is doing. Decades after he was executed for murdering twelve people, Johnny's evil ghost has returned to continue his nightmarish work with the help of his deranged girlfriend. The only living person who can see - and stop - Johnny Bartlett is Frank Bannister.
The idea of Johnny Bartlett is creepy enough, but it's the over the top spooky performance by Jake Busey that really makes the character stand out. Busey plays Bartlett as a complete madman who wants to get the highest body count because he thinks it makes America look bad that there's a Russian killer who has outdone everyone else.
2 Woman In Room 237 (The Shining/Doctor Sleep)
The Shining, based on the book by horror master Stephen King, is filled with some really scary stuff, but none of the other ghosts at the Overlook Hotel are as creepy as the Woman in Room 237. First seen by little Danny before his father Jack falls under her spell, the Woman in Room 237 appears differently depending on who sees her.
To Danny, she is a rotting toothless old woman coming out of the bath, but to Jack she is a beautiful woman that seduces him, bringing the failed writer closer to madness. The Woman in Room 237 returned in Doctor Sleep, still haunting Danny years after he and his mother escaped from the Overlook.
1 The Entity (The Entity)
What makes The Entity so frightening is that it is based on the true story of Doris Bither, a woman who claimed to have been repeatedly assaulted by three ghosts in 1974. Birther was observed by doctoral students at the University of California and while they found nothing conclusive, the students did claim to see some odd things.
The Entity takes the basics of the Bither case and turns it into a terrifying movie that has some of the most amazing special effects for any ghost movie. Making it all the more frightening, the ghost is never actually shown in The Entity, leaving it to the audience to imagine what it may look like.