Nightmare Fuel / Alone in the Dark

"Nobody can pierce the mystery and not pay the price. Nobody can contemplate the face of gods with impunity."

• The first game:
  • The ghosts; if you touch them, they turn into a crazy vortex and chase you everywhere, with a constant demonic groaning noise, and the screen shaking. It doesn't always happen immediately either.
  • Reading "De Vermis Mysteriis" while standing outside the marked tile causes your character to utter a horrified moan as an unseen force lifts them up, and then very quickly and with no warning snaps their spine in half and hurls their body back to the ground.
  • The Fragments Of The Book Of Abdul, a collection of prose that references two of the gods in the Cthulhu Mythos^note Cthulhu and Shub-Niggurath, while not as deadly as "De Vermis Mysteriis", still has quite the effect on the player character. Namely, clutching their head, banging it against the floor, and then stretching and contorting in ways that should be impossible, howling in pain. And, as someone who knows their Lovecraft could tell you, the "Book Of Abdul"? That would be the Necronomicon^note Noted usually to be the book of Abdul Alhazred, the Tome of Eldritch Lore. No wonder just mere fragments cause such horrific effects.
  • If you get clever and simply try to walk out the front doors before you're allowed to, you get sucked into the Great Old One waiting right outside.
  • Certain monster sightings will pause all music with a sudden but subtle Scare Chord to incline that you're likely about to get attacked or worse, often from having stumbled into a room completely unaware of something inside it until it's already lurching for you.
  • Game over leads to the corpse of your character being dragged to a sacrificial altar before what seems to be the feet of the Big Bad, as the game then cuts to a shot of the mansion and the awakening of Pregzt that effectively spells the doom of humanity.
  • The game really captures the feeling of an H. P. Lovecraft story, with a highlight being Jeremy Hartwood's diary and suicide note, detailing the man's slide into madness brought on by "The Dark Man" and his last words as he commits suicide to avoid a much more painful death.
    Jeremy's Notebook: He has come back... He found the door to my dreams.
    Jeremy's Suicide Note: They are coming. (...) I hear their footsteps.
• The third game:
  • The recording of the ghost killing the actor is a lot more unsettling than most of the series' monsters, and its different art style helps it feel otherworldly.
• The New Nightmare:
  • The Giant Space Flea from Nowhere Mini-Boss in the library.
  • You are walking along hoping that you don't get attacked by another dog, when all of a sudden you hear a scream and when you walk toward the source, you hear a splash and then the game goes quiet for a second.
  • Before entering the mansion, there's a chance that you might encounter a group of ghosts that show up during lightning strikes.
    • Similarly, you can encounter more of them in a random office in the mansion, but the thing is unlike the ones at the gate, you ''don't'' go back and fight them, they're just there for the scare.
• The 2008 reboot:
  Lucifer: Did you think I'd come alone?
  • The park can be creepy; going around in a lonely silent place, and then you find an incredibly strong monster.
  • Even the Narm-tacular bad ending of the game gets pretty chilling at the very end.
    Carnby (possessed by Lucifer): I'm the light bringer! I'm the fucking universe!