Stories about ghosts and things that go bump in the night are rife with material for Nightmare Fuel.
Spoilers below.
- Particularly the "Blood-stained Labyrinth" case.
- The first episode of the seventh file. A bloody bathtub and then "I don't want to die".
- Hell, the...thing. It can't even be classified as human anymore. It rises out of the bathtub to grin at Mai and Masako in the dark of a room that looks like a cross between a morgue and an operating room.
- If we look into it a bit more, the character was probably based on a mix of Elizabeth Báthory and the Buddhist concept of "hungry ghosts". To stay...alive (or whatever it is), they have to feed on corpses. Constantly. Without being sated. The Other Wiki can tell you something about them.
- Mai's vision of being taken by the spirits, and awakes before her throat is slit to drain her blood for the aforementioned monster. Most of her visions are insubstantial in some way, and she knows they're not real. Not this one. She even tells the others how she felt the knife against her neck.
- It's actually even worse because, based on what she says later, she didn't wake up before her throat was slit, that was just where the episode ended.
- Urado is especially terrifying because he's not an innocent or normal person whose undead state twisted them. He was a mass murdering Serial Killer who likely killed hundreds, bathed in their blood, and kept their bones as trophies. Then when he died, he just kept doing it. Urado was already a monster, he's just made that himself one literally as well as figuratively.
- The worst part is, it's unkillable. You can't exorcise Urado because he's not a ghost anymore. Naru flat says Urado has basically become a demon or monster. Nothing the heroes can throw at it can do more than stun it for a short time and even Naru seems afraid of the monster Urado has become. Worse yet, even if he was a ghost, his sheer evil and the fact he was already a mass murderer in life means exorcising Urado would've been a massive task to begin with. Naru also implies Urado and his minions have become so powerful they can even warp time and space to teleport people to their murder room. In the end, what does it take to finally put an end to Urado? They had to burn the entire mansion down to finally banish him.
- The first episode of the seventh file. A bloody bathtub and then "I don't want to die".
- The resolution of "Silent Christmas" counts, as well. It's bad enough that the spirit is a dead child, but then you learn that he died because he climbed all the way up the church, with no way to get down or call for help, in the rain and snow. The best outcome would be if he had died of hypothermia that same night.
- The penultimate arc in the manga, "Forgotten Children". Your friends keep disappearing one after another, but the children's malicious spirits immediately replace them so you can't even notice, much less remember them, and then you treat the ghosts like they were there since the beginnings. And that's after you've seen your friend being taken away right under your nose. And the whole situation makes it clear that anyone can be a victim. If that doesn't creep the hell outta you, it's still enough nightmare fuel to induce hellish paranoia.
- The possessed family members in The Cursed House arc. Two children and an adult who are possessed have black, soulless eyes, while another adult is running around on all fours and growling like an animal. It's one of the most intense hauntings in the show.
- The penultimate episode ends with all the main characters in one room as the lights go out. They hear sounds coming from all around them, then see hands pounding against the window as the opening theme for the series starts up to positively terrifying effect. They're being assailed by an army of drowned corpses. *shudder*
- Naru being possessed. This isn't the first time one of the group has gotten possessed - voluntarily or otherwise - but in this case Lin makes it clear that Naru isn't just in danger but extremely dangerous too. The way he frames it its because of his combat abilities but come the last episode and we know exactly what he means. Naru's psychic abilities are worlds above anyone else's and that in the hands of a God that thinks people have to worship it? Makes you not want to think about what would've happened if Naru had actually woken up...
