"Waking the Witch". Egads. If the distorted voice calling for help doesn't make you jump, the satanic voice tormenting her will.
"You won't burn. You won't bleed. Confess to me, girl."
Pretty much all of The Ninth Wave could count.
The live album Before The Dawn actually adds a LOT to the experience of The Ninth Wave that's just as terrifying, if not more so, than the original:
The prologue, "Astronomer's Call", is a spoken-word piece where an astronomer, who happened to be star-gazing on the cliffs, caught a distress signal from a boat - "Sinking fast" - and is trying to call the coast guard to summon a rescue. He gets frustrated at some of the questions they ask about it and it's really apparent that he feels it's his responsibility to save these people.
The music video for "And Dream Of Sheep" shows Kate floating in this pitch-black water, being kept afloat by a life jacket as she stares up at the camera. At the end, something happens to the life jacket and her upper body and face sink beneath the water. Made scarier and more convincing by how it was filmed; Kate Bush really did just sing this in a cold pool of water, making her wavering, slightly strained vocals very realistic.
"Waking The Witch" is still terrifying, as the "demonic" voice is replaced by "The Witch Finder", played by Jo Servi. His voice obviously isn't as deep as in the original recording, but having a more human voice shouting these things at her turns it from a supernatural horror at being judged by demonic forces into a more mundane horror about religious-based persecution.
"Watching Them Without Her", an acted piece of dialogue before "Watching You Without Me", shows what's happening with the woman's husband and son. They're talking, looking for things, the dinner gets burnt, and it's a nice comedic break from the rest of the suite...and then the son pauses, and adds "Mum's late..." At the end of "Watching You Without Me", the husband answers the door, with the implication that it's the police, letting them know that she's lost at sea.
They also add a piece between "Watching You Without Me" and "The Jig Of Life" called "Little Light" - firstly, it starts with Kate saying, between breaths, "Let me live...let me live!" before screaming in fear. The rest of the piece is a warped version of a motif that appears in the much more cheerful An Endless Sky of Honey suite.
Finally, during the third act of the show, An Endless Sky of Honey, the song "Nocturne" has a call-back to "Waking the Witch": "Help this blackbird! There's a stone around my leg!" It's not unwelcome, but it's quite jarring if you're not expecting it.
"Under Ice" uses the already terrifying metaphor for an ice skater breaking through the ice and plunging into the freezing water below to symbolise the heroine of The Ninth Wave getting into further difficulty in the water. If you'll pardon the pun, it's incredibly chilling.
Another good example: "Get Out of My House", inspired by the book & film The Shining, which likens the agony of restless spirits in a haunted house to the emotional scarring of abuse and violation.
Then there's the disturbing video for "Experiment IV" (which the page image is from). It's creepy enough that the scientists are being forced to create a sound-based weapon and test it on human subjects, but when the "sound creature" as it's sometimes nicknamed comes in...
"Breathing." It's a song about nuclear holocaust. Enough said. "Oh God, please leave us something to breathe!" Shudder.
"Pull Out the Pin" is from the perspective of a Vietnamese soldier who decides to pull out the pin of a grenade to kill the American soldier he's been tracking.
Just one thing in it:
Me or him.
And I love life!
"Leave It Open" is very unsettling, and culminates with Kate's heavily distorted voice chanting "We let the weirdness in" over and over, though the words are so hard to make out that for a while after the song's release, no one could figure out what was being said. Even more creepy, it is believed by some that when this line is played backwards, you can hear the words "They said they would let us in" or "They said they were buried here".
Though "Suspended in Gaffa" is a very bouncy song, Kate has stated that it was inspired by the idea of someone being in purgatory or hell:
"I was brought up as a Roman Catholic and had the imagery of purgatory and of the idea that when you were taken there that you would be given a glimpse of God and then you wouldn't see Him again until you were let into heaven. And we were told that in hell it was even worse because you got to see God but then you knew that you would never see Him again. And it's sorta using that as the parallel. And the idea of seeing something incredibly beautiful, having a religious experience as such, but not being able to get back there."
Kate's short film The Line, the Cross, and the Curve is full of creepiness. First of all, there's the premise (based on a Hans Christian Andersen story) about the protagonist being tricked into putting on a pair of ballet shoes that force her to dance nonstop. Then there are the weird characters who inhabit the realm beyond the mirror; the evil dancer with a Big Ol' Unibrow (played by Miranda Richardson) who gives her cursed shoes to the unsuspecting Kate, and the spooky man in white facepaint (played by Lindsay Kemp) who is there to help the heroine but appears quite sinister nevertheless. The sequence featuring the "The Red Shoes" song is especially scary, as Kate is drawn into the mirror by said man whose face suddenly appears within it, and once she's inside she finds herself in what looks to be hell, with a floor covered in bones and dancing demons. All the while the shoes are forcing her to dance insanely. Later there's also an unsettling scene where Kate is sitting down, but still helpless to prevent her legs from flopping around (and at times they twist into unnatural angles). She begs the man to help her, and he slowly approaches her while maniacally chanting "It's really happening to ya..." repeatedly.
"The Infant Kiss" is equal parts terrifying and heart-breaking. Based on the film The Innocents, it's depicting a woman developing sexual feelingsfor a child - albeit a child who she thinks is being possessed by the ghost of an adult man. The sheer despair in Bush's voice really sells the fear and shame of the whole thing.
I only want to touch
I must stay away and find a way
To stop before it gets too much
The music video for the Director's Cut version of "Deeper Understanding" is both this and a Tear Jerker, showing a man - played by Robbie Coltrane - becoming so alienated from his family that he starts spending all his free time with this computer program, which is depicted as a highly uncanny pair of lips; when it sings and speaks, you can see a black void in its mouth, with no teeth or tongue. Eventually, the program stops working and he electrocutes himself trying to fix it, before going on a rampage trying to get his "fix" from the program - leading him to break into the bedroom of a man (played by Noel Fielding) and kill him. The video ends with the program developing these dark eyes, sitting just above the mouth, and staring at him.
, inspired by the book & film The Shining, which likens the agony of restless spirits in a haunted house to the emotional scarring of abuse and violation.