Best Horror Anime To Creep You Out (Or Horror-Adjacent To Entertain You Through Your Halloween Hijinks)

First, we'll start with my lists because we all know that's what you're here for. (And you know how I looooove to make lists.) Some of these will be true horror, featuring hideous monsters, slashing serial killers, and bloody gore. Others will be horror-adjacent, featuring the tropes of horror stories or horror characters in non-horrific settings, such as headless detectives, monsters chillin' at school, and chosen ones with creepy BFFs.

The Top Twenty-One All-Time

1. Perfect Blue

2. Higurashi When They Cry

3. Serial Experiments Lain

4, Bakamonogatari (and the rest of the -gatari series) 

4. Angels of Death

6. Akira

7. Junji Ito Collection

8. Shiki

9. Yamibashi: Theater of Darkness

10. Blood C

11. Killing Bites

11. Another

13. Dead Space

14. Parasyte

15. Red Garden

16. Ghost Hunt

17. Call of the Night

18. Devil Lady

19. Hell Girl

20. Dusk Maiden of Amnesia

21. Demon City Shinjukin

Top Vampire Anime

1. Call of the Night
2. Shiki
3. Rosario +Vampire
4. Blood C
5. Nightwalker: Eternal Darkness
6. Dance in the Vampire Bund / 
7. Diabolik Lovers
8. A Dark Rabbit Has Seven Lives
9. Vampire Hunter D
10. Actually, I Am

Top Slasher / Serial Killer Anime

1. Perfect Blue
2. Higurashi When They Cry
3. Angels of Death
4. Another
5. Future Diary
6. Karakuri Circus
7. Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne
8. Ninja Scroll
9. Talentless Nana
10. The Magical Girl Site

Top Monster Anime

1. Akira
2. Parasyte
3. Dororo
4. Chainsaw Man
5. Frankenstein Family
6. Hellsing
7. Berserk
8. Claymore
9. Nyaruko: Crawling with Love
10. The Island of Giant Insects

Top Monster-Girls Anime

1. Bakamonogatari (and the rest of the -gatari series)
2. Monster Musume
3. Rosario + Vampire
4. Killing Bites
5. Journal of the Mysterious Creatures
6. Monster Girl Doctor
7. Interviews with Monster Girls
8. How Not To Summon a Demon Lord
9. Arifureta: From Commonplace To World’s Strongest
10. Omamori Himari

Top Ghost Anime

1. Dusk Maiden of Amnesia
2. Ghost Hunt
3. Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs
4. Ghost Stories
5. Corpse Party: Tortured Souls
6. Death Parade
7. Ghost Hound
8. Mononoke
9. The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window
10. Muhyo & Roji's Bureau of Supernatural Investigation

Top Zombie Anime

1. Tokyo Ghoul
2. Attack on Titan
3. Dead Space
4. Sankarea: Undying Love
5. Corpse Princess
6. Is This a Zombie?
7. Kabeneri of the Iron Fortress
8. Zombieland Saga
9. High School of the Dead
10. LilyC.A.T.

Top Aliens Monster Anime

1. Parasyte
2. Red Garden
3. The Promised Neverland
4. Argento Soma
5. BEM

Top "And Then There Were None" / Deadly Games Anime

1. Angels of Death
2. Killing Bites
3. Future Diary
4. Akudama Drive
5. Darwin's Game

Top Monsters at School Anime

1. Rosario + Vampire
2. Beastars
3. Monster Musume
4. High School DxD
5. Testament of Sister New Devil
6. Dusk Maiden of Amnesia
7. Vermeil in Gold
8. Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-Kun
9. Sankarea: Undying Love
10. High School of the Dead

Top Horror Anthology Anime

1. Pet Shop of Horrors
2. Boogiepop Phantom
3. Yamibashi: Theater of Darkness
4. Junji Ito Collection
5. Hell Girl
6. Ayakashi: Samurai Horror
7. Mushi-shi
8. Boogiepop and Others
9. xxxHOLic
10. Monogatari

Top Demons/ Devils Anime

1. Demon City Shinjukin
2. Devil Lady
3. High School DXD
4. Testament of Sister New Devil
5. Devil Man
6. Devil May Cry
7. Hell Girl
8. Vermeil in Gold
9. Demon Slayer
10. Demon Lord Dante

Top Witch Anime

1. Witchcraft Works
2. Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches
3. The Ancient Magus Bride
4. Howl’s Moving Castle
5. Kiki’s Delivery Service
6. Puella Magi Madoka Magica
7. Burn The Witch
8. Witch Hunter Robin
9. Grimoire of Zero 
10. Wandering Witch: The Journey of Elaina

Top Yokai Anime

1. Undead Murder Farce
2. Kamisama Kiss
3. Spirited Away
4. Tsugumomo
5. Noragami
6. Mushi-shi
7. Spice and Wolf
8. Elegent Yokai Apartment Life
9. Into the Forest of Fireflies’ Light
10. Natsume’s Book of Friends

Other Lists

The following are also interesting lists of top horror anime, many of which -- you'll notice -- agree with me. 

10 Best Horror Anime That'll Give You Nightmares For Days

10 Best Horror Anime To Watch This Halloween

The Best Horror Anime of All Time

10 Best Horror Anime of All Time

Anime Monsters: 15 Of The Most Terrifying Creatures and Demons

Movie Reviews for Writers: An American Ghost Story

Oh, look! It's another movie in which a writer decides to stay in a haunted house for inspiration. Okay, sarcasm aside, this was a creepy little story about a writer named Paul who wants to become part of the story of a house where a family was murdered. He wants his own experiences in the house and wants to catalog them in a book. Same old, same old, right? Well, this low-budget gem actually manages to make bedsheet ghosts creepy. I know... Right?!

All that aside, let's see what Paul and his experiences have to tell us about the writing life. 

About 16 minutes in, Paul and his girlfriend are lying in bed and she asks him point-blank why the story of "this house" is so important to him. He responds blithely that it's a good time in the industry, paranormal books are hot. But Stella, she's a smart cookie, and she sees through all that noise right away, so she presses the point. "What's driving you?" she asks. He kids a little more, but she won't let go, and eventually, he actually goes deeper and answers honestly: 

"I want to prove to myself that I can actually finish something I start. I'm thirty. I'm a part-time ad writer for a newspaper. My biggest accomplishment has been writing an obituary." 

Days later, when the activity in the house really gets going, Stella has had enough and she's moving out, begging Paul to come with her, but he refuses, claiming that if he leaves, then this will be just another thing he started and didn't finish.

I get that. I really, totally get that. I can't tell you how many times I've started projects that peter off and lay unfulfilled by the wayside on my road of good intentions. I've started and never finished several novels, two of which are more than halfway done. And I have a backlog of stories that I was "so excited" about that lie tangled in the weeds with those novels. Just ask the book editors who helped sell me on doing said stories. 

I could, and I often do, beat myself up about those unfulfilled stories, but then I have to remind myself that I may not have done those novels, but I do have two large collections of short stories (one horror and one of superheroes). I may have a litter basket filled with unfinished novellas and novelettes, but I have a six-issue comic book mini-series published by IDW. I may have a notebook full of beginnings without endings, but I have more than 30 anthologies that have my finished short stories in them. 

When I focus on the unfinished and find more reasons to label myself a failure, I tend to miss all the really cool stuff that makes me a success as a writer. 

And really, I'm more of a short story writer than a novelist, and I'm cool with that. Most of the time, anyway, except when I compare myself to other writers I consider more successful and prolific.

Still, all that said, that little voice that says "finish what you start" is a good little cricket to listen to, by Jiminy. (See what I did there?) Way too often I need that push to stay on task. And that's okay. As long as it's a push to finish and not a push off the deep end into despondency.

The Writer Will Take Your Questions Now #343 -- Making Monsters

When you write horror, what goes into making a creepy, horrific monster?

In all my horror stories, even in those with creatures such as zombies and monsters -- especially in those with monstrous creatures -- one thing remains the same for me as a writer. People make the best monsters in fiction. You don't need claws and fangs to bring on the evil, creepy, or scary. For example, in my first published zombie story, the big bad isn't the zombie itself, but the man who has created an art project of his late wife's undead corpse.

I think it comes from the influence of Gothic horror movies. Sure, the castles were filled with ghosts and monsters, but the evil that always seemed to be most at play was that of the living humans. Greed brought out the ghosts. Lust ignited the passion of vampires. The human evil always trumped the supernatural one.

I think that's a trait of much of the best horror fiction.

The Writer Will Take Your Questions Now (#228) -- Old Style

Is there a type of story that isn't really being told anymore that you wish

would come back into fashion so you could write that kind of tale?

Oh yes. I wish the sort of Twilight Zone, end-reveal comic book story that used to be told in horror and sci-fi anthologies like Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, Weird Science, Ghosts, and House of Mystery (among others) would come back into style. I love that kind of story, even if today's jaded and cynical reader might find them not just old-fashioned, but also a little silly or perhaps just campy.

Back during my days at Shooting Star Comics, we published a few in that style, and sure enough, we had reviewers call us out on it for being too nostalgic or just "cheating" with a Twilight Zone ending. But we enjoyed them. Call it nostalgia or cheating if you must, but they still all kinds of fun to me.