12 spine-chilling series to watch this Halloween

Halloween 2024 is right around the corner, and this spooky season we’re bringing you the perfect fix for frights that will make you jump in the night – and maybe lose some sleep along the way. You know, the kind of shows you shouldn’t watch alone but just can’t resist: so gripping, yet so haunting. Read on for our round-up of the 10 best nightmarish series to stream right now.

Multiple timelines, disappearances and murdering cults, a man on the edge of his sanity. This creepy and deeply atmospheric series has been praised as one of this year’s best. An archivist is enlisted to restore tapes, and in the process stumbles upon a terrifying story of their missing director and an obscure cult, which slowly leads to his unravelling. Eerie in the way that makes you want to double check that you locked your doors and windows, it is the perfect series to kick off Halloween 2024.

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This Korean masterpiece weaves together deep emotion with scenes that make you jump out of your skin. Set at a local high school, what starts out as a flick suddenly turns on its head when a zombie virus spreads through the school, forcing classmates to choose between killing their friends, or being killed themselves. With poignant underlying messages at its core, such as the consequences of bullying, it’s more than just a scary series. Beautifully filmed and full of shock-horror moments, its perfect for a fast-paced scare that will trigger all of your senses.

From the creators of The Haunting of Hill House comes a series that shakes you to your core. After a captivating young priest arrives in a small and remote island town, strange but seemingly miraculous incidents begin to take place. The community is thrown into a religious passion, desperate to have something to cling to. Their frenzied need for hope, and fleeting glimpses of it, make the terrible unfolding all the more tormenting when they start to arrive. Deeply unsettling, this horror has a gratifying plot and soul to it, nailing both the depth of existential dread, whilst delivering all the disturbing, hair-raising shocks you so crave during Halloween.

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An oldie but a goodie, The Walking Dead has been a go-to horror show for years. And this is the year that it reaches its conclusion, with its final and eleventh season wrapping up just after Halloween. Showing the truly dark side of humanity, The Walking Dead is set during the zombie apocalypse. A group of survivors are thrown together and forced to fight both the monsters and rival groups for survival. Few shows can deliver consistent fear factor for over ten years like this one, and if you haven’t seen any of it yet, lucky you.

A small town becomes a prison when a reoccurring road accident leaves travellers unable to find their way out again. A sweet family of four find themselves trapped, forced to settle in the gloomy community and adapt to the evil forces that control it. And if they obey the rules, they might only just survive the horrors that torment the town every night. Praised by critics and filled with terrors and jolts, this series will have you grasping on with dread until the final scene.

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It captures you from the first moment. A mother hires a nanny for her baby, all seems picture perfect. But rather quickly, the perfect picture begins to crack and the darkness and grief they harbour start to show. The child is not what it seems. The parents are living under a veil of deceit, bordering on madness. But most chilling of all is the nanny. Who have they let in, and what does she want with the child? Enrapturing direction from M. Night Shyamalan with a disturbing plot that drags you in, daring you to keep watching.

Starring our favourite rising Danish stars and Vogue Scandinavia alums Clara Rosager and Lucas Lynggaard Tønnesen, Netflix’s mystery thriller 1899 is one of those mind-bending puzzles that will keep you guessing – and on your toes.

Created by German masterminds Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese, the duo behind the hit series Dark, 1899 takes us aboard a European immigrant ship travelling from London to New York, with passengers hoping for a better life in America. But as the ship navigates stormy seas, chilling events begin to unfold. When they discover another vessel adrift on the open sea, a nightmarish riddle emerges. Soon, it becomes clear that some passengers are mysteriously connected to the abandoned ship, sparking a chain of terrifying and bewildering events.

Based on Danish author Søren Sveistrup’s Nordic noir masterpiece, The Chestnut Man debuted its first season in 2021, and this year brought exciting news with Netflix announcing the series will return for a second season.

Serial killers are both fascinating and terrifying to explore, and The Chestnut Man’s villain is no exception. A grisly murder in a playground sends shockwaves through a quiet Copenhagen suburb, where the killer leaves a chilling calling card: a small figurine made of chestnuts. Detectives Naia Thulin and her new partner, Mark Hess, are put on the case. As they investigate the chestnut man, they uncover a fingerprint belonging to a missing girl – the daughter of prominent politician Rosa Hartung.

What unravels is a case far bigger than they could have ever imagined as the pair race against the clock to catch a psychopathic killer before they strike again.

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When HBO’s post-apocalyptic series The Last of Us, based on the video game by Naughty Dog, premiered last year, it became an instant international sensation – no doubt boosted by its star-studded cast, led by Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey. Fans of the dystopian drama will be thrilled by the recent announcement that the second season will hit the small screen in the first half of 2025.

Set in a world ravaged by a deadly fungal outbreak that turns humans into violent, zombie-like creatures, The Last of Us follows Joel (Pascal), a hardened survivor tasked with smuggling Ellie (Ramsey), a young girl who may hold the key to humanity’s survival, across a decimated America. The pair embark on a dangerous journey, filled with encounters with ghoulish creatures, humans desperate for survival and unimaginable terrors, strengthening the bond between Ellie and Joel.

This list wouldn’t be complete without at least one true crime series, and what better to give you goosebumps than a haunting story that actually happened? Night Stalker: The Hunt For a Serial Killer delves into the case of one of the most notorious serial killers, Richard Ramirez, who terrorised Los Angeles in the 1980s. His nickname, ‘Night Stalker,’ came from his chilling method of attack, striking during the dark hours and killing at least 13 people in California between 1984 and 1985. Police worked around the clock to catch the elusive killer, who targeted anyone unlucky enough to cross his path.

Like many of Netflix’s true crime series, Night Stalker: The Hunt For a Serial Killer recounts these horrifying events in a captivating manner, enhanced by harrowing first-person interviews, riveting archival footage, and original photography. While the show may not be for the faint-hearted, it’s undeniably binge-worthy.

As for the 2024 newcomers to this list, few shows can claim the epithet of "spine chilling" quite as well as Grotesquerie. Created by American Horror Story's Ryan Murphy, the show follows Detective Lois Tryon who senses that the string of heinous crimes in her small community carries an eerie, personal taunt. At home, her life is fraught with challenges: a tense relationship with her daughter, a husband in prolonged hospital care, and her internal struggles. With no leads and at a loss for what to do next, she enlists the assistance of Sister Megan, a nun and journalist from the Catholic Guardian. As Lois and Sister Megan piece together the clues, they become entangled in a sinister web that seems to generate more questions than it answers.

Show creator Ryan Murphy has been on a horror roll this year, with a second entry on this list: Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. In the second instalment of the Monster anthology series, Murphy and co-creator Ian Brennan tackle the Menendez Brothers' high-profile case, which captivated the United States in the 1990s. A dramatisation of the event, it tells the story of two brothers who killed their parents on Aug. 20, 1989, and the media circus surrounding the brutal slayings. (Both were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.)