History Main / OminousKnocking

** This trope features heavily for the final days of the Tenth Doctor, and a prophecy that "He will knock four times". This comes to a head in his final episode, "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E17E18TheEndOfTime The End of Time]]", where this "he" turns out to be [[spoiler:Wilfred Mott, knocking from within radiation capsule and asking to be let out... which the Doctor can only do by entering one himself.]]

* ''Series/TheHauntingOfHillHouse'':

* In one of the ''Literature/{{Goosebumps}}'' books, the main character acquires a magic typewriter and starts RewritingReality. Setting the scene for a horror story, he writes that [[ItWasADarkAndStormyNight there's a storm]], so it starts storming. When he writes that there's an ominous knock on the door, the same thing occurs... but nobody's there. He didn't write that anything in particular was behind the door, after all.

* During the intro to ''VideoGame/EarthBound'', the front door keeps being knocked on, over and over, with slow ominous music playing the whole time. Ness opens the door to discover BigBadFriend Porky on the other side, who tells him about his brother Picky getting lost. After the game is over, the same knocking occurs on the door with the same music playing. When Ness opens the door this time, [[spoiler:Picky is on the other side, leaving Ness with a note from Porky saying that [[SequelHook Ness hasn't seen the last of him]]]].

* In ''[[http://mielofon.ru/tvor/proza/proza/las01.htm Alice (The Non-Return)]]'', an ''Literature/AliceGirlFromTheFuture'' fanfic, the characters hear someone knocking on the door (while everyone else who lives in the apartment has keys and there's a doorbell anyway) and grow increasingly unsettled and scared. One of them suggests calling the police, but another points out that "Help! Someone knocked on our door!" won't be taken seriously. [[spoiler:It turns out it's their good friend Alice, but with news of a catastrophe and a horrible murder]].

->''"The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door."''
-->-- "Knock", by Creator/FredricBrown

* Whatever incident convinced the ''Wiki/SCPFoundation'' to stop investigating [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-087 SCP-087]] and seal off the entrance instead culminated in whatever is down there knocking on the door to try to trick someone into opening it and letting it out. The door is in an [[ParanoiaFuel ordinary hallway]] of an ordinary university building frequented by faculty and students on a regular basis.

* The trope codifier is the horror short story "Literature/TheMonkeysPaw'', which climaxes with knocking on a house's front door by what is implied to be a horribly disfigured RevenantZombie.

* Happens in the ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' episode "Forever", which is an {{Homage}} to "The Monkey's Paw", where Dawn attempts to resurrect her dead mother and is implied to have created a malevolent undead version of her. We don't see much of the undead mother except for a few flashes, but we hear a knocking on the door. Buffy tries to resist for a while and goes to open it, at which point Dawn finally thinks better of it and breaks the spell.