The idea of being hunted by body-snatching spirits in your sleep/astral travel, especially if you've had dreams resembling Astral Projection yourself. Thankfully, in real life, if something goes wrong, waking up is usually as simple as just desiring to be out of the nightmare. The characters encountered also can't interact with the waking world or obstruct your ability to wake up...usually.
Chapter 1:
Both scenes that use aforementioned "Tiptoe through the Tulips."
The infamous scene in which the Lorraine speaks about a nightmare she had of a shadowy figure in Dalton's room. It talks to her and tells her that it wants the comatose child's soul. All we see of the creature is its claw pointing at the kid, and then the sequence ends. When she finishes her story, The Red-Faced Demon suddenly makes an appearance behind Josh.
The claws clicking at the end of Chapter 2. You didn't even need to see him for your stomach to jump to your throat. Elise's look of horror was all you needed.
And at the end of Chapter 3, he makes his official onscreen return.
The old lady is creepy. See Chapter 2 to learn more about her...
Elise's death. Even before the reveal, Josh's sudden violent outburst is unsettling, if you don't find it too much Narm.
The Smiling Family, holy hell. They way they stay absolutely still is so unnerving.
When Josh and Dalton are making a break from the Demon's lair, they temporarily end up lost in The Further and acosted by a crowd of the dead who have become aware of that they have bodies they're away from. The limited lighting, moans of the dead, and sense of disorientation being lost in the void really sell the scene.
The shot of a ghost standing outside the babyroom.
Another scare is the voices on the baby monitor.
Assumed to be Red Lipstick Demon: I want it. I want it NOW!!
The 'old lady' mentioned above is actually the ghost of a male serial killer named Parker Crane. And his back story doesn't help; he was a a man who dressed as an old woman in a black wedding gown whilst committing his murders, and after being hospitalized for self castration, he committed suicide. It's all because of his cruel, abusive and downright terrifying mother who beat him whenever he acted like a boy and insisted that his name was Marion. Seriously, she's arguably more terrifying than him!
To add, the way he had... well... the assemblage of his victims corpses when found by Loraine, Carl, Specs and Tucker in his home. It becomes much more unsettling when they make an appearance in The Further version of the Crane home, when Mrs. Crane hides among them.
During the second film, Renai receives a phone call from the detective working on Elise's murder, informing her that no evidence of Josh's DNA was found on Elise's neck marks. This means that Parker Crane's influence is so powerful he's able to change his host's fingerprints.
Dalton's false awakening scene where be believes he's still awake and tries to wake up his brother and starts hearing someone communicate with him through his tin-can-phone. Long story short, a young lady eventually jumps out of the closet, desiring to live again through Dalton's body, and the scene quickly drops all pretense of reality to reveal that the room is The Further's version filled with the dead ready to pounce on Dalton's body.
Chapter 3:
Quinn getting thrown from her bed and injuring her neck, meaning that all she can do is lie still and watch as a demon walks around her room, turning off all the lights and getting ready to attack her.
Demon-possessed Quinn effortlessly taking down three other people, then breaking away her casts and walking towards her father on broken legs, complete with horrible crunching sounds.
The faceless, limbless representation of Quinn in the Further.
"The man who can't breath" is very unnerving in the buildup moments. Always waving to Quinn. And knocking on the wall. It's the settle things that work for him.
Elise has to deal with Parker Crane "The Bride in Black" as a major fear that keeps her from astral projecting. It's made worse by the fact that Parker chronologically follows up on his promise to kill Elise in "Chapter 1". It's blunted by the fact that Elise is Only Mostly Dead and can still help the protagonists, but that limits her presence in the story.
The Last Key:
A non-paranormal example with the opening of the movie, showing Elise's past. With her still having her gift, but with her abusive father who literally tries to beat it out of her. Hitting her in the back with an iron crowbar and tossing her to sleep in the dark basement, and this obviously not being the first or last time he did this.
The scene where Elise and Tucker are lead to a cellar downstairs, expecting to find some sort of paranormal entity on the other side. What they do not expect, however, is an imprisoned woman, very much still alive, chained by her neck to the wall. Just as audience members are likely trying to put the pieces together, Garza enters the room, with a gun aimed squarely at Elise and Tucker.
Garza hearing Specs walking around upstairs, and asking, "Is that your friend?" before locking Elise and Tucker in the basement and quietly going upstairs to try and kill Specs, who is completely unaware that the seemingly hapless man he's been trying to help wants him dead.
The revelation that Elise's father was secretly getting up to the same activities as Garza when she was a child. Even worse, Elise met one of his prisoners, but failed to realize that she was actually alive, so she left her behind to be killed.
Even worse; the implication that Key Face influenced Elise's father and, therefore, Garza, into torturing and killing women.
The way he captures people: He shoves his key into the victim's neck to silence them, uses a knife on it's finger to cut into their upper chest, and then puts another key there to knock them out. And then takes their souls into his prison.
The Red Door:
At various points, there is a mysterious figure standing in the background observing Josh, starting in the opening chapter at the cemetery. One is probably dreading what will happen when they finally meet. The payoff scene has Josh's memory card game session on a large window interrupted by the figure smashing through violently and chasing Josh upstairs. Fortunately, the visitor is Josh's deceased father Ben Burton and is just guiding Josh to find a box of lost photos to help him remember forgotten details buried in his subconscious.
Josh's stint in the CT scanner. Everything seems normal, with the machine whirring extremely loudly, until the doctor whispers into his headpiece that there's somebody else in there with him. All communication ceases at this point, and the machine loses power. Josh screams for help, unable to move much in what is essentially a medicinal coffin, before an emaciated hand reaches down near his head and an emaciated figure starts crawling towards him. It's then revealed that Josh had fallen asleep during the scan.
In art class, Dalton "paints from his soul" and recreates an image of The Red Door. With little warning, a ghoulish hand reaches through the painting, injuring Dalton's hand and causing him to bleed onto the canvas very boldly, demonstrating that Dalton can be attacked just through creating artwork.
Dalton's first return to The Further can be tense for those who remember how badly this went back in Chapter 1 as Dalton's amnesia makes him act reckless and make too much racket. Just before Dalton's return to the physical, what looks like a Humanoid Abomination is in hot pursuit of Dalton's astral form. Said mutant has tentacle-like appendages for legs, and we don't get a solid look at the humanoid, making them all the more potentially creepy.
Even though The Red Door has been sealed at the end, The Stinger reveals that the ceiling lamp above the door has lit back up again. This implies that Dalton may not be as safe as he thinks and could be facing a surprise attack in the future, especially if Dalton continues to experiment with Astral Projection.
