Nightmare Fuel / Lost

Talk about bears being bad news...

"This place is death!"

— Charlotte Lewis

There's plenty to fear when you're trapped on an island with polar bears, Smoke Monsters, and people stealing your children in the night.

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General

• Composer Michael Giacchino is a master of creating Nightmare Fuel. Fully half the cues in the show's history (basically all the ones that aren't Tear Jerkers) could probably give someone nightmares. Examples include:
  • The opening title music.
  • The closing credits theme. Seeing the Bad Robot vanity plate afterwards is also pretty creepy.
  • If the character of Ben Linus isn't enough to give you nightmares, his theme, "Dharmacide", might be.
  • "Sweet Exposé", the track that accompanies Nikki and Paulo being Buried Alive.
• The Statue of Tawaret. A giant, Colossus-like sculpture of the Ancient Egyptian fertility god looking out into the open sea. It has the face of a hippopotamus and the body of a man - except for its feet, which have only four toes each. The thing that adds to its mystique is, you never really get a good look at the full statue from the front. The only time its face is ever shown in any significant detail is when the Black Rock is sailing towards it in the midst of a fierce storm in "Ab Aeterno". One of the slaves below deck managed to catch a glimpse of it from a hole in the cabin walls. He thought he saw the devil. It's not hard to see why. Sayid puts it best the first time he sees it:
  "I don't know what is more disquieting: the fact that the rest of the statue is missing, or that it has four toes."
• The Smoke Monster. Although introduced in the very first episode of the series, it seldom appears on-screen and is rarely even mentioned by the survivors prior to season 6 - but whenever it does show up, it always makes one hell of an impression. It can expand itself to gargantuan proportions, possesses extraordinary strength, has the ability to take on the forms of the deceased, and emits quasi-mechanical noises to make its presence known. It gets even worse in Season 6, when we find out that the Monster Was Once a Man, and he becomes the new Big Bad. In addition to being an unstoppable Invincible Villain, the Man in Black is a very clever and capable strategist and manipulator, and excels at turning the survivors against each other or convincing them to kill themselves when he's not allowed to kill them directly. He spends all of Season 5 playing the show's greatest Magnificent Bastard Benjamin Linus for a fool. There's also the unnerving effect of seeing him take on the appearance of John Locke, owing in large part to the dissonance between his personality and that of the original.

Season 1

• The crash of Oceanic 815 flight is shown in only bits and pieces but if you watch it edited together you can see how violent and terrifying the crash actually was.
• In the first episode, while Kate is stitching him up, Jack talks about how he accidentally cut the nerve pouch of a 16-year-old girl the first time he performed surgery. This was in-story Nightmare Fuel for Jack, but can serve the same purpose for anyone who has actually had surgery too.
• On their very first night following the plane crash, the survivors hear strange noises in the jungle. They range from mechanical clicking, something akin to stomach-growling, an eerie whale-esque siren, and what can best be described as the sound of an amusement park from Hell that's on the verge of collapsing at the foundation. Keep in mind, these are the closest approximations that can be made when describing these noises; they sound otherworldly and unnatural, not like anything you'd ever hear in real life. Then the Survivors see a few trees getting knocked over in the distance, and it becomes clear that this creature - whatever it may be - is not something you'd typically find in a Polynesian jungle.
• The next day, Jack, Kate, and Charlie venture into the jungle in search of the cockpit. After finding it, they encounter the pilot in the cabin, barely clinging to life. What better time for the monster to show up just outside? The pilot barely survives long enough to tell them that the plane was 1,000 miles off course before he peers out the broken window to investigate the strange noises... and is promptly snatched from the plane and gruesomely bludgeoned to death. After a short chase through the jungle, the survivors come across his bloody, mangled body in a tree canopy. Charlie said it best: "How does something like that happen?"
• In the second part of the pilot episode, a small expedition of survivors - namely Kate, Sawyer, Sayid, Charlie, Boone, and Shannon - manage to get the transceiver working and hear a transmission in French. After a couple seconds of Charlie cheering that the French are coming to rescue them, Shannon translates the transmission: "The others are dead. It killed them. It killed them all. It is outside." The Mood Whiplash makes an already creepy moment that much more chilling. There's also an accompanying counting voice; it sounds eerily monotone, not unlike a Number Station. Sayid realizes the number is the amount of times the recording has repeated and does some quick mental math, coming to realize that the message has been playing for sixteen years. Once again, Charlie has the last word:
  "Guys... where are we?"
• "Walkabout" and "White Rabbit" feature a mysterious figure dressed in a blue suit apparating as if from nowhere. Jack is the only one to see this man, and it catches him off guard for some reason. Turns out, this "mysterious figure" is his father, the late Christian Shephard, whose body was being transported via casket back to Los Angeles. The first time you see a dead person walking around the island is very creepy indeed.
• Sayid's description of his Cold-Blooded Torture of Sawyer in "Confidence Man".
  "We do not have bamboo in Iraq, although we do have something similar — reeds. But their effect is the same when the shoots are inserted underneath the fingernails."
  • Later in the same scene, he very convincingly threatens to cut Sawyer's eye out.
• Claire's nightmare from "Raised by Another", especially Locke's creepy black and white eyes.
  • The scene in which it's revealed that Ethan Rom wasn't actually one of the plane crash survivors. Going straight from discovering that someone's name wasn't on the manifest and realizing you have no idea who or what that person really is, to seeing him standing over the defenseless Claire and Charlie is unnerving. And he just stands there, staring at them menacingly, with the most vacant expression imaginable on his face. The accompanying slide trombone sound effect makes it even more eerie.
• The beginning of "All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues." Jack and Locke run through the jungle and all they find is Claire's bag. Then Locke sees a series of footprints that indicate a struggle. Jack starts screaming for Charlie and Claire, and Locke simply puts his finger over his lips to tell him to shush. The hunt is on, and Ethan can be anywhere around them.
• Perhaps the single scariest moment in the entire series happened all the way back in Season 1's "Deux Ex Machina". The scene opens with Locke and Boone arguing over whether or not opening the hatch is a fool's errand. Locke remains adamant that the island is simply testing their faith. Suddenly a plane can be heard falling towards the island, followed by the sound of glass shattering, Locke finds himself in a wheelchair again, his mother appears and points upwards, and Boone's face is bloodied as he repeats the same line over and over again in a voice worthy of Satan himself: "Teresa falls up the stairs, Teresa falls down the stairs..."
• Walt's kidnapping in "Exodus, Part 3." After seeing something on the raft's radar, they fire a flare and are found by a boat. Michael, Sawyer, Walt, and Jin are overjoyed that they've been rescued. Then...the bearded man says they're going to take Walt. The smiles fade; even Jin, who can't understand what's being said, knows something bad is happening. Michael refuses, and the bearded man turns off his boat's spotlight. Then it goes to hell. Sawyer is shot, Jin jumps in the ocean to save him, and Walt is grabbed. Then the raft is blown up, and Michael watches helplessly as Walt disappears into the black of night, screaming his name.

Season 2

• Just about anything to do with the Swan DHARMA station qualifies, although the orientation film is particularly notable for its creepiness.
• The episode where Michael, Jin, and Sawyer are told by the Tailies that 23 people survived in their section, get taken to their hideout, and find only five:
  Michael: I though you said there were 23 of you.
  Libby:...there were.
• Ben's easy manipulations of the survivors when he is a prisoner. How scary are you when you're tied up in a cell repeatedly getting the crap beaten out of you every other episode, and you can STILL give people nightmares? "You guys got any milk?"
• The season 2 episode when Sayid is interrogating "Henry Gale": "My name is Sayid Jarrah, and I am a torturer." The creepy music and Naveen Andrews's emotionless delivery makes it absolutely chilling, coupled with the sudden look of Oh, Crap! on Ben's face as he realizes Sayid isn't bluffing...
• Ethan's interactions with Claire in the flashbacks in "Maternity Leave", as he keeps her in a drug induced haze to the point that she thinks he is her friend, and gives her seemingly sweet gifts like a bedroom for the baby and a picnic in the jungle, all while planning to cut the baby out of her and kill her when the time is right. Even worse, it's implied that many of his creepier actions are done against the orders of the senior Others, meaning they are inspired by his own strange obsession with Claire.
• The terrifying moment when the countdown runs out and Egyptian hieroglyphics start appearing instead of numbers. Add to that the automated voice saying "SYSTEM FAILURE" over and over again, the sound of something metallic smashing repeatedly against the other side of the wall, and that low hum getting louder and louder...
• The way Michael goes full Knight Templar Parent by killing Ana Lucia and Libby to get Walt back. It's full of Realism-Induced Horror as it may cause viewers to wonder how far they would be willing to go to save the people they love.
• Mr. Eko's flashbacks in "?" show him travelling to Australia to investigate a story about a girl who drowned only to wake up during her autopsy. The undertaker provides proof in the tape recording of his notes that capture the girl's blood-chilling screams when she woke up. He's so disturbed by it that he practically begs Mr. Eko to take the tape because he never wants to hear it again.

Season 3

• Room 23. Watching Karl being strapped to a chair, drugged, and forced to watch a bizarre video with loud music blaring in his ears and weird clips of seemingly random images are seen flashing on the screen (one of the images consists of several, creepy doll faces) is disturbing. On that note, have you ever listened to the music of Room 23 played backwards?
  "Only fools are enslaved by time and space."
• In Season 3's "The Man Behind the Curtain", Locke is led by Ben to a remote cabin in the woods so that he could have a face-to-face meeting with Jacob, the unseen leader of the Others. They enter and find the place dark and deserted, evidently abandoned. Ben begins communicating with an empty chair in the center of the room, which Locke quickly deduces is an act. Things get weird when he motions back towards the entrance and a deep, monotone male voice is heard: "Help... me..." Suspicion initially falls on Ben, but as it turns out, he didn't hear anything. Suddenly, everything in the cabin begins shaking violently, as if it were haunted by some malevolent spirit. Items get thrown about, glasses and windows are shattered, the lantern they placed on the table falls over, a small fire breaks out - and for a split second, a shadowy old man appears in the seemingly vacant chair, his face not visible. It's a terrifying scene. If you're interested, here you go.
• Nikki and Paulo's ultimate fate. After their relationship was obliterated by greed, they are both paralyzed by one of Arzt's so-called Medusa spiders, making them appear dead. As Hurley and Sawyer bury them, Nikki wakes up just in time to see them shovel a pile of dirt onto her face, and both of them suffocate while fully aware of what is happening and unable to do anything about it. The soundtrack makes it all the more chilling.
• The final shot of the season has Jack standing outside an airport while a plane takes off behind him. With the reveal that he left the island and is now trying to get back, it's pretty ominous.

Season 4

• In the premiere, Hurley comes across the cabin in the middle of the night and peers in through the window to see Christian Shepherd sitting in the chair at the center of the room... and then somebody else comes up to the window and looks back out at Hurley, who is so scared at this point that he runs back into the jungle in a panic. But it gets worse. After running a safe distance away from the cabin, Hurley stops to survey the area, turns around - and sees the cabin again, right in front of him. The building has the ability to move. Again, if you're interested...
• The mercenaries dispatched to the island by Charles Widmore in season 4 exhibit a horrifyingly callous disregard for human life. Martin Keamy in particular shows a disturbing willingness to kill people almost on a whim. At the end of Meet Kevin Johnson, his team snipes Karl and Danielle dead almost out of nowhere, leaving Alex alone and with no choice but to surrender. Keamy seizes the opportunity to hold her as ransom in exchange for her father Ben, and coldly shoots her dead when he refuses to surrender. The mercenaries commence an assault on the barracks knowing full well that a baby is among its occupants, and when their siege fails, they return to the Kahana freighter and have it rigged with explosives, set to go off in the event of Keamy's death. He kills friend and foe alike, and it's genuinely chilling to observe his casual willingness to murder so many people.
• The way Ben stabs Keamy over and over yelling "YOU KILLED MY DAUGHTER!" Although it's a Moment of Awesome for Ben, it doesn't change the fact that it's absolutely TERRIFYING, especially when you factor in Ben’s casual disregard of all the human life he has doomed: Keamy broke him when he killed Alex, and it shows.
• Seasons 4 and 5 are chock-full of psychological horror. Just imagine witnessing what appears to be the deaths of close friends or relatives and spending the next three years believing them to be gone. Imagine watching an island literally vanish before your eyes, and then having to lie about everything you've experienced throughout the 108 days you had spent there. Imagine flipping through different eras seemingly at random, or getting what appears to be cerebral hemorrhaging from the blinding flash of light that happens at each time warp, or having your present-day consciousness replaced with that of yourself from eight years prior and going back and forth in time (4x05, The Constant), or spending years stuck in the past with no way to return to the present, or pretending a baby is your biological son when he's not, etc.

Season 5

• After Ben moves the Island several characters begin experiencing "time flashes" which are accompanied by a blinding flash and a increasingly loud noise that sounds like chimes, followed by a whooshing sound and magnetic humming.
• During the time flashes, we meet the young Charles Widmore, and he is just as dangerous and sociopathic as a teenager as he is in the future. First he threatens to cut off both of Juliet's hands if she and Sawyer don't tell him everything he wants to know when he captures them, and claims that the first one isn't negotiable, it's just to show how serious he is. He still tries to get his men to cut it off when Sawyer agrees to tell him everything straight away, and they are only stopped at the last minute by Locke. Then, he snaps a fellow Other's neck with no hesitation or remorse just because the man agreed to take the Losties back to their camp to talk to Richard.
• Just before Charlotte dies, we get two scary scenes from her:
  • First is the scene where she suddenly goes crazy and starts yelling at Jin in Korean and then tells him to never let Sun come back to the Island:
    "THIS PLACE IS DEATH!!!"
  • Then there's her recounting a seemingly irrelevant anecdote from her childhood, which ends on a very creepy Wham Line.
    Charlotte: Because I remember something now. When I was little, living here, there was this man... a crazy man, he really scared me. And he told me that I had to leave the island and never ever come back. He told me that if I came back I would die.
    Daniel: Charlotte, I don't understand.
    Charlotte: Daniel – I think that man was you.
• Locke's methodic and unconcerned preparation of his suicide, in "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham''. The scene doesn't skip the details that are usually skipped in movies, like the cable and the knots. It gives a weird creepy view of what it actually means to prepare to hang yourself.
• Sayid shooting a 12-year old Ben in "He's Our You." Especially the look of frozen shock on Ben's face and the way he just drops to the ground.

Season 6

• The Smoke Monster dispatching Bram and his men with ease. Especially scary is the fact that Bram protecting himself with a magical ash circle barely slows him down, as he cleverly uses his environment to knock Bram out of the circle before finishing him off. "I'm sorry you had to see me like that." So are we. Anything capable of turning the Magnificent Bastard Ben Linus into a quivering, wide-eyed mess in the corner of a room deserves nothing but fear.
• After spending the first five seasons being scared to death of the black smoke monster, there's something very unnerving about seeing the island through its eyes as it flies around making that horrible clicking sound.
• The look on the Man in Black's face when he sees the little boy. He actually looks scared - which, given what he is and what he's capable of, is spine-chilling.
• The Season 6 episode "Sundown":
  • Claire's creepy backwards singing of her old Leitmotif, Catch A Falling Star.
  • Kate finding Claire in the hole. Especially Claire's angry Kubrick Stare when Kate tells her that it wasn't the temple people who took Aaron. It was really her. Also, Claire happily delivering the following line with a smug smile on her face: "He's coming Kate! He's coming and they can't stop him!"
  • The very brief conversation Sayid has with Ben not long after murdering Dogen and Lennon, even giving him a full-on slasher smile. When Ben is creeped out, you know something's terribly, terribly wrong.
  • Considering what a creepy, Ax-Crazy guy he is, it's rather unnerving to see Martin Keamy again in the flash sideways. There's something very odd about his eyes — maybe contacts, maybe just lighting — which sent him into the Uncanny Valley. Maybe it's the fact that this particularly evil bastard is actually smiling. You know something's wrong when he's cheerful.
  • The scene where Claire and Sayid, now both completely turned over to the side of darkness, are walking calmly through the carnage left over from the temple attack. With Claire singing a cheerful rendition of 'Catch a Falling Star' in the background.
  • Claire's "baby" in the crib. That she knows it isn't real somehow makes it worse.
• In the episode "Dr. Linus", even though Ilana forgives Ben and he ultimately doesn't have to go through with it, watching him being forced to literally dig his own grave is nothing short of horrific. That's gotta be one of the worst ways to die.
• Richard's ordeal in "Ab Aeterno" after the Black Rock crashes on the island and the Smoke Monster kills the crew. He's left chained to the cabin walls, surrounded by the corpses of his fellow slaves for god knows how long with no food and just out of reach of the rainwater that seeps in. After prying a nail out of the floor he slowly gouges away at the bolt holding his chains in place. One morning he wakes up to find a boar eating one of the bodies. While attempting to scare the boar off he drops the nail and it lands a few inches away, robbing him of his chance to escape. By the time a vision of his wife shows up telling him he's dead and in hell it's easy to see why he'd believe it.
• If Arzt's death by dynamite wasn't bad enough, the exact same thing happens to Ilana, and once again, it comes out of nowhere.
• So, as of "Everyone Loves Hugo", we know what the whispers in the jungle are... knowing doesn't really make it less scary. In fact, it kind of makes it worse when you consider how many distinct voices you can pick out of the whispers.
• "What They Died For", the penultimate episode, gives us the incredibly creepy confrontation between the Man in Black and Charles Widmore. There are no explicit scares, just an all-encompassing sense of dread that starts as soon as "Locke" arrives, still looking and acting as he has in seasons past, but also...not.

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