A relatively minor one, but during the later part of Ochette's first chapter when she goes back to the Beastling Village with the girl, the area is suddenly infested with shadowy creatures, and a piece of eerie music that won't be replaced with the regular battle theme keeps playing through the area. The shadow enemies you find in this area are rather weak, but the atmosphere can be scary, especially when compared to most other chapters'.
The boss of Ochette's first chapter qualifies for just how... off it is. The way its mouth opens just a bit too wide, the way its neck stretches, the way the spines on its back resemble an exposed rib cage—everything about it just feels vaguely wrong. That's not even getting started on the fact that it's heavily implied the beast used to be human... Temenos's story outright confirms this and reveals their former identity.
Similarly, her final boss, the Darkling. It's covered in scars and is extremely aggressive, and its only speech consists of broken phrases about plunging the world into darkness. Knowing that the Darkling looks and acts like a normal animal if chosen by Ochette just makes it even worse, since it drives in how wrong it is.
Castti
Relatively minor, but it's still creepy to watch some of the townspeople yell at Castti during her first chapter when she has no idea what they're talking about. It's also rather unnerving when several villagers just collapse for seemingly no reason. Fortunately, Castti happens to have the medicine they need on hand, but if she hadn't been there, it's very possible that the damage in Canalbrine could've been much, much worse.
The boss of her chapter is a pair of diseased apes contaminating the town's water supply. Their Body Horror is unnerving enough, but when one reaches critical HP the other will devour it and become stronger. Castti's remarks imply it was nauseating to watch.
The first time (and even subsequent times) that Castti’s inquiry triggers a memory can be extremely unsettling. The entire screen glitches in a jarring Interface Screw that doesn’t match the rest of the game’s tone at all, being more suited for a horror game than a low fantasy JRPG.
Related to the above: you learn early on in Castti's first chapter that Eir's Apothecaries apparently killed an entire town. Her third chapter details exactly what happened, and it is horrifying. First, some of the children of Healeaks are found dead in the middle of an unexpected rainstorm, with signs of poison apparent... and then one by one the other villagers drop dead with the same symptoms. Castti quickly realizes that the rain itself is poison, and because the entire village went searching for the children, the entire village died. The Apothecaries then discover it was Trousseau, having crossed the Despair Event Horizon, who spread the poison by starting a fire and causing it to rain down from the resulting clouds. Worse, he shows absolutely no remorse for his actions, especially as the other Apothecaries give their lives to prevent him from claiming more lives, which gives the bonus horror of Andy and Randy throwing themselves onto the fire to put it out.
The poison doesn't kill people quickly and quietly. It causes paralysis, swellings of black blood that can leave marks (such as the one on Castti's arm), and what appears to be some kind of violent hemorrhage before death.
Trousseau's speech pattern. Even as he's gloating and mocking Castti, his voice constantly sounds wavering and breathless, as if at any moment he's going to break down sobbing. Whatever Claude showed him in the Book of Night didn't simply drive him mad, it broke him.
His battle sprites during the second phase of his battle also worth a mention. His idle pose shows him furiously staring at the party while reaching out with one hand, and when he uses an attack, he grabs a lot of flasks and violently slams them all on the ground.
The flashback you get during Castti's Chapter 2 about this event is extremely creepy, because you are given little additional context about the event at that point. All Castti recalls is that her apothecary group approached a robed man who set off the rain, and he rants about how he thinks he's doing what Castti would want him to do. Castti is horrified after this memory, but all she can note is that something terrible happened in that village.
Trousseau deliberately used the children as bait to kill off everyone else, which is nightmarish on its own.
The music that plays in the Abandoned Village is very eerie, especially since it's very possible to wander into this area way earlier than intended - you may possibly even find the area before clearing Castti's Chapter 2 Sai route which, would show the same village being destroyed by purple rain.
Throné
Chapter 2 of Throné's story flashes back to her as a child, being forced to kill a man, and Father encouraging her to do it, even going so far as saying that she'll get used to spilling blood so much, she'll be putting it on bread.
Halfway through the Father battle in Chapter 3, Father reveals that he raises Throné with the most effort because he wants her to kill him so he could feel some closure. Throné begins to show genuine fear as Father persuades her to kill him: not only is she once again forced to kill someone, but her victim is someone that genuinely loves her.
The fight is also unnerving since Father seemed like a relatively calm and collected person before then, but his voice acting gets increasingly unhinged as the fight goes on, until by the end he's screaming for Throné to kill him at the top of his lungs.
The entirety of Lostseed. The whole area is broken-down, decaying, there's barely anyone living there, and the area also uses the same music as the Abandoned Village. When Throné arrives, an emaciated woman begs her to kill her baby, that Throné hears crying in the distance. Then there's the other NPCs, who are all denoted as some type of "vessel", each with their own broken dialogue and chilling Inquire/Scrutinize descriptions. But it gets worse after doing the final story and reading Ori's journal entries: Claude hadn't just been searching for the perfect candidate to kill him - he was also looking for someone to take over his duty as Vide's vessel. Lostseed is thus made up of Claude's failed vessels and the women he impregnated.
Various interactions or other subtle details just make Lostseed even creepier. One of the first NPCs the player comes across just laughs when spoken to, and his Inquire/Scrutinize data breaks down into oddly-capitalized gibberish - upon further inspection, the capitalized letters actually spell 'Rescue Me'. The "shop" is just a vendor hunched over, facing away from the party, on a mat outside with a broken sign nearby. Similarly, the inn looks run-down and has the innkeeper sitting in a chair facing the wall. Everyone and everything there feels as wrong as possible.
The way Claude talks about his children is extremely creepy. He says how "adorable" his newest baby is... but refuses to put him down for the fight, and the boss sprite shows the baby is literally chained to him. He also calls Throné a "masterpiece", and considering his warped standards as described above and the undertones they lend, it sounds incredibly eerie.
Another detail that shows how sadistic Claude is: when he summons Phantom Snakes during his battle, he'll let out unsettling laughter, while Throné will react with a horrified expression when she gets her turn. It's clear that Claude is taking pleasure in tormenting Throné.
Throné: Pirro?!
When Throné uses a full Boost during the fight, she doesn't have any sort of Pre Ass Kicking One Liner - you just hear her panting for breath, as though she's doing everything she can just to stay alive and keep herself from having another nervous breakdown.
Osvald
Harvey in general is terrifying due to how petty his motivations boil down to. He's so jealous of Osvald that he burns down Osvald's house, killing his wife and daughter in the process (or so everyone thinks), bribes the town guards to arrest Osvald (implying that some of them were fully aware of Osvald's innocence), and proceeds to steal Osvald's research for himself. Osvald is then sent to the hellish conditions of Frigit Isle for five years for something he didn't even do.
Even worse, Harvey bribed the judges to give Osvald a prison sentence instead of the death penalty because he wanted Osvald to come after him. Why? So he could let Osvald have a tiny ray of hope by seeing Elena alive, only to dash it by revealing that he's brainwashed Osvald's daughter into thinking Harvey is her dad. Then, just to finish it, he uses Elena's blood to unlock his version of the One True Magic, and then lets Osvald take her back just so Harvey can kill them both. The only thing that doesn't go according to plan for Harvey is Osvald unlocking the One True Magic himself and beating him with it, but Harvey still intended for Osvald to suffer as much as possible out of sheer spite. To add to this, Harvey survives his fight with Osvald, and though he never appears again in the story, there's the frightening possibility that he could return to finish what he started.note Note that this piece of information is only present in English. The Japanese version doesn't say anything about Harvey's survival.
In relation to Harvey, in his underground lab, one of the tubes contains what looks to be a human being. Given that the others had monsters of his design in them, it's safe to say Harvey didn't stop at experimenting on animals.
The fact that this is the only one of Harvey's experiments that goes unfought makes it even creepier, since the player doesn't get to see exactly what it is. It could be all human, or part human and part monster. Either way, if Harvey is doing human experimentation, too, it's never stated where exactly he got this person from...
Scrutinizing the other inmates can be rather disturbing. While a couple may have been framed as Osvald was, others have committed crimes that really do deserve a life sentence.
Additionally, while some of them did commit crimes, they were relatively minor ones that don't match the punishment, such as Emerald's embezzling or another inmate's graffiti, and majorly calls Solistia's justice system into question.
Partitio
At the beginning of Partitio's second chapter, Thurston attempts to get a child to pay his taxes. The child, Will, states that he can't pay because his family is poor and the taxes are too high. Thurston responds by threatening to break his knees.
Thurston: "I don't want to have to break your knees, kid. But—"
And when Thurston reappears in chapter 3, its clear that Roque firing him has severely damaged his mental state. Not only has he deluded himself into geuinely believing that assassinating Partitio and Alrond will put him back in Roque's good graces, but his sprite in the subsequent boss fight shows him with a completely deranged facial expression.
While Partitio's story is one of the more lighthearted of the eight, there's a Surprisingly Creepy Moment once it's actually finished. Once Partitio's story has been completed, if you venture to Crackridge you'll suddenly find Ori passed out and catatonic in the inn. There's no indication of what happened to put her in this state, since you can't interact with her and no one in the inn is willing to tell you just what the hell happened. Then in the Final Chapter, where you finally find out what happened to her, and it is not pretty.
Agnea
Agnea's little sister Pala goes missing during the climax of chapter 1, and Agnea has no idea where she could be. Then she finds a monstrous boar walking around and remembers the stories of the damage one did previously to her village.
Temenos
The reason for Temenos's doubts towards the church? His predecessor and best friend, Roi, came to him with a demonic bow that he and the pontiff found, consumed with paranoia and telling Temenos to trust no one except the pontiff before leaving to destroy the bow. Temenos never saw Roi again, turning him into the extremely distrusting man he is today. To make matters worse, Roi didn't just die - Ochette's first chapter boss repeats some of Roi's lines as it's dying, meaning the Moonshade Order captured and mutated him into a mindless monstrosity.
Crick's death feels like it belongs right in a horror movie. He goes off alone to do some investigating for Temenos, only to be cornered and murdered by Cubaryi and Kaldena. His body is then left outside near the Sacred Guard headquarters for anyone to find. Temenos "Guiding" Crick's spirit afterwards is also kind of eerie in a subtle way.
During the battle with Kaldena, she tries to use the shadow magic to empower herself, only to be consumed by it and become a monstrous humanoid like Lucia in the previous game. On the surface, this might look less scary than other examples, but you eventually learn that Kaldena has been manipulated by Arcanette all along — including the aforementioned misuse of shadow magic — all while she is blinded by the hatred towards gods and the thoughts of vengeance. It's horrifying to think about how the Moonshade Order is able to ruin someone's life this thoroughly.
Hikari
Hikari's curse. It manifests itself as a voice of sorts that, at many opportunities, commands Hikari to go against his convictions and kill people, seemingly taking some sort of sick delight in the thought of "bathing in the weaklings' blood" and tormenting the Nice Guy Hikari.
When the voice shows up "in person", it manifests as a shadowy version of Hikari himself with glowing red eyes.
Speaking of the curse, General Rou is able to identify what's going on in Chapter 3, even if he can't actually see the shadow Hikari himself. Once he realizes Hikari's trying to resist the curse, he immediately takes Ritsu and leaves, explaining on the way out how members of Clan Ku sometimes give in to a darker side and utterly slaughter their enemies, leaving no survivors. This already-terrifying moment is intensified when considering that Rou is known as "the Wild Bull of Ku" who loves charging into battle, and even he's unnerved at the idea of fighting someone overtaken by the curse.
The last part of Hikari's first chapter, after the boss battle, is a mix between that and Tear Jerker. The whole city is in flames, and every citizen you could talk to during the day is dead, all because Mugen knew they would not support him. Then you get to the palace and it's completely silent, making the place feel dead and empty. And that's not even going into Oboro's letter, which can be found there and reads as quite sinister, especially in that atmosphere.
The room where you must finally challenge the manifestation of Hikari's curse is a dark throne room with no exits, no music, and no access to any of your menus. Just Hikari and the embodiment of his curse, glowing red eyes staring directly into your soul.
Crossed Paths
The climax of Castti and Ochette's crossed path. The Shadow very nearly wins then and there by consuming Castti, who up until that moment had proven to be the most resistant to its machinations, up to and including withstanding the Book of Night. The Shadow isolates her, and the player gets a good look at how it turns others into hopeless nihilists—Castti is forced to endure constantly running through a forest that doesn't end, lost and separated from her friends, while she overhears either a memory or some deep-seated fear play out in her head. It consists of a woman berating Castti for being unable to save her husband, slowly going mad before declaring that Castti herself murdered him in her grief. The weight of all the people she was unable to save nearly breaks her, and she nearly gives in before Ochette arrives to save her. Keep in mind, this same thing happens to poor Tanzy down below, and unlike Castti, no one was there to save her.
During Castti's nightmare sequence, when the dying husband is saying how much pain he's in, his voice sounds weirdly distorted, making it even creepier.
The Shadow is depicted in the overworld as a giant, shadowy arm, and it looks that way in Ochette's Provoke fight with it, too. In the second fight, it becomes a giant mass of several arms. Ochette even comments on how wrong it feels, as she can't get any scent off it whatsoever. The Shadow's name is also simply listed as "???", and it isn't given a proper power rating like other Challenge/Provoke enemies are.
The fact that Vide was even able to actively target Castti despite still being sealed is deeply unsettling. Since the second half of the Crossed Path unlocks after fully completing Castti and Ochette's stories, by this point in time Castti has defeated Troussaeu, who was effectively an honorary agent of the Moonshade Order by the time of his death, and Ochette ended the Night of the Scarlet Moon, an event where Vide's monsters were rampaging. As the Final Chapter reveals, by this point chronologically, Toto'haha's Sacred Flame was doused by Petrichor, which gave Vide enough power to directly attack Castti due to seeing her as the biggest threat to his plans out of the eight heroes.
There's even more potent Fridge Horror if Ochette and Castti's stories are the first ones you complete: Just one of the Sacred Flames being snuffed out gave Vide enough power to actively target and attack his enemies!
Combat
Sometimes, the world around you will turn dark with no warning and when it happens, you might encounter a strange monster that can inflict terror on your whole party. Depending on your level it might not be too hard to beat, but the whole creepy atmosphere as well as its eerie battle music are more than enough to make the whole experience downright terrifying when you're not sure what's happening.
If it's an area the player has already been to, the sudden change to the creepy music is even more jarring, and coupled with the strange monsters can make them think that they triggered something to change the area. If it's a route they haven't been to yet, it's easy to assume that it's "supposed" to be like that... Except that in either case, the area immediately goes back to normal after the fight's over. The sheer weirdness of the situation, combined with the lack of explanation, is a large part of what makes it so spooky.
This later becomes a regular occurrence during the Final Chapter, which is about the eternal night itself, and features a battle against shadowy monsters right at the beginning.
The Journey For The Dawn
The exact moments always cut to white or black or are just out of frame so the player won't see, but the process for dousing each of the Sacred Flames involves a ritualistic sacrifice while holding a Darkblood Artifact. Two of the sacrifices are actual members or affiliates of the Moonshade Order committing suicide.
Ori stabs herself. The player gets to see her pull out the knife and cut the jovial act before she faces away from the camera, pulls the blade back, and then plunges it into her chest. It's a miracle she survived, spurned on by a sudden desire to live brought on by her memories of Partitio being a Hope Bringer, but it's also chilling to think about just how lucky she had to be. Apothecaries just so happened to be that deep in the Fellsun Ruins at the time of her bungled suicide, and happened to be unaffiliated with the Moonshade Order despite the closest town being the headquarters for the cult, so they cared enough to save her life and bring her to an inn. If not for luck and luck alone, Ori would have hesitated just as she stabbed herself and ended up slowly bleeding out in painful agony.
Kazan regales Ageha with his crazed nihilistic ideals before lethally stabbing Ageha. Unlike his sister, Oboro never once doubts his actions and seems earnestly resigned to the fact that, as horrible as his actions are, they will lead to the end of all human suffering.
Petrichor doesn't have a Darkblood Artifact on her—instead, the Darkling serves as her Darkblood Artifact, and she wills it to maul her to death, all while happily calling out to her mistress. The player gets to "enjoy" the sounds of the Darkling slowly crushing Petrichor's body in its crazed agony, complete with the crunching of the Dark Hunter's bones as they break. The fact that this happens during Ochette's final chapter just makes both scenarios all the more nightmarish.
By far, the darkest in terms of symbolism has to be the death of Tanzy. She is betrayed by the woman she devoted everything to, mercilessly tortured and murdered just as Arcanette promised to 'reward' her. Given how she is literally consumed by the Shadow and what the player sees the Shadow try to do to Castti during her Crossed Paths with Ochette, Tanzy was very likely tormented by her worst fears and regrets screaming at her before finally succumbing to the dark flames. All her devotion and love, wasted on the woman who used the death of Tanzy's husband and Tanzy's youthful naivete to manipulate Tanzy into becoming her slave... Arcanette can't even be bothered to feel bad about what she does, and practically taunts Tanzy as she kills her, ensuring the last words the poor woman hears are "I love you, Tanzy."
When the player is exploring during the final chapter, every area will either be completely silent or play the same creepy music from the shadow monster encounters.
Path Actions and Side Stories
A rather unexpected and creepy one happens in Gravell, outside of a story event: one of the children you can interact with has a stuffed toy in his inventory, whose description simply reads "Won't you play with me?". Using Inquire or Scrutinize on the kid reveals that the child is apparently scared of a lot of things, and the toy (who talks to him) helps him with this by stealing his soul away every night so he won't feel any fear. What's worse, the toy can't be stolen or purchased, and the kid disappears at night, so there's no way to get the toy away from him. The weirdest and worst part is that this isn't part of an overarching story, it's just a STARKLY creepy moment hidden away in the overworld, making you wonder what other horrible things are just waiting in Solistia, preying on NPCs with no consequences...
Similarly in Gravell, the Legendary Arms as described by the Cleric Guild Master is the Sunshadow Staff, a powerful staff formed by conquering a darkness unique to the hearts of children in the lands of Gravell during the transition from night to morning. Waiting outside Gravell by the cliff's edge will allow an NPC boy different from the one mentioned above to walk out of town and appear. Temenos the Cleric is the only one who can perform a Path Action with this boy, particularly Coerce - this initially reads as the only instance where you use a violent Path Action against children, though it's revealed Temenos is Coercing the Shadowy presence in his heart instead, more akin to an exorcism. The information acquired from breaking the Shadowy Boy isn't any better, making it overall debatable if the boy has actually been freed or not.
The Mysterious Box side story. In Merry Hills, you can find a man simply saying "Give it back" each time you talk to him. To start the quest, you must steal the box from him, which causes him to pass out and then wake up the next day without any memory of having it. Then, on the path to Timberain, if you decide to go towards House Wellows Manor (a manor that looks long since abandoned), you hear a voice speak to you begging you to give "it" back. While exploring the manor, the decay becomes more apparent: the background "music" is the sound of wind, only broken up by the strange sounds you can hear when trying to find the two gold chests in the manor (e.g. the sound of children laughing). The worst room is the one you need to enter to finish the sidequest: it's an empty room during the day, with a portrait of a woman scratched out. If you enter at night, a woman appears in the center and tells you to "Give it back." If you do so, you get a scene where the woman and her entire family appears, and they are seemingly reunited with a little girl that isn't there initially. Then you complete the sidequest and the woman never appears again. And how many leaves do you get from completing this sidequest? 6,666!
There is apparently a whole backstory to the manor. In Timberain, you can find someone who used to be a maid for House Wellows, and inquiring reveals that she is the sole survivor of a horrible mass murder by a serial killer that claimed the lives of everyone else in the house. And as for the box? On the path to Timberain, it is possible to find a hidden item which is simply called "Worn Journal," which belonged to the little girl who owned it. The journal reveals that the box was a music box gifted to the little girl for her birthday, and details the events that happened just before she was murdered, cutting off at the end. Why? Her parents told her to hide in the closet when the murderer broke in, and she was so bored and oblivious to the danger she was in that... she played the music box while the killer was still in the house...
If you pay attention, you can see the little girl in the gazebo in the lake nearby (during nighttime only). After the sidequest is over, she disappears, and you can pick up her journal afterwards. It's extremely weird to see an actual ghost just casually hanging around the overworld, though at least it's implied she was able to pass on after getting the music box back.
This entire horrific incident is entirely unrelated to any of the main quests, and we learn nothing of who was behind the deed. Whoever committed it is still out there somewhere...
