Like Pact before it, Pale has its share of creepy beings and happenings.
Unmarked spoilers below.
- The Hungry Choir's ritual. A group of eight have to sing the Choir's song while attempting to bite chunks out of an animal that's alive and trying to fight back. They have to sing the song perfectly, and if they get a word wrong or aren't in time, the Choir start biting chunks out of them. Anyone who hasn't consumed some meat from the animal gets devoured by the Choir, turned into a Waif, and Ret-Gone to everyone who wasn't at the ritual. They have to do this seven times, and if they make it to the eighth night, they have to swallow seven things from the rest of the group.
- Even winning is pretty horrific since it leaves you with the ability to eat just about anything without disgust, allowing Brie to defeat it by eating Yalda alive.
- The mullet man generated by Zed's "Crying Cold Tears" tape, Mr. Cold Tears, is shown to be utterly merciless, attacking without pity or quarter anything its wielder points it at, can be activated simply by the current wielder cursing at someone, and is seemingly impossible to put down permanently as long as its tape keeps playing.
- In Clem's Interlude, one of the items she finds is a plaque containing what is implied to be a bound demonic mote, which when she turns her back repeatedly threatens to make gore come out of all her orifices and the earth itself except with worms, all of which will taint everything.
- In Kevin's Interlude we see that true to Nicolette's dossier, he's a truly depraved individual who ruins lives at a whim just by looking at them for intensely petty reasons, such as when he gave Rae's mother a stroke just for giving him dirty looks when he was around. He even causes Laila's death in the following chapter just because she happened to look like someone he hated.
- As for Laila's death itself, while relatively mundane by Pactverse standards, is gruesome more in its suddenness. While being chased by the brownies Kevin's evil eye kicks in to make her trip and fall while going down a slope, and causes her to die instantly from dashing her head on a rocky riverbed only five feet from Avery and Tashlit trying to rescue her.
- Melissa's Career-Ending Injury as caused by Nicolette. A badly broken ankle is one thing, but Melissa's ankle broke off and was only attached by skin. Jesus.
- Lauren's familiar is revealed to have somehow gotten corrupted by demonic influence, it prevents her from dying by draining power off of the god she's pledged to, and the very concept of getting corrupted by it is enough for 'Plath to surrender and be unmade rather than fight it. Even after John defeats Lauren, the demonic taint cannot be destroyed, and is instead buried in the spiritual equivalent of a vault for spent nuclear fuel rods.
- The opening of Milly Legendre's Interlude has her father taking her to a house where six people, three of them children, were brutally tortured and killed by goblins. It's a very stark reminder that despite the overall friendliness of Pale's goblins, most of them are not like that at all.
- The first part of Interlude 16.z reads like something out of the SCP Foundation, detailing how an Other called the Turtle Queen was created from a sheer coincidence of three different artists using the same colour combination, and grew until she took over the area, her influence knotting and distorting it into something obviously outside of reality, but nobody noticed because almost everyone had devolved under her influence, people turning on each other and doing them serious damage over minor things. There's a very graphic description of how one girl was taken prisoner in her own home by thirty of her fellow students, who live streamed each of them slapping her until their arms were too tired to continue, and it ended with the Turtle Queen slapping her so hard her neck was broken.
- Musser's POV chapter reveals further depths of fucked-up-ness among Practitioner culture, with him as a not-particularly-intelligent 10 year old being forced on pain of death to swear to his father that he would get top marks at magic school. The physical and mental effects of the prolonged terror and stress on him are described in such detail that it's almost understandable when he kills his supportive and helpful roommate in order to steal his academic ability. The adult Musser at the time of the story is essentially a Self-less melting pot of stolen mental abilities and a host for the collective spirits of his equally horrible family. Musser's own treatment of his family likewise combines horrifically believable real-life abuse with the additional high-stakes of Practitioner culture.
- When Avery goes to parley with Sanamiego, when he feels that Avery is underestimating him, he gives the signal, the other guests stare right at them, and it's revealed that every guest in the restaurant apart from Avery and Clem are Lighthouse Witch Hunters, showing that they're canny enough to evade a practitioner's ability to sense connections. It's made clear that if he so desired, he could've easily had Avery killed at any time during their conversation before she even realized what happened.
- In 2.6, after the rest of the Carmine contestants have been killed, the last remaining participant, a nine-foot tall redcap, tells Charles that he's not actually there to win, but to deliver a message from Gerhild the Redcap Queen. After telling Charles he can burn a piece of him to summon Gerhild if he's interesting in making an alliance, he gives a literally (This goblin has teeth growing in his ears) ear-to-ear Slasher Smile before slitting his own throat with his claws. While Charles refuses his overtures, he still takes the hand the goblin leaves behind after being unmade as insurance.
- The Ordinary Family, one of Charles' Lords. On the surface, it's a perfectly normal family of perfectly normal people who fit into society without doing anything wrong. Underneath the surface, it's The Assimilator, taking corpses and living people and turning them into more of the family. The worst part is that 'underneath the surface' is literal- anyone who damages or harms the family will reveal a mass of people and animals inside them.
- In Gillian Belanger's interlude during chapter 20, we see first hand what it looks like when someone is turned into a Horror, and why exactly Horrors have that name. From her perspective, reality itself seems to turn into a kaleidoscope, which leaves her with a feeling of deep, base wrongness that threatens to overwhelm her sanity in mere seconds. And if she moves, even so much as breathes or talks, her body will be permanently deformed and disfigured. And Gillian's one of the lucky ones in that Montague was close at hand to calm her down and keep her from panicking too much.
- The final epilogue ends with a rather chilling Sequel Hook: Gerhild the Redcap Queen found torn to pieces by the New Fae, who have managed to steal her blood and fire prophecy.
