History NothingIsScarier / Literature

** ''Literature/ANightInTerrorTower'' although there’s a massive GenreShift some way in, the first half of the book is just two kids Sue and Eddie getting lost from a tour group in a creepy tower and running into a scary man dressed in black who stalks them and repeatedly tries to kill them. For multiple chapters, no reason is given for why he is trying hurt to these children and that itself is extremely terrifying. There's also the moment later on when Sue go back their hotel and find their parents gone, they have no money and they can't even remember their last names.

** [[HumanoidAbomination The Dementors]] are in general a massive example of this. ''What the hell are they?'' We the readers and Harry never really find out. They’re more solid than ghosts but clearly wraith-like, they can produce mist and cold, can suck your soul out and prolonged contact with them actually depletes a Wizard’s power making them the only magical creatures capable of doing so. Somehow wizards are able to negotiate with them, despite us never hearing them talk. Worse of all they appear to be immortal and according to J.K grow like fungus. It is semi-confirmed the Dementors’s origins are tied to Azkaban's creation itself and the experiments done by dark wizards there, but even then those who investigated “[[TheseAreThingsManWasNotMeantToKnow refused afterward to talk about it]]”. The unfinalised version of ''Prisoner of Azkaban'' actually implied they were wizards and witches who have lost their souls, but wisely this was removed allowing for the mystery to remain.

*** Earlier than that we have Stan’s encounter with Pennywise at the Standpipe (where a few kids drowned), which is an immensely effective example of this. Rather getting a traditional up in your face scare or meeting Pennywise face to face like the rest of the Losers, Stan instead just finds the Standpipe unlocked and goes inside. At the stairwell he hears calliope music and smell of popcorn and cotton candy of a carnival and lured Stan climbs up a dozen (he thinks he only climbed up a little way) but stops when he hears beneath the music — the sound of ''wet eager footsteps'' descending the stairs and bobbing shadows above him. Stan only sees the shadows for a moment as the Standpipe doors swing shut leaving him in darkness. Fleeing back to the door Stan tries to push against as he hears footsteps coming closer and closer, foul water runs down the stairs and dead voices call out to Stan as something approaches from the darkness. Thanks to some ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve Stan is able to use his bird book to ward whatever coming towards him off and escape. What makes this encounter so much more frightening than a lot of the other scares in the book, is that the horror is sensory and sparse, Stan just finds himself stuck in a dark place and knowing a death he can’t see coming the stairs to meet him. [[spoiler:It’s small wonder Stan chooses to kill him rather than return to Derry and subject himself to that level of mental torment again.]]
*** [[spoiler:Speaking of Stan’s suicide, that is also a case of this in the book. We follow his wife Patty’s POV as she witnesses Stan answer the phone and be initially delighted before becoming quiet (it’s Mike telling him to come back to Derry and fulfil their vow). Stan then tells Patty he’s going to take a bath and she hears him go upstairs and sound of water running into the tub and then stop five or ten minutes later. Patty realises Stan went up without a beer like he usually does and goes to get one for him from the fridge. The fear well and truly seeps in when she finds the bathroom door closed and no answer as she taps on the door, Patty likens the feeling to a “cold pocket” when swimming through a warm lake and you feel a suddenly chill except in this case it wasn’t around her teenage legs but around her heart. She tries to reassure herself her fright is unfounded and everything is okay as she goes downstairs to get the key and go back up to unlock the bathroom… to see Stan dead in tub with his wrists cut and the word '''IT''' written on the wall. Similar to Georgie and storm drain the reader is well horribly aware of what’s going to happen but can’t do anything but witness it slowly play out through Patty’s eyes.]]

** ''Literature/GeraldsGame'' being a minimalist book is a masterful case of this. Initially the horror is purely just predicament Jessie has found herself in i.e handcuffed to a bed by husband who died from a heart attack in a house on a lake far from help, and in danger of starvation or dehydration. Yet as night falls Jessie half-dreaming becomes afraid sensing that something is wrong in the darkness and thinks she can make out a tall figure standing in the corner of room staring at her. What’s perhaps most terrifying about this is that Ruth the practical voice inside Jessie’s head is stunned into silence by this and later upon fully waking she has ponder on whether or not what she saw was real or just her imagination [[spoiler:it’s not]]. The terror returns full force of the following evening as Jessie understands that she has free herself before it gets dark again and whatever she saw the previous night returns. After the gruesome business of freeing her hand from one of the cuffs, Jessie has to pull the bed in around trying to reach the key, terrified of the thought of something coming to the house as she dallies. The most terrifying segment comes when she falls unconscious again after fully getting free and wakes up in the darkness, somehow knowing she’s not alone in the house… before she encounters the Moonlight Man in the study and gives him her wedding ring. The whole finale is utterly nail biting with tension and doesn’t let up even when Jessie gets out of the house.

*** Earlier than that we have Stan’s encounter with Pennywise at the Standpipe (where a few kids drowned), which is an immensely effective example of this. Rather getting a traditional up in your face scare or meeting Pennywise face to face like the rest of the Losers, Stan instead just finds the Standpipe unlocked and goes inside. At the stairwell he hears calliope music and the popcorn and cotton candy of a carnival and lured Stan climbs up a dozen (he thinks he only climbed up a little way) but stops when he hears beneath the music — the sound of ''wet eager footsteps'' descending the stairs and bobbing shadows above him. Stan only sees the shadows for a moment as the Standpipe doors swing shut leaving him in darkness. Fleeing back to the door Stan tries to push against as he hears footsteps coming closer and closer, foul water runs down the stairs and dead voices call out to Stan as something approaches from the darkness. Thanks to some ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve Stan is able to use his bird book to ward whatever coming towards him off and escape. What makes this encounter so much more frightening than a lot of the other scares in the book, is that the horror is sensory and sparse, Stan just finds himself stuck in a dark place and knowing a death he can’t see coming the stairs to meet him. [[spoiler:It’s small wonder Stan chooses to kill him rather than return to Derry and subject himself to that level of mental torment again.]]

** This trope is heavily used, played straight, played with and subverted in the opening chapter of ''Literature/{{It}}''. Little Georgie Denbrough is nearly mad with fear during the seemingly endless minute he's searching for the box of paraffin at the top of the cellar stairs, imagining that something hairy and clawed crouched down there will grab and eat him at any second. But nothing bad happens to him; there's no monster, he gets the box and his fear sloughs off once he closes the cellar door. Then later, when he's sailing the boat he and Bill made and it's sucked down the stormdrain, he sees the clown Pennywise inside. As he sticks his hand into the drain to get the boat (and his balloon), he's not ''expecting'' anything bad to happen[[note]]not true for the reader, who knows poor Georgie is doomed the second he puts his hand down there[[/note]], because all his senses are telling him "it's OK, everything is all right." Then Pennywise seizes his arm, he turns his head, sees the clown's face change into what Pennywise ''really'' looks like...and King refuses to tell the ''readers'' exactly what it is that Georgie sees in his final moments, only that it "was terrible enough to make his worst imaginings of the thing in the cellar look like sweet dreams; what he saw destroyed his sanity in one clawing stroke."
** A later scene in ''It'' where the Losers’ Club travel through the Pennywise’s abode on Neibolt street, has a grand display of this. Up to this point we’ve seen the titular monster transform in all kinds of horrors that directly threaten or attack the characters, but in the Neibolt house Pennywise for once doesn’t appear in person for most of the chapter. But this only makes his omnipresence more haunting as the kids walk through the decrepit environment, which seems to expand before their eyes - trying to seperate them from each other, which rattles the Losers’ Club into hysterics. This EldritchLocation where the kids aren’t even attacked manages to be more terrifying than any of the previous shapes the titular monster takes.

* The journey through Moria and the buildup to the Balrog in ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'' employs a lot of this, the Fellowship is just walking in the dark for hours and Frodo hears something moving behind them which only stops when they stop (which turns out to be Gollum). Pippin foolishly drops a stone into a well that causes an echo which turns into the faint sounds of hammering far off, Gandalf fears that they disturbed something but the real horror comes when they read Balin's dying ApocalypticLog which speaks of "drums in the deep", and the Fellowship actually hear drumming and attacked by Orcs. It only gets worse after the Orcs are beaten and Gandalf feels "something" behind the barred door which even the Orcs are afraid of and when he attempts to shut the door with magic he's nearly overcome, at this point Gandalf just tells the Fellowship to RunOrDie as their weapons are useless against this new devilry.
** Similarly in Shelob's lair we don't even see the GiantSpider fully until later, it's mostly Frodo and Sam walking around the horrifying dark tunnels using the [[LightIsGood Phial of Galadriel]] and cutting through the black webbing. What description we get off the eldrich spider are the points of light that are Shelob’s eyes and the malice and hunger she radiates.

** In ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheGobletOfFire'', after enjoying the Quidditch World Cup and going to bed, Harry and company are awakened by Mr. Weasley, who tells them to flee into the forest. The kids only glimpse what's causing the fear: a group of Death Eaters dangling {{Muggles}} in the air and blowing up tents, but the really creepy part comes when the heroes are hiding in the forest. Harry, who is missing his wand and feeling vulnerable, senses someone standing a few yards away from them in the darkness--then that someone utters a spell that causes a giant green skull with a snake in its mouth to appear in the sky. Another chilling moment comes later in the book, when Mr. Crouch comes shambling out of the Forbidden Forest, babbling incoherently. At the sight of Harry, he comes to his senses long enough to explain that he walked all the way from home to confess a mistake to Dumbledore and warn of Voldemort's return. But when Harry comes back with Dumbledore, Crouch has disappeared. Crouch's mistake turns out to be [[spoiler:smuggling his Death Eater son out of Azkaban, which enabled the son to escape his father's control and mastermind Voldemort's resurrection under the guise of Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody. (Yep, this book's secret villain all along was Harry's trusted mentor--''not'' Igor Karkaroff, the sinister former Death Eater.) Crouch Junior cast that spell in the dark forest after the Quidditch World Cup, ''and'' killed his father after Crouch Senior arrived to warn Dumbledore.]]
** A briefer example appears in "Bathilda’s Secret," the seventeenth chapter of [[Literature/HarryPotterAndTheDeathlyHallows the final book]]. After a tender moment at Harry's parents' grave in Godric's Hollow, Hermione sees something move in the bushes as she and Harry leave the cemetery. Harry sees nothing and tells her it's probably just a ghost (in this universe [[FriendlyGhost ghosts aren't particularly frightening]]). But then he sees an eddy of dislodged snow, which unnerves him because ghosts can’t move physical objects. They soon encounter Bathilda Bagshot, who can somehow sense them even under Harry's InvisibilityCloak. Though somewhat unsettled by her bad smell, her creepy stare, and fact that she only gestures instead of talking, Harry trusts her. It only gets creepier when they follow Bathilda into her derelict house and Harry agrees to go upstairs with her while Hermione has to stay downstairs. At one point when Harry goes into a dark room and lights his wand, he starts because Bathilda silently moved closer to him in those few seconds of darkness. It's then revealed that [[spoiler:this poor senile woman is actually dead, controlled by Voldemort's snake Nagini, who's been hiding ''inside her body''.]]

** ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheChamberOfSecrets'' introduces ''multiple'' red herrings as to who could be releasing the monster (which is more a "wait for it" example, as we don't see it until the climax) from the Chamber. As it turns out, the real culprit is a piece of Voldemort's soul [[SoulJar hidden in]] [[spoiler:Ginny Weasley's diary, which they had to go back to the Weasley home to retrieve before departing for Hogwarts, and which Harry encountered earlier in the book without knowing it was Ginny's. (Harry does know from the start that the diary he finds is supernatural, as someone named Tom Riddle communicates through the book and even shows him a flashback, but this too serves as a red herring. The flashback misleads Harry to think that Hagrid may have opened the Chamber, and only later do we find out that "Tom Riddle" is actually Voldemort's birth name.) This whole time, Voldemort's soul has been possessing poor Ginny to unleash the monster and scrawl ominous threats on the walls.]]

** One of the more unsettling moments in ''Literature/HarryPotterAndThePhilosophersStone'' is when Harry is walking in the Forbidden Forest and hears what sounds like "a cloak slithering over dead leaves" but doesn't see anything in the darkness. Years later in ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheDeathlyHallows'' Harry remembers the sound while keeping watch outside the tent and shakes his head of it trying to get rid of the paranoia.
** Another truly tense chapter is in ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheGobletOfFire'' where after enjoying the Quidditch World Cup and going to bed, Harry and co are awakened by Mr Weasley and told to flee into the forest. The trio only glimpse what's make out what's causing the fear i.e a group of Death Eaters dangling {{Muggles}} in the air and blowing up tents, but the really creepy part comes while hiding in the forest Harry (who is missing his wand and feeling vulnerable) "senses" someone standing a few yards away from them in the darkness — then that someone utters a spell that causes a giant green skull with a snake in its mouth to appear in the sky.

** From the same book, Chapter 17 “Bathilda’s secret” is all over this trope. Harry and Hermione have just visited the former’s parents grave in Godric’s Hollow in a tender moment, as they leave the graveyard Hermione says she saw something move in the bushes, Harry looks around and can see nothing telling her it’s probably just a ghost (in this universe [[FriendlyGhost ghosts aren’t particularly frightening]]) but sees an eddy of dislodged snow and gets unnerved knowing ghosts can’t move snow. They leave the graveyard under the Invisibility Cloak and soon encounter Bathilda Bagshot who can somehow sense them under the cloak, Harry trusts her despite being somewhat unsettled by her bad smell, creepy staring eyes and fact she doesn’t talk - only beckons. It only gets creepier when they follow Bathilda into her derelict house and Harry agrees to go upstairs with her while Hermione has to stay downstairs, at one point when Harry goes into a dark room and lights his wand he starts, because Bathilda in those few seconds of darkness moved closer to him and ''he did not hear her movement''. [[spoiler: It’s then revealed Voldemort’s snake Nagini was inside Bathilda‘s corpse controlling her, which while very disturbing isn’t nearly as scary as everything leading up to that point]].

* ''Literature/HarryPotterAndThePrisonerOfAzkaban'' revolves around this trope. The book builds up the menace of the second title character, an escaped {{Fantastic Terrorist|s}} named Sirius Black who betrayed Harry's parents to the BigBad and then murdered his pursuer, Peter Pettigrew, in an explosion that also killed a dozen {{Muggles}}. But before the climax Harry never meets him in person, even when Sirius repeatedly breaks into Hogwarts: once slashing up the [[LivingDrawing moving painting]] at the entrance to the Gryffindor common room (don't worry, the occupant just temporarily relocates to a different painting), and once actually entering the common room to wake Ron by tearing up the curtains around the poor kid's canopy bed. When we do finally meet him, the "there all along" variant of this trope is doubly in effect. Not only is Sirius [[spoiler:the ominous black dog that's been stalking Harry throughout the book]], he's also [[spoiler:trying to ''protect'' Harry from Peter, who ''actually'' betrayed Harry's parents and faked his death in that explosion, and who's still alive in the form of the pet rat that Ron's been carrying with him across the series up to this point]].

* An in-universe example in ''Literature/TheGunsOfTheSouth''. Nate Caudell witnesses a black mulatto slave on the run from her master, one of the AWB men. Later in the story [[spoiler:the slave hangs herself]] which he learns about from a letter from Mollie. Nate wonders what could have driven the slave to escape [[spoiler:and later kill herself.]] He is so shaken by the possibilities of the latter he tears up the letter from Mollie.

* ''Literature/HarryPotterAndThePrisonerOfAzkaban'' revolves around this trope. The book builds up the menace of the second title character, an escaped {{Fantastic Terrorist|s}} named Sirius Black who betrayed Harry's parents to the BigBad and then murdered his pursuer, Peter Pettigrew, in an explosion that also killed a dozen {{Muggles}}. But before the climax Harry never meets him in person, even when Sirius repeatedly breaks into Hogwarts: once slashing up the [[LivingDrawing moving painting]] at the entrance to the Gryffindor common room (don't worry, the occupant just temporarily relocates to a different painting), and once actually entering the common room to wake Ron by tearing up the curtains around the poor kid's canopy bed. When we do finally meet him, the "there all along" variant of this trope is ''doubly'' in effect. Not only is Sirius [[spoiler:the ominous black dog that's been stalking Harry throughout the book]], he's also [[spoiler:trying to ''protect'' Harry from Peter, who ''actually'' betrayed Harry's parents and faked his death in that explosion, and who's still alive in the form of the pet rat that Ron's been carrying with him across the series up to this point]].

** Invoked again when Harry is sitting alone in Little Whinging during ''Literature/HarryPotterAndThePrisonerOfAzkaban'' getting increasingly more unsettled and then sees what looks like a big black dog in an alley, however the Night Bus arrives to relieve the tension. We learn later that it's just his Godfather Sirus Black keeping eye on him but that doesn't make it any less tense, the movie makes it even more unsettling.
** Another truly tense chapter is in ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheGobletOfFire'' where after enjoying the Quidditch World Cup and going to bed, Harry and co are awakened by Mr Weasely and told to flee into the forest. The trio only glimpse what's make out what's causing the fear i.e a group of Death Eaters dangling {{Muggles}} in the air and blowing up tents, but the really creepy part comes while hiding in the forest Harry (who is missing his wand and feeling vulnerable) "senses" someone standing a few yards away from them in the darkness — then that someone utters a spell that causes a giant green skull with a snake in its mouth to appear in the sky.

* ''Literature/TheHobbit'':
** it's flat-out stated that the scariest thing Bilbo had to do in his whole adventure was walk down the lightless tunnel to Smaug's lair. Not the dragon himself, not the giant spiders from Mirkwood, not the Goblins, Trolls or Wolves from the Misty Mountains, just the tunnel and the crippling fear of not knowing if a dragon was sleeping at the end of it.
** The chapter where Bilbo traverses through the deep tunnels of the Misty Mountains after getting separated from Gandalf and the Dwarves, strongly invokes this. Bilbo wakes up in the darkness and "He could hear nothing, see nothing, and he could feel nothing except the stone of the floor", he does find a light source in his elvish blade and goes on, not taking the side passages and hurrying on for fear of goblins and "half-imagined dark things coming out of them". The narration doesn’t help saying there are worse things than goblins that live and sneak around in darkness, just as Bilbo meets Gollum.
** The journey through Mirkwood also uses this trope a good deal. Bilbo and the Dwarves don’t encounter anything frightening for most of the chapter, but the forest is frightfully dark and [[GiantSpider massive cobwebs]] surround the path. They almost go mad trudging through the woods, and are especially scared at night [[TheDarknessGazesBack as eyes watch them from darkness, especially insect-like ones]]. At other times they hear eerie laughter and voices of Elves and this only causes them to hurry on with what strength they have. Actually encountering the elves and to much lesser extent the giants spiders is almost a relief compared the preceding unknown.

** What did the Muggle boys do to Dumbledore's sister Ariana to drive her mad as a girl? (As with the Umbridge example above, the popular fan interpretation of this one [[RapeAsDrama isn't pretty either]].)

** Worse still during the climax where Raoul and the Persian are traveling through the bowels of the Opera House, they encounter unexplained horrors like the figure or "shade" in a black hooded robe. The Persian claims the shade has almost caught him before and at Raoul’s questioning states the shade has nothing to do with Erik or the theatre police, but disturbingly doesn’t elaborate any further. Not even the author’s notes offer any concrete explanation, making the cellars of the Opera and its shadowy inhabitants unknowable and frightening.

* Seven words from ''Literature/ScaryStoriesToTellInTheDark'': "Ellen...I am coming up the stairs..."

* ''Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse'': In ''Literature/AftermathEmpiresEnd'', it is revealed that Palpatine claimed to have sensed a powerful signal through the Force from the Unknown Regions, one that not even Darth Vader could sense. He had theories about it, but it's never revealed what it is exactly. But whatever it could be, it tempted Palpatine so much that he tried to map out the Unknown Regions (an area of the galaxy on the map but largely unexplored), sending probes so he could create hyperspace routes for his Contingency Plan (a backup plan in the event of his death). But as for the Dark Side presence lurking out there, nothing is revealed about it — though it could very well be [[spoiler:Supreme Leader Snoke, the leader of the First Order in the sequel trilogy, considering that the Imperials who escaped to the Unknown Regions after the Battle of Jakku eventually formed the First Order, and that Starkiller Base's origin point is located somewhere in the Unknown Regions.]] However, groups like the Acolytes of the Beyond also sensed this signal. Grand Admiral Thrawn might also know what's lurking out there, based on his knowledge of the Unknown Regions.
* The Vug under the rug from Creator/DrSeuss' ''Literature/TheresAWocketInMyPocket''. It is never shown, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin hiding under a rug]] in a dark room, and the only detail the reader knows about it is that it's the only creature the narrator is afraid of.

* ''Literature/TheTimeMachine'' another H.G Wells work has a Wait For It when it comes to the iconic Morlocks. The Time Traveler while exploring the peaceful land of the Eloi in the daylight finds several frightening structures that he can’t figure out and a deep dark well that fills his little companion Weena full of fear. All the protagonist can gather is that the Eloi fear darkness for some reason, the Time Traveler stays up and sees simian-like shapes moving on a hill and one sees a pair of red eyes staring at him in the dark. Soon he encounters the Morlocks and begins to fear [[DarknessEqualsDeath darkness]] and night time as much as the Eloi, even while exploring during the day.

* ''Literature/ThePhantomOfTheOpera'', being seminal GothicHorror invokes this. For a lot of the novel the titular antagonist is kept a mystery and his presence is mostly felt rather than seen. The first chapter opens with a bunch ballerinas fleeing into older dancer’s (La Sorelli) room and [[GhostStory share stories]] about the Phantom, as Little Meg reveals her mother knows the Phantom, they hear footsteps from outside and Sorelli goes into the dimly lid hallway to check wielding a knife and finds... ''nothing''. The Phantom’s first "appearance" in the book is as an angelic voice Raoul hears talking to Christine in her dressing room, jealously thinking it’s a rival suitor he enters the room after Christine leaves, but like with Sorelli finds ''nothing''. The eeriness is further enhanced when Christine is astonished to learn Raoul could hear the voice too and when she personally learns the terrible truth, she desperately tries to protect Raoul, who is shocked to see how [[BreakTheCutie haggard]] she looks when she takes her domino mask off during the Masquerade ball. Eventually Christine fully reveals the terrifying true nature of the Angel of Music, making the eleven chapters of build up well earned.

* The journey through Moria and the buildup to the Balrog in ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'' employs a lot of this, the Fellowship is just walking in the dark for hours and Frodo hears something moving behind them which only stops when they stop (which turns out to be Gollum). Pippin foolishly drops a stone into a well that causes an echo which turns into the faint sounds of hammering far off, Gandalf fears that they disturbed something but the real horror comes when they read Balin's dying ApocalypticLog which speaks of "drums in the deep", and the Fellowship actually hear drumming and attacked by Orcs. It only gets worse after the Orcs are beaten and Gandalf feels "something" behind the barred door which even the Orcs are afraid of and when he attempts to shut the door with magic he's nearly overcome, at this point Gandalf just tells the Fellowship to RunOrDie as their weapons are no more use against this threat.

** The ApocalypticLog the London police find on a shipwrecked European schooner the Demeter. The log-book which was found on the corpse of a sailor who lashed himself to the helm, details how while delivering mysterious cargo the crew are picked off one by one by something, leaving the narrator and others mad with terror of "Him". The second last survivor throws himself into the sea after investigating the cargo below deck and narrator too scared to leave the helm starves to death. The lack of clear description makes Dracula’s presence and his slaughtering of the crew all the more terrifying.

** Jonathan’s journey to Dracula castle in Transylvania is ominous, despite nothing happening. The landlord and landlady of the hotel he’s staying in look terrified and make the sign of the cross when Jonathan tells them where he’s going and the landlady insists he wear a crucifix around his neck, after pleading with him not to go without any explanation. During the carriage ride to the castle, the passengers all bless Jonathan in turn and don’t answer any of his questions. They even sigh with relief when initially no second coach shows up to pick Jonathan up, only to scream along with the horses when a calèche driven by a man with sharp teeth and black horses. In the following journey Jonathan see a pack of wolves surrounding the calèche and strange blue flames on the road... none of which gets explained.

** ''Literature/TheHauntedMask'' which is already one of the scarier books in the series ''especially the [[Series/{{Goosebumps}} TV adaptation]]'' has a case of this with the unnamed shopkeeper, who created “The Unloved” the eponymous haunted masks. In the books we never learn why he created these apparently real and grotesque faces, but more disturbing in the show is the revelation that he made the masks to cover up his own NightmareFace and every beautiful mask he creates will soon turn hideous due to the ugliness within him. We ''never'' actually see his real face, making an already unnerving character even more scary.
** ''Literature/AShockerOnShockStreet'' despite most of the scares being loud and crazy theme-park style, there’s a few effective moments of this such as the Mad Mangler’s lot. After escaping from the giant mantis, Erin and Marty go past an empty lot which according to Erin is where the Mangler lurks attacking people who walk in thinking it’s regular lot. Marty himself steps into the lot where “Tall weeds bent low, blown by the moaning wind. Shadows moved against the fence at the back”… yet nothing attacks Marty and he leaves the lot unmangled. [[spoiler: The ending particularly in the [[ComicBookAdaptation Graphix adaptation]] is a powerful example of this: Marty is seemingly electrocuted to death and lies there with a lifeless, empty gaze as Erin desperately tries to wake him. Then her father enters the scene, his face completely shadowed except for the shine of his glasses as he menacingly approaches a terrified Erin, desperately begging Mr. Wright to help them. Erin screams that he's not her father and the page's last panel is a black space decorated with Erin's fading cries. Even if the kids are actually robots believing they’re kids, the way it’s framed as the murder of a child is still utterly horrifying.]]

* ''Literature/ThePhantomOfTheOpera'', being seminal GothicHorror invokes this. For a lot of the novel the titular antagonist is kept a mystery and he’s presence is mostly felt rather than seen. The first chapter opens with a bunch ballerinas fleeing into older dancer’s (La Sorelli) room and [[GhostStory share stories]] about the Phantom, as Little Meg reveals her mother knows the Phantom, they hear footsteps from outside and Sorelli goes into the dimly lid hallway to check wielding a knife and finds... ''nothing''. The Phantom’s first "appearance" in the book is as an angelic voice Raoul hears talking to Christine in her dressing room, jealously thinking it’s a rival suitor he enters the room after Christine leaves, but like with Sorelli finds ''nothing''. The eeriness is further enhanced when Christine is astonished to learn Raoul could hear the voice too and when she personally learns the terrible truth, she desperately tries to protect Raoul, who is shocked to see how [[BreakTheCutie haggard]] she looks when she takes her domino mask off during the Masquerade ball. Eventually Christine fully reveals the terrifying true nature of the Angel of Music, making the eleven chapters of build up well earned.

** From the same book, Chapter 17 “Bathilda’s secret” is all over this trope. Harry and Hermione have just visited the former’s parents grave in Godric’s Hollow in a tender moment, as they leave the graveyard Hermione says she saw something move in the bushes, Harry looks around and can see nothing telling her it’s probably just a ghost (in this universe [[FriendlyGhost ghosts aren’t particularly frightening]]) but sees an eddy of dislodged snow and gets unnerved knowing ghosts can’t move snow. They leave the graveyard under the Invisibility Cloak and soon encounter Bathilda Bagshot who can somehow sense them under the cloak, Harry trusts her despite being somewhat unsettled by her bad smell, creepy staring eyes and fact she doesn’t talk - only beckons. It only gets creepier when they follow Bathilda into her derelict house and Harry agrees to go upstairs with her while Hermione has to stay downstairs, at one point Harry when goes into a dark room and lights his wand he starts, because Bathilda in those few seconds of darkness moved closer to him and ''he did not hear her movement''. [[spoiler: It’s then revealed Voldemort’s snake Nagini was inside Bathilda‘s corpse controlling her, which while very disturbing isn’t nearly as scary as everything leading up to that point]].

** ''Literature/StayOutOfTheBasement'' also has a lot of this, for a good portion of the book the main horror is uncertainty of what the father of the protagonists Dr Brewster is doing in the basement. The first chapter ending with him bellowing at them to stay out of there while his hand is bleeding for some reason. What’s more [[AdultFear disturbing]] later on is that the dad is acting off in little ways and at one point comes into his daughter Casey’s room to check if she’s actually sleeping after nearly catching her snooping. While TheReveal [[spoiler: that he’s been replaced by a PlantPerson]] is a bit silly, everything else about the story (a parent behaving weird and suspiciously) is very unsettling.

** ''Literature/TheHauntedMask'' which is already one of the scarier books in the series ''especially the [[Series/{{Goosebumps}} TV adaptation]]'' has a case of this with the unnamed shopkeeper, who created “The Unloved” the eponymous haunted masks. In the books we never learn who he created these “real” and grotesque faces, but more disturbing in the show is the revelation that he made to masks to cover up his own NightmareFace and every beautiful mask he creates will soon turn hideous due to the ugliness within him. We ''never'' actually see his real face, making an already unnerving character even more scary.