Top 10 Scariest Episodes of The Walking Dead
#10: “JSS”
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A bright day in the city of Alexandria got a whole lot darker when one of their residents was slain in the street with absolutely no warning.. The survivors quickly realize that their town is being invaded by the ruthless Wolves. Since these villains have no problem slaying whoever they come across, no one is safe. The episode does an effective job at making each Wolf feel like a bonafide horror villain. They’re hard to take down, pop out from every corner and are absolutely ruthless. Neither the characters nor the viewers knew when a new wolf would appear or take another life. This unexpected invasion kept our hearts racing during this rollercoaster of an episode until the credits rolled.
#9: “The Same Boat”
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After Carol and Maggie are captured by the unpredictable Saviors, viewers watch the duo get escorted to another location while barely being able to see. This terrifying journey ends with an effective jumpscare and the reveal that they’ve been taken to a slaughterhouse. For the rest of the episode, Carol and Maggie have to struggle to stay alive as their captors become more unhinged. Every moment of their capture feels tense thanks to intimidating performances from all the saviors. And to ramp up the fear factor, a few well placed walkers remind the heroines that they have to deal with living and undead threats. Although the duo makes it out of the slaughterhouse alive, this anxiety inducing incident clearly shook them to their cores.
#8: “One More”
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Gabriel and Aaron’s terrible supply run gets worse when they meet a man named Mays. After they end up in his home, he makes them play Russian roulette. The two heroes desperately try to convince him to change his mind before one of them loses the deadly game. What makes this scenario so chilling is the intimidating performance from “Terminator 2” actor Robert Patrick as Mays. Throughout the story, he makes us believe that neither hero is leaving the building alive. While Mays is the main source of terror here, there’s a few chilling suprises along the way to keep you on your toes. Ironically, the “One More” episode might convince you to take a quick break to recover from all the scares.
#7: “Ghosts”
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It becomes hard to tell where the threats are coming from during this haunting story. After Aaron is temporarily blinded, we fear for his life as he stumbles around the world. But the biggest frights come courtesy of Carol. After a few too many sleepless nights, she starts seeing terrifying visions. Carol’s hallucinations are so realistic that it’s unclear if she’s actually in danger or if everything she’s seeing in her head. No matter what the truth is, viewers definitely get a few jump scares, creepy walkers and imagery that looks like it was ripped out of a ghost story. The final reveal that at least one of Carol’s visions was real makes the episode scarier upon a rewatch.
#6: “A”
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The most frightening monsters in “A” aren’t the gruesome walkers that the heroes have to avoid. In the first portion of the episode, a group of roaming villains nearly commit unspeakable acts against the group. Rick’s only able to get out of this scary and visceral situation by taking a brutal bite out of their leader. Although that sequence was dreadful on its own, the episode also sees the heroes get captured by a group of seemingly friendly people. It was extremely unsettling to see calm people turn into villains on a dime. By the end of this spine-tingling episode, we could no longer tell whether humans or walkers were the biggest monsters in this undead world.
#5: "The Day Will Come When You Won't Be"
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Everyone tuned into season 7’s premiere to see which survivor was dispatched by the sinister Negan’s bat. But while they waited for that answer, they witnessed a twisted combination of physical and psychological horror. If Rick doesn’t wade through a horde of undead while barely being able to see, he or one of his loved ones will be slain. Anyone who defies any order given by absurdly terrifying Negan could be violently removed from the earth. And since we watched two of our favorite main characters die, our hearts stopped whenever someone was singled out. This premiere simply doesn’t allow you to breathe until Negan decides that he’s done with the survivors. The episode definitely got season 7 off to an incredibly unnerving start.
#4: “Acheron: Part I”
This tense episode begins with the survivors sneaking into a warehouse to get supplies while trying not to wake the horde of walkers beneath their feet. Their extremely narrow escape is surprisingly not even the scariest part of the episode. While on the quest for more supplies, a group of heroes is forced to travel through a dimly lit subway full of horrifying walkers. And did we mention there’s a subplot where characters are interrogated by intimidating enemies? If “Acheron Part I’s” psychological horror doesn’t scare you, the creepy setting and undead threats will. Its willingness to go a lot of dark places made it shine as one of the series’ most spine chilling entries.
#3: “Days Gone Bye”
When Rick Grimes wakes up from a coma, he discovers the world has become a waking nightmare. The episode slowly builds up the threat of this strange world by giving us quick glimpses of lone or incapciatated walkers. This frightening opening also includes a few variant infected that are capable of doing more than just stumbling and biting. Not only did this iconic series opening perfectly set up the rules of the franchise, but it terrified us while doing so. There are more than a few spine-tingling scenes that use darkness and tension effectively. And our jaws still drop when Rick stumbles onto a city of walkers. This petrifying pilot episode helped establish “The Walking Dead” as a big name in the horror genre.
#2: “Squeeze”
In this incredibly claustrophobic entry in the series, a group of survivors must make it through a tight cave full of walkers and whisperers. Both types of enemies showed up when the heroes least expected them to. To make matters worse, the survivors had extremely limited light sources that could go at any moment . As they go deeper into the cave, it only becomes harder and harder for them to squeeze through. This figuratively and literally dark episode left us breathless every time a survivor stumbled or hit a new obstacle. The scene where the heroic Jerry seemed permanently stuck was a particularly terrifying sequence. After this cramped and creepy episode, we wouldn’t blame you if you needed to take a walk outside.
#1: “On the Inside”
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An exhausted Connie and her ally Virgil barely get time to rest in a house before it becomes clear that they’re not alone. In a terrifying twist, it’s revealed they’ve stumbled inside of a place full of hungry and feral humans. The show makes the events more unsettling by reducing the sound or dropping it completely at points to mirror how Connie would experience the events as a deaf person. In the end, she lets walkers in the house to combat the feral humans. These enemies were so horrifying that we were genuinely torn on whether we wanted the undead or living monsters to win. But we knew for sure that they all appeared in one of the most terrifying episodes of “The Walking Dead”.
