9 Best Horror TV Shows & Series to Watch

From the dawn of its golden age, television and horror have been intrinsically linked. The original masters of fright honed their craft on the small screen first, with classic horror TV shows like The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents pushing the boundaries of popular culture. In fact, the very act of being sucked into your television is rooted in the horror genre (thanks, Poltergeist) and the experience may have changed with the advent of streaming services, however, some things remain the same.

Here, we’re breaking down some of the best horror experiences you can have on the small screen. There’s a lot to be afraid of, but these shows will at least be terrific while they’re being terrifying.

9 Best Horror TV Shows

1. The Outsider

• IMDB Score: 7.6
• Showrunner: Richard Price
• Starring: Jason Bateman, Ben Mendelsohn, Bill Camp, Julianne Nicholson
• Seasons: 1

Based on prolific horror writer Stephen King’s book of the same name, The Outsider is a slow-burn detective thriller that unravels into something far more ominous the more you watch. The show only lasted one season, but what is on display is a complete story – you’re not necessarily going to be left with dozens of questions about the true nature of what is happening. Rather, you’ll get a good taste of where the story could go, and can move onto King’s original novel if you’re hungry for more.

As can be expected by something originally written by King, The Outsider is a story about human characters running up against something monstrous and evil. After a small boy is found dead, and a local dad is pinned for the crime, detectives start running up against some strange impossibilities: a pattern of deaths that seem to point to murderers that couldn’t have been involved.

Without spoiling too much, there’s something supernatural stalking the town that wants to cause pain to those around it, and it’ll be up to a group of investigators willing to question concrete evidence to figure out what’s really going on. It’s a wild ride, and one that won’t take you too long to get through!

2. Twin Peaks

• IMDB Score: 8.8
• Showrunner: David Lynch
• Starring: Kyle MacLachlan, Sheryl Lee, Lara Flynn Boyle, Michael Ontkean
• Seasons: 4 (plus a movie)

A masterpiece of modern television, Twin Peaks is arguably director David Lynch’s seminal work, and somehow walks the line between so many genres and moods that it can sometimes feel disorienting. Is it a police procedural? Kind of, but it’s also a slice-of-life look into a quaint American town and its inhabitants, while also resembling a fever dream. The show’s production also spans three decades, and is bolstered by a prequel movie that should probably be watched at the end.

If, somehow, you haven’t watched this show, Twin Peaks follows FBI Agent Dale Cooper, who travels to the titular logging town to solve the murder of seemingly innocent high schooler Laura Palmer. Things quickly get weird, though Cooper takes a lot of the incongruities of the events in his stride: he’s weird too.

What follows is a deep dive into the seedy underbelly of what appears to be a quiet town, the supernatural threat that lurks in the woods, soap-opera-style love triangles, and some truly dark moments punctuated by the eerieness of Lynch’s house style.

Not just one of the greatest supernatural TV shows, one of the best shows of all time, period.

3. The Haunting Series

• IMDB Score: 8.5 and 7.4
• Showrunner: Mike Flanagan
• Starring: Michiel Huisman, Elizabeth Reaser, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Kate Seigel, Victoria Pedretti
• Seasons: 2

If you’ve heard of The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor, you might be surprised to learn that they’re actually part of a two-part anthology series, sharing a number of cast members and themes but, ultimately, being independent stories. Within these two shows, director Mike Flanagan adapts Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, as well as Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, and delivers them in a modern format.

Hill House follows the remaining members of the Crain family, which abandoned wife-and-mother Olivia to their haunted home in the 90s, only to be plagued by spirits for their formative years. The Crain children, now adults, return to the house to figure out what happened to their mother, and what is causing their respective hauntings. It’s genuinely chilling in places, while also tackling some real-world issues along the way.

Bly Manor, on the other hand, tells the story of au pair Dani Clayton as she is hired to take care of a man’s niece and nephew, after he unexpectedly takes them on following his brother and his wife’s death. The Bly Manor estate on which they live, however, is plagued by apparitions that seem to take an interest in Dani and her past.

Together, the two seasons are a fantastic exploration of the ways in which people can be haunted by both literal and figurative ghosts, and the impact that has on the way they live their lives. Sadly, the third season, which was to be Flanagan’s take on Richard Matheson’s Hell House, never came about.

4. From

• IMDB Score: 7.7
• Showrunner: John Griffin
• Starring: Harold Perrineau, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Eion Bailey, David Alpay
• Seasons: 3

If you’re a fan of Silent Hill, or the idea of sentient towns (who isn’t?), From is probably right up your alley. Part horror show, part mystery, From weaves together the stories of residents of a town in America that has decided they can no longer leave. Trying to exit the town will inevitably lead you back, as if the world is looping around you, and strange, nightmarish creatures lurk in the surrounding woodland.

When a family becomes trapped in the town, they work together with residents to figure out what is going on so they can all get out: all while avoiding the terrors that stalk the streets when darkness falls. It’s a great premise that leads to a lot of personal drama in a similar way to Stephen King’s The Mist, though also leaves a lot of room for weird occult shit to happen. In fact, the deepening and cascading mysteries of the show have been compared to Lost, for better or worse.

Still, season three is well underway and promises answers to some of the show’s bigger questions. Even if we don’t learn everything, From is one hell of a ride.

5. Archive 81

• IMDB Score: 7.3
• Showrunner: Rebecca Sonnenshine,
• Starring: Mamoudou Athie, Dina Shihabi, Evan Jonigkeit, Julia Chan
• Seasons: 1

Cruelly cancelled after just one season, Archive 81 is a strange mix of found-footage, cult investigation, and supernatural shenanigans, but the resulting mix is unlike anything else. Well, if you ignore the Blair Witch and the podcast this show is based on, of course.

See, Dan Turner has been hired by a man named Virgil Davenport to restore a burned 8mm video tape containing the PhD dissertation of Melody Pendras: a former grad student that was documenting the story of an apartment building that mysteriously burned down. In order to do so, Dan must be isolated in a research campus owned by Virgil’s LMG Corporation to keep the tape from degrading further, but when the tapes start featuring Dan’s own family members, it becomes clear that things aren’t as they seem.

What follows is two stories: one following Dan in the present day figuring out what is going on, and one following Melody in the 90s as she investigates the building’s history. The two stories interconnect in interesting ways, all while a shadowy cult keeps its eyes on Dan.

The show did well critically, but was cancelled regardless. If you’re into it, though, the show was based on a podcast of the same name that ran for three seasons, plus some extra episodes, which tells the complete story.

6. True Detective

• IMDB Score: 8.9
• Showrunner: Nic Pizzolatto (seasons 1 to 3), Issa López (season 4)
• Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Woody Harrelson, Colin Farrell, Vince Vaughn, Mahershala Ali, Jodie Foster, Kali Reis
• Seasons: 4

While the various seasons of True Detective have landed differently with audiences, the first and fourth seasons of the show are some of the best horror mystery TV you could ask for. Driven by some of the finest acting on TV, and often with some of the best writing, True Detective has made a name for itself as a pillar of modern psychological horror.

While each season follows a different storyline, they share the commonalities of being focused on a series of police detectives that run up against the horrors of the world: often appearing at first to be supernatural, but often being revealed to just be the brutality of man.

There does still seem to be a supernatural undercurrent in the shows, or some kind of cult activity affecting things from behind the scenes, but nothing concrete has ever been confirmed, and ultimately it doesn’t really matter. There aren’t monsters out to get you, just sick people in a sick world.

With season five in production, following the well received Night Country, we’ve got high hopes for the future of True Detective.

7. Midnight Mass

• IMDB Score: 7.7
• Showrunner: Mike Flanagan
• Starring: Kate Siegel, Zach Gilford, Kristin Lehman, Samantha Sloyan
• Seasons: 1

Fresh off the success of The Haunting of Bly Manor, showrunner Mike Flanagan took a hard left turn and made a gothic horror series focusing on the impoverished and devout Crockett Island. Midnight Mass is a monster story done right, letting the story breath over seven episodes before bringing it all to a satisfying close.

According to Flanagan, Midnight Mass was a passion project inspired by his childhood Catholicism and eventual shift into atheism, and it shows. The story follows a man returning to his childhood home on Crockett Island to find it being subsumed by the charisma of a young priest with less-than-holy intentions. I don’t want to spoil what is really going on there, but it’s a fun twist I haven’t really seen often.

The show only has a single season, but that’s just because Flanagan had a story to tell and told it succinctly. Midnight Mass had been an idea in his head for a long time before he was finally able to make it, and so the idea was already pretty firmly established. There are even hints to it in some of Flanagan’s prior work, which is a fun aside for the eagle-eyed among us.

Either way, if you’re willing to give Midnight Mass a crack, you’re not going to be disappointed.

8. The X-Files

• IMDB Score: 8.6
• Showrunner: Chris Carter
• Starring: David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson
• Seasons: 11

Probably the most well known and famous sci-fi horror show ever made, The X-Files is an iconic piece of television history that has remained relevant over three decades. Featuring an opening theme burned deeply into my childhood nightmares, The X-Files follows FBI special agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully as they investigate the ‘X-Files’: unsolved cases so bizarre and unexplainable that the FBI pushes them to the side.

Scully, ever the scientist, has been sent to keep an eye on the more laissez-faire Muldur, and often tries (and fails) to explain away the supernatural with logic and reason. Muldur knows, though, that there is more in the universe than just humans – having lost his sister as a child to an alien abduction. The pair act as perfect foils for one another, and Duchovny and Anderson bring chemistry rarely seen in a show that lasts as long as The X-Files did.

Honestly, there are more than 200 episodes of the show so there’s a lot to talk about, and a lot has been said about The X-Files already, but there’s one episode that has always stuck out to me: Home, season four, episode two. It features what is essentially the family from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but throws Muldur and Scully in to investigate the death of a small, deformed child near their property. There’s no aliens, or anything supernatural, really. Instead, the horror comes from a family of humans that do some pretty awful things, and enjoy killing.

It’s one of my favourite pieces of television simply because of how human it was, and The X-Files is filled with episodes of the same calibre. There’s a reason that the show has been so influential, and if you haven’t watched it yet, there’s no better time.

9. Monsters

• IMDB Score: 7.9
• Showrunner: Ian Brennan and Ryan Murphy
• Starring: Evan Peters, Niecy Nash, Molly Ringworld, Richard Jenkins
• Seasons: 2

By now you would have heard about Netflix’s bloodthirsty adaptation of the real-life cannibal murderer Jeffrey Dahmer. One of the most-talked-about series in television history, the series sees former American Horror Story actor Evan Peters take the reins as the infamous murderer and cannibal as a young adult. The series chronicles how Dahmer was able to murder 17 innocent men between 1978 and 1991, revealing harrowing details about the victims’ rape, dismemberment and eventual cannibalization.

Co-created by AHS’ Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, the series “exposes these unconscionable crimes, centred around the underserved victims and their communities impacted by the systemic racism and institutional failures of the police that allowed one of America’s most notorious serial killers to continue his murderous spree in plain sight for over a decade.”

The series dropped a second season in 2024 about the Menendez brothers, who shot and killed their parents in 1989 and went on to describe some serious abuse. Is there truth to their claims? Watch to find out.

Here’s Some Extra Scares!

We covered a lot in this article already, but there’s literally hundreds of horror shows on TV, and while we can’t name them all we’ll settle with adding a few more here – just in case you’ve already watched all of the above.

American Horror Story: Whether you call it American Horror Story or AHS, this much-loved horror-drama anthology redefined horror TV series for the modern era. Each season takes place in a new horrifying setting like a haunted house, a Hotel and even an 80s summer camp, to name a few, and centres around different horror themes and tropes.

The Watcher: A smash-hit that seemingly came out of nowhere, The Watcher has emerged as one of the biggest and best news horror series in recent memory. The Netflix series follows a young family who, after moving into their dream home, are plagued by ominous letters, strange neighbours and sinister threats. From there, it’s a cavalcade of mysterious messages and eerie situations that are downright uncomfortable to watch. The Watcher is based on a 2018 article for New York’s “The Cut” by Reeves Wiedeman and arrives via perennial hitmaker Ryan Murphy, who also had a hand in crafting American Horror Story and American Crime Story.

Masters of Horror: A proverbial who’s who of the horror genre joined forces for this criminally underrated series. The American anthology television series showcased hourlong horror films from famous horror movie directors, with works by Dario Argento, John Carpenter, Larry Cohen, Don Coscarelli, Joe Dante and Takashi Miike to name a few. In a similar vein to the old Twilight Zone, this series might not have lived up to the hype, but it still fits the bill for a perfect Halloween show.

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