You do not have to wait until Halloween or Friday the 13th to have a scary night. It is never a terrible idea to spend a night binge-watching horror anthologies and looking for costume ideas for Halloween. You might sense the presence of a stranger lurking in the shadows, or a monster preparing to leap out of your closet and attack you. You will probably distrust the clown’s intentions at children’s events and wonder if John Wayne Gacy was his role model. For weeks after watching a classic horror film, you will be anxious about your surroundings. The villains are what make or ruin a horror film. The greatest way to unwind after a bad day or week is to watch a crazed serial murderer abuse humans. We are going to go into the stories of eight tremendously terrible monsters from horror anthologies today. Slappy the Dummy from Goosebumps and Flukeman from the X Files are among the characters on our list.
Shoggoth (Lovecraft country)
Shoggoths have been prominently featured in the horror stories by H.P. Lovecraft. At The Mountains of Madness, he had described them as formless protoplasm that can mock and reflect all forms of organs and viscous agglutinations of bubbling cells. Lovecraft country follows the journey of Atticus as he embarks on a road trip with his family to rescue his father. The show blends in the terror of racism in the 50s with the fictional monsters from Lovecraft’s stories. When the gang ends up at Ardham, a strange section of the woods, Atticus describes the Shoggoths to Leti moments before they are attacked by the creatures. They are similar to vampires in many aspects.
One of the police officers turns into a shoggoth after being bitten by one. The transformation seems quite painful but quick. Just like a vampire’s aversion to daylight, the shoggoths are weakened near any form of life. Atticus’s family exploits this weakness to their advantage and waits till sunrise until they are completely safe. Lovecraft classified the shoggoths by their many eyes and their protoplasmic exterior. They resemble an amoeba that can grow limbs at will and aren’t made of solid mass. They are known for their gibbering sounds which resemble a sinister version of birds or other woodland creatures. In Lovecraft’s mythos, shoggoths are invulnerable except for their weakness to fire.
The shoggoths who appear in Lovecraft Country act as the guard dogs of the Braithwaite estate. The fishlike humanoid has a massive muscular build and about four thousand razor-sharp teeth. Their jaws can liquidize their victim’s head while being consumed. They have gills located on their heads that help them breathe underground. Not only that, they can dig through the grounds fast, run at high speed and jump across heights. The shoggoths can be controlled via sounds hence they retreat after hearing a high-pitched piercing whistle at night.
Ghoul (Love death and robots)
Siberia was plagued by ghouls during World War II in Love Death and Robots. The creature was summoned from Koryaks by black magic. The summoning ritual involved the sacrifice of a human female and the removal of her uterus for the eggs to be used as a catalyst. Major Grishin of the Cheka secret police was sent by the Soviets to conduct black magic after the White Army was defeated in the Russian Civil War. It was a part of Operation Hades. He intended to summon the horde of demons to make them fight for the Soviets, but they started killing the black magicians as soon as they were summoned. The fleeing Cheka officer ended up as a victim of the monster’s slaughter.
The ghouls had spread across Siberia by the 1940s and posed danger to the Soviets. Teams of soldiers were deployed to hunt down and eliminate the creatures remaining in the wilderness. During the Siege of Stalingrad, Lieutenant Zhakarov led one team to hunt down the ghouls. The Soviets however couldn’t afford to spare support to eliminate these monsters during their crucial battle with the Germans. To make up for the lack of manpower, the Major had split the teams to cover more area. Zhakarov came across Grishin’s frozen body at the original summoning spot of the ghouls. They found a journal that detailed the purpose and ritual for summoning the ghouls. The team came soon across a large ghoul barrow a few days later, and set charge to kill the ghouls inside and sealed the barrow shut.
Two of the soldiers managed to escape after the charges went off successfully to find out that the barrow was larger than they had realized. They had caused a landslide that enraged the ghouls. Zhakarov’s son was sent to relay back the barrow’s posterior location to the Major, while the men attempted to hold off the ghouls. They resorted to charging the mountains and blowing them up but ended up slaughtered by the ghouls.
Zhakarov had managed to detonate the explosives moments before the Soviets bombed the entire mountainside and neutralized the horde. The ghouls are strong enough to lift and throw a military in their complete gear. Their incredible speed and reflexes help them run, jump and climb with ease. Their claws are lethal enough to cause serious damage and their teeth are sharp enough to tear off the limbs of their prey. Despite their superior strength, the monsters weren’t bulletproof. They are just as vulnerable to bullets and bombs as humans are. They are nocturnal creatures and sensitive to light. The predatory creatures didn’t display much intelligence or strategic scheming while hunting their prey.
Flukeman (X-files)
The Flukeman originated in the radioactive sewage of Chernobyl. The creature had caused a blockage in the freighter’s boiling system, not far away from New Jersey. When Dmitri the engineer was sent to clear up the blockage, he was dragged down inside the sewage tank by the creature despite his crewmate’s efforts to save him. Dmitri’s body along with the Flukeman’s washed out into the sea after the crew members flushed the tanks.
The National Comet referred to the creature as Monster on Board. It was believed that the Flukeman had entered New Jersey via an old sewage system during heavy rainfall. A workman became the creature’s next victim after he removed a large piece of wood from the mesh above a sewer outflow. He had managed to escape despite the creature pulling him backward from underwater. The man died later, after throwing up the reproductive larva of the Flukeman. The creature had now reached the sewage processing plant of Newark County.
A worker named Charlie spotted the monster while it was swimming through the filtration pools. The Flukeman got caught in a large transparent pipe after Charlie back-flushed the facility’s sewage system. The creature caught the eye of the plant’s foreman as well as FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder. Mulder and Scully visited the Middlesex County Psychiatric Hospital after the creature was sent there. The creature hid behind the pipes in a far corner while the agents visited him. Scully was amazed by the creature’s appearance, which Mulder described as a seemingly giant blood-sucking worm. Mulder hoped that the creature was not the culprit behind the deaths that the agent was investigating.
The creature was classified as an X file due to the bizarreness of the monster. The creature could neither be taken for a psych evaluation nor be kept in a zoo because of its murderous nature. The US Marshall Service had attempted to transport the creature by strapping it to a gurney in the back of an ambulance. The creature managed to escape the gurney midway. On discovering this, the driver asked for immediate backup before stopping near a sign for Lake Betty. He was attacked and killed by the Flukeman despite being armed with a shotgun while inspecting the vehicle.
The creature hid inside the portable chemical toilet in Lake Betty Park and was picked up by a Tanker Trucker the next morning. While investigating Marshall’s death, Mulder noticed the similarities between the location of this incident and Dmitri’s accident. Observing the section of pipes, he concluded that the creature was trying to make its way back to the sea. When the foreman of the treatment plant and Mulder arrived at the vault in the sewer, they attempted to close the rusted gate between the vault and the overflow pipe.
The Flukeman dragged the foreman underwater after he fell into the sewage water trying to shut the gate. Mulder helped the foreman back to safety and managed to close the gate, splitting the Flukeman in half. In a shocking turn of events, that night the upper portion of Flukeman’s body came back to life. In 1996 the Flukeman was reported to have washed up in Martha’s Vineyard.
Pax (Black Mirror: Bandersnatch)
Pax was the villain of Jerome F Davies’s choose your own adventure novel Bandersnatch. Stefan Butler was incorporating Pax into his video game adaptation of the book in 1984. Pax’s role in the downfall of Davies had become a frequent topic of discussion and the being was driving Butler to the brink of insanity. The nature and existence of Pax depended on the player’s decisions and interpretation of the narrative. Davies’s sketches depict Pax as a skull covered in a lion-like mane from his nightmares. A documentary had described him as a lion-like creature.
Butler’s game provided Pax with a humanoid body based on his description from the novel. Stefan encounters Pax in the flesh, after a bad acid trip at Colin’s place or during his attempt to unlock his father’s safe. The creature appears as a snarling monstrosity, layered in leathery dark skin and shrouded in yellowish thick fur with claw-like fingers. His primal hunched body is often obscured by the shadows or surrounding environment. Pax speaks in only animalistic roars and snarls but he can speak in the video game and the book. Jerome began working on the interactive novel Bandersnatch, back in the 80s. He wanted to allow the readers to have a range of choices on how to proceed through the narrative. They could have encounters with government agents, enchanted daggers, etc.
But the limits of his imagination began to wear him out and he resorted to drugs to help him with the creative process. The increase in dosage led him to a breakdown. As side effects of the hallucinogens, he believed himself to be a victim of Pax. He thought that the demon was convincing Davies’s wife to poison him with drugs. Davies referred to him as the thief of destiny and made him the villain of Bandersnatch.
He blamed Pax for the shortcomings in his own life. Thus, the readers of the novel could reach their happy ending by refusing to worship the demon and defeating him. Unfortunately for Davies, in the real world, the only way to defy Pax was by decapitating his wife and daubing the wall with esoteric symbols with her blood. Davies was sent to prison but his work Bandersnatch gained immense popularity and earned the status of a classic.
When Butler’s Pax was presented in the demo for the first time, he suspected the demon to be more than just a character in the game. Learning more about Davies’s breakdown cautions the creators of the Bandersnatch experience of a possible mental illness. Pax takes on a more involved role as the narrative begins to branch. Pax’s role and nature in the narrative depending on the route taken by the viewer.
In the scenario where the viewer makes Stefan ditch his therapy session for hanging out with Colin, he experiences a different universe after consuming cannabis and a tab of LSD. During their psychedelic trip, Colin talks about the possibility of traversing through multiple realities to redo past decisions. He shares his conspiracy theory of the government monitoring people by pretending to be their family or friend, and how Pac-man was the metaphor for government control. At the end of the experience, Kitty turns into Pax and attacks him, following which Stefan abruptly wakes up in his Therapist’s office. He returns to work after being given a higher dose of medication. After watching a taped documentary on Davies, Stefan begins to notice the similarities between their struggles and begins to panic about Bandersnatch.
Twisty (American horror story)
Twisty, the clown, looked terrifying because of his frightful grinning mask and a filthy clown suit. He was oblivious to how scared the children were of his appearance and believed that children liked him. He had a minor mental disability from being dropped on his head as a child. In 1943, he left his job at Jupiter for Rusty Weschester’s Traveling Carnival to work as a clown. The carnival freaks grew jealous of his popularity and spread rumors about Twisty being a child molester. The rumors made it difficult for him to find a job as a clown, but it wasn’t enough for Twisty to abandon his attire. He returned to Jupiter only to find out that his mother was no more.
The lack of interest in buying in whirligigs by the local toy store and the anguish from the rumors about his past drove him to attempt suicide. He blew off his lower jaw with a shotgun while trying to kill himself, ultimately in vain. He began wearing a wide grinning prosthetic mask to hide his disfigured jaw and decided to save children from their parents in his own way. In search of a babysitter for the children he intended to keep safe, he discovered Bonnie on a picnic date with her boyfriend. He ended up killing the boy and subdued the girl as she was trying to flee. He proceeded to abduct Corey Bachman and killed his parents.
He imprisoned the two of them in the back of an abandoned bus. No matter how hard he tried to entertain his audience, it only increased their fear. Twisty took his revenge by killing the owner of the toy store who had rejected him in the past. He was hiding behind the mannequins when the young clerk was about to arrive. Twisty killed the employee after he discovered the decapitated head of his boss. Meanwhile, Gloria Mott approached Twisty for a private children’s party while he was on his way to the bus in the woods. Gloria’s son Dandy found the clown’s silence provocative and demanded to be entertained.
The clown brained the kid with a juggling pin after he stuck his nose inside Twisty’s bag of tricks. Twisty then returned to the bus to entertain his prisoners. After his tricks failed, he tried to amuse them with the store clerk’s severed head. Bonnie fled deep into the woods with the boy, after hitting Twisty with a secret weapon. The clown chased after them and caught up with Corey. Upon returning, he found that Dandy had overpowered the girl and also criticized the clown’s quality of his prison. Twisty went trick or treating children during Halloween in a neighboring town where he was spotted by Jessie. Twisty followed her family home and abducted her cruel older brother Mike.
He found Dandy wearing a clown costume in the woods while bringing the teenage boy. Bonnie attempted to escape once again but was caught by Twisty on the road. Jimmy and Maggie witnessed this incident and followed the clown to the bus. Unknown to the kids, they were being followed by Dandy who took them out from behind. Dandy tried to see Maggie in half while Twisty played a toy piano. The clown applauded on seeing Jimmy knockout Dandy with his lobster claws.
Jimmy gave the others a chance to flee while Twisty put him in a stranglehold. He wanted to kill him on the bus but Edward Mordrake’s arrival interrupted him. With the help of a little ghost magic, the killer clown opened up about his tragic life to Mordrake. Twisty is stabbed and killed by Mordrake when the demon head named the clown as the one that it seeks. Twisty’s ghost was invited to join Edward’s menagerie of freakish spooks.
Lizzie (Tales from the Darkside)
Lizzie was a deformed creature residing in a closet. Doctor Fenner used to regularly tend to her, but their father-daughter routine was abrupt after a guest arrived at their home. The guest became concerned about the strange noises coming from the closet and put a mousetrap in there thinking that a rat was the source of the noise. This action infuriated Lizzie and she continued to torment the guest. One night, the guest awakened while Lizzie was opening the closet, and screamed in fear after shining the flashlight upon the creature.
Lizzie attacked the guest and dragged her corpse to the closet. Lizzie appears again after Doctor Fenner gets off the phone with the victims’ murder accusing them of a cover-up. He takes his daughter Lizzie upstairs and reads her a story. Neither of them seems concerned over the murder she had committed. She resembles a bald humanoid devoid of ears, her mouth full of sharp fangs and red eyes which leave quite an impression on those who have seen her. She has webbed hands and feet with vicious claws. Despite her small size, she is extremely strong and deadly.
She can quickly leap onto a victim’s back and claw them to death. Her strength and appearance are similar to that of a chimpanzee and other primates who are strong enough to topple human beings despite their small size. Her appearance in the Tales from the Darkside was brief, but it did leave quite an impression on the horror fans. She is one of the most terrifying creatures to have appeared on the show.
Slappy the Dummy (Goosebumps)
Franz Maher moved to America from England in the 1920s. He became well known as a star ventriloquist, as the dummies, he made looked quite realistic. Franz learned a lot of magic from Kanduu, who was his colleague as well as an evil sorcerer. Kandu didn’t want his dummies to feel lonely so he used his magic to bring them to life. An ancient sorcerer had carved Slappy out of coffin wood and placed his soul inside the dummy. He kept a card with a spell inside Slappy’s pocket and waited for the day someone would say the words ‘Karru Marri Odonna Lama Molonu Karrano’ and resurrect him. Slappy had a twin brother Wally, who was carved out of the same coffin.
Slappy the dummy, was the primary villain of the Goosebumps franchise. He came to life when someone would read the words inside his pocket aloud, which translated to ‘You and I are one now. He would try to enslave the person who brought him back to life. Since his introduction in 1993, Slappy has become one the most popular villains of the franchise as well as their mascot. The sinister ventriloquist dummy has blue eyes and brown hair, his lips are painted bright red and curled up in a smile. His appearance for television was changed into a curly-haired redhead with brown eyes.
Slappy insists that he is not a fool or a dummy, instead, he insists you are! He wants to enslave humans to serve his bidding and is fond of disastrous pranks. He creates a mess wherever he goes and lets others take the fall for his misdeeds. Slappy the Dummy is a sadistic narcissist by nature. He can turn humans into dummies and bring dummies to life. He controls people with sounds and uses his laser vision to bring things from the museum to life. He can also freeze people in place, control them and use electric zaps. The words which bring Slappy to life can also put him in temporary sleep. Slappy fears that one day someone may find a way to put him in permanent sleep.
Meat Servant (Channel Zero)
The Meat Servant is a resident of Slaughterland. It’s a place that lies behind the doorway of the staircase in Medallion Park. The Meat Servant made his first appearance when the dwarf Smart Mouth tries to kill Zoe Woods in the park with his hammer. The dwarf followed him after he appeared at the doorway of the staircase. He covered Izzy Marcus in white paste after she was kidnapped, and brought her to the Slaughterland for the Pestilent God. When Alice and Louise go to the park, the Meat Servant was present in his human form and found the Peach family at the meat buffet. The table Alice and Louise sat at suddenly turned into the inside of a large house.
The Peaches and the Meat Servant disappeared by the time Louise and Alice awakened in the park, the next morning. Parts of Tanya’s body remained at the table. The Meat Servant appears as a skinless entity and in its regular human form. He was one of the last remaining residents of the Slaughterland, along with the Pestilent God, Ruth Peach, and the gardener. He was an agent to the Pestilent God, who orchestrated the Peach family’s sacrifice to the deity.