10 Buffy The Vampire Slayer Episodes That Were Actually Scary

This article mentions an incident of attempted sexual assault.

From silent screams to ghostly encounters, Buffy the Vampire Slayerexpertly blended supernatural horror with real-world anxieties. Part of the reason why the show remains so successful is that it draws on the coming-of-age experiences of the scoobies, using this as inspiration for every Buffy monster of the week and big bad.

From the unsettling Gentlemen in Buffy’s "Hush" who steal voices to the deeply personal horror of "Forever" as the group grapples with grief, each episode would demonstrate suspense, character development, and thought-provoking themes. This, along with the clever character designs and the great performances, still provides the perfect cocktail of scares, comedy, and heartbreak almost 30 years after Buffy's best episodes aired for the first time.

10 Hush

Season 4, Episode 10

“Hush” is one of the most cleverly written episodes in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series. Sunnydale falls silent in “Hush” when a group of fairytale ghouls, "The Gentlemen", steal everyone's voices. The inability to scream leaves residents vulnerable as The Gentlemen begin killing by removing hearts. Buffy and the scoobies must learn to communicate without speaking as they investigate the cause of the silence and the murders. For the first 20 minutes of the episode, there is no dialogue whatsoever, just one of the ways Buffy challenged expectations on broadcast television.

According to SlashFilm, two of the Gentlemen, played by Toy and Doug Jones, “had such scary expressions that they were actually given less prosthetic makeup than their counterparts”. Their plastered-on smiles and eerie glides make them one of the most memorable TV villains, and certainly up there with the greatest monsters of the week in Buffy. The episode as a whole was incredibly well written with some moments of comedy gold, like Giles’ presentation on an overhead projector, such a product of its time, with crude diagrams of the plan of action.

9 Killed By Death

Season 2, Episode 18

“Killed By Death” plays on fears of hospitals, one of many instances where tangible, real-world fears are translated into the supernatural in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In the episode, despite her best efforts to patrol, Buffy is so sick with the flu that she must stay in the hospital for a few days. While an inpatient, she encounters Buffy the Vampire Slayer demonDer Kindestod - a creature that can only be seen by the unwell and vulnerable. The ongoing threat of Angelus that runs alongside this monster of the week is particularly disturbing in the episode.

Der Kindestod sucks the life out of children. This gives Buffy flashbacks of a childhood memory at the hospital and the death of her cousin. In a horrifying reversal of the cartwheeling, kickboxing Slayer viewers are used to seeing, Buffy intentionally injects herself with the disease of the sick children so that she can worsen her fever and see Der Kindestod herself. Ultimately, she triumphs over the Kindestod - but seeing Buffy in such a vulnerable position is just as scary as the villain prosthetics in this episode.

8 Same Time, Same Place

Season 7, Episode 3

“Same Time, Same Place” has both a horrifying premise for Willow and a genuinely scary monster of the week. When a skinned body is found at Xander’s construction site, the scoobies wonder if Willow is back from England and, rather than healing, is back to her Dark Willow villain tricks. Only Anya and Spike can see Willow in the episode, so it is full of misunderstandings stemming from Willow’s fear of seeing her friends again after everything she has done, causing her invisibility.

The monster of the week in the episode is the Gnarl, a demon that paralyzes its victims and eats their skin. Both Dawn and Willow are paralyzed by the Gnarl in the episode, and Willow even loses some skin in a horrifying scene. Despite being one of the most graphic villains in the show, even scarier than the Gnarl is Willow’s plight. Her guilt and shame are so intense that she and her friends are no longer on the same plane - their disconnection is what could have had horrific results.

7 Normal Again

Season 6, Episode 17

Season 6 is one of the most fraught seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the what-if Buffy episode “Normal Again” is no exception. Its premise has huge implications for the series as a whole, depending on the viewer’s interpretation. In the episode, Buffy is an inpatient at a mental institution and is told that her identity as the Slayer is an elaborate fantasy she clings to. The crux of the horror in “Normal Again” is not knowing what is real and what is a hallucination, particularly because it is left open to interpretation.

The horror of this premise is intensified by its context within Buffy’s arc. Buffy has returned from heaven in season 6 and resents being resurrected, feeling disconnected from her friends and the world. The theory that she has been hallucinating for six years and could have a comparatively normal reality back where she has her parents is a heartbreaking insight into Buffy’s mindset at this point in the show. Her choosing to stay in Sunnydale and help those who depend on her, whether they are real or not, shows that Buffy is willing to truly engage with life again.

6 Forever

Season 5, Episode 17

“Forever” directly follows perhaps the most emotionally shocking death episode of Buffy, “The Body”. Following her mother Joyce's death, a devastated and confused Buffy finds solace in Angel's return to Sunnydale. Meanwhile, a heartbroken Dawn attempts to resurrect Joyce using magic. Dawn makes this choice after deciding to stay with Willow and Tara after Joyce’s funeral, stealing one of their books on resurrection despite them strongly advising her against pursuing necromancy. Buffy and Dawn are somewhat distant in the episode, since Buffy as the elder daughter takes on the grueling funeral organization that comes with losing their mother.

Buffy is such a coming-of-age show for all the scoobies that losing Joyce is like losing the mother of the whole gang. Although viewers do not see many of the everyday maternal acts Joyce does for Buffy’s friends, their recounting of this and the intense grief of the whole group makes her enmeshment with their lives completely believable, which intensifies the complex desire to resurrect the beloved character. The episode is all the more scary for not actually showing Joyce resurrected - her shadow approaching the Summers’ front door makes the unknown result terrifying.

5 Seeing Red

Season 6, Episode 19

Season 6 is an intense season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, especially the episode “Seeing Red”. A controversial scene in the episode has been described by James Marsters as the darkest professional day in his life and something that “crushed” him (per EW). Not only was this a gender flip of a real experience of one of the writers on the show, but it was also designed to intentionally turn audiences against the Spike and Buffy romance, as nothing else was working. The show needed something shocking and unforgivable, but the scene remains controversial for Buffy viewers.

The way the scene is filmed makes it all the more horrifying. The stark lighting of the bathroom in which the attempted assault happens makes it particularly difficult to watch. A further detail that intensifies the horror is that the viewer is not presented with Buffy the Slayer. Buffy does fight Spike off, but seems to struggle to do so and comes across as a regular woman in a vulnerable, terrifying position. Both she and Spike seem out of character, making the assault all the more jarring.

4 Listening To Fear

Season 5, Episode 9

“Listening To Fear” is a frightening Buffy episode both as a monster of the week and the heartbreaking events of season 5. An alien demon targets Buffy's mother Joyce as she prepares for brain surgery. The creature infiltrates the Summers' home, drawn to Joyce's increasingly disoriented state. Much like other hospital episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the source of fear is being preyed upon when at one’s most vulnerable. The scoobies find out that this particular demon is called a “Queller”.

Besides the demon at the center of the episode, another layer of fear is Joyce’s deteriorating condition. While in the hospital, she grows increasingly agitated and begins to allude to Dawn’s true nature with upsetting comments she seems unaware of. Later, at the Summers home, the viewer gets a sense of Buffy’s desperation about her mother’s health when she turns on a loud stereo to mask her crying. Overall, the Queller demon preying on Joyce when she is already going through so much makes it one of the most upsetting episodes of Buffy season 5.

3 Helpless

Season 3, Episode 12

“Helpless” gives the viewer a glimpse of how scary it would be for Buffy to lose her Slayer abilities. Buffy's 18th birthday wish for a quiet celebration is shattered when she faces a life-threatening Slayer trial which would make Buffy more easily defeated. Instead of her lovely birthday plans, she's stripped of her powers and forced to battle a powerful vampire, a test she must pass to survive. This is a rite of passage forced on Buffy by the Watchers’ Council, one of their most abhorrent practices in the series.

The episode is arguably the most disturbing because Giles decides to prioritize the Council before Buffy at this point in the series. He is in a very difficult position because he knows if he refuses the trial, which he clearly does not approve of, the Council will separate him from Buffy. The episode showcases Giles’ capacity for deception, even of his beloved Slayer and borderline daughter figure. Buffy’s helplessness in the episode further builds her character and shows her resourcefulness, as well as vitally showing that the wisest adults in the show are fallible and complex.

2 Passion

Season 2, Episode 17

Jenny Calendar lays dead in Giles room in the Passions episode of Buffy

The aptly named “Passion” shows the villainous flipside of Angel’s love for Buffy after he has turned bad. Angel's harassment of Buffy intensifies, crossing into her personal life and forcing a confrontation with her mother. Simultaneously, Jenny seeks redemption for her past actions, especially those concerning Giles. In the episode, Angel’s pursuit of Buffy is shown in an especially dark light when Buffy does not even need to allude to the supernatural to explain his behavior to Joyce, with the dialogue having a clever dual meaning when Joyce guesses Angel is no longer the guy she fell for.

Most horrifying, though, is the abrupt end of Jenny Calendar, who is working to uncover the restoration ritual. Angel makes it clear he does not want her help when he snaps Jenny’s neck, a sudden, cruel end to her story. That was not even the worst part - Angel showed the extent of his darkness when created a fake date scenario at Giles’ house, and then planted her dead body in his bed. This sadistic act establishes that he is beyond redemption at this point in the series, enjoying the emotional torture of the whole sequence of events.

1 Conversations With Dead People

Season 7, Episode 7

Buffy episode Conversations With Dead People

The horror of “Conversations With Dead People” is exactly what the episode title suggests. Buffy's vampire hunt at the cemetery takes an unexpected turn when she connects with a former classmate, now a vampire, and seeks his counsel. Willow receives a message from the deceased Tara via Cassie, while Dawn experiences a ghostly encounter as Joyce's spirit tries, but fails, to reach her. This episode is one of several in season 7 that shows why Buffy’s The First Evil is the biggest bad the scoobies have encountered in the series.

Viewers were thrown into the moment when viewing the original episode, with an unusual timestamp at the beginning - November 12, 2002; 8.01 PM, the exact time of airing. Although the episode is divisive in terms of continuity, as a standalone episode, “Conversations With Dead People” is a genuinely scary Buffy the Vampire Slayerepisode. It does a great job of portraying the insidious, psychological threat of The First in its dialogue-heavy scenes.

Source: SlashFilm, EW