A Timeline Of TV Terror

With additional reporting by Ryan A. Berenz, Karl J. Paloucek, Jeff Pfeiffer, Lori Lundquist Acken and Sarah Stefanko

Prehistoric parents likely told scary stories around the family fire, horrific warnings designed to keep their children close to the cave. Soon after Gutenberg created the modern printing press, said press churned out The Poem of the Last Judgment, a lurid piece that must have given Renaissance children nightmares. Early radio broadcasts were filled with scary series like The Shadow, while silent films like Nosferatu scared people at the movies.

Horror also made a very effective transition to the small screen, as demonstrated by this list of the TV shows that have scared us the most.

Trend: Great Writers In Horror Anthologies

Early horror series drew their inspiration from great writers in anthology series hosted by notably creepy personalities.

Lights Out — 1949-52

Like many of the great radio dramas, Lights Out found itself adapted for the airwaves of early television. Its creep factor was certainly helped by the memorably macabre intros from Frank Gallop. Several of the stories, in addition to being scary, were innovative and influential. The pilot episode, “First Person Singular,” followed the point of view of an unseen killer. “The Martian Eyes” is about a man whose eyeglasses enable him to see Martians who have disguised themselves as humans. (Sound familiar? A similar premise was used in John Carpenter’s film They Live.) Once aired on SCI FI Channel, this series is now rarely seen, but if you ever happen upon a chance to check it out, tune in — with the lights out, of course. — JP

Alfred Hitchcock Presents/The Alfred Hitchcock Hour — 1955-1962/1962-1965

Often confused, these actually were two different shows, though they both bore the unmistakable imprint of Hitch’s twisted imagination. While Alfred Hitchcock Presents leaned a little more to crime mysteries, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour allowed the stories to open up and allow greater depth — and move even closer to Creepsville. It’s still unnerving to watch “The Jar,” a Ray Bradbury-inspired story about the huckster with the jar supposedly containing a monster’s head. The close-ups of that thing — the floating hair, the orbs that looked like they could be eyes — still can give you nightmares just thinking about them. — KJP

The Twilight Zone — 1959-1964

Serling’s classic The Twilight Zone predates me. As a youngster in the ’80s, I would flee the room when its famous theme music came on TV in reruns. But now it’s one of my all-time favorite shows. Zone had elements of horror, but it usually avoided big scares in favor of using imagination and sci-fi conventions to make a social comment. The monsters in Zone were often ordinary people who were confronted with the darkest parts of their nature, as in “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” or “The Shelter.” — RAB

Dare To Watch On: SCI FI Channel

Thriller — 1960-62

Best known for Frankenstein, Boris Karloff also made other notable contributions to the horror field, including serving as host of this outstanding series that Stephen King declared the best horror series that has ever aired. Thrilling highlights include “The Cheaters” based on a story by Robert Bloch (Psycho), in which a pair of glasses reveals the lies people hide behind. If the only Thriller you know involves a certain moonwalking pop star, acquaint yourself with this series. — JP

The Outer Limits — 1963-1965

Haunting, creative — and beautifully filmed — this anthology series showed what horror in the hands of masters could create. Most memorable is the episode “Wolf 359,” in which a professor builds a replica of a distant planet. As his little world advances, an evil menace seems to take hold of it — a ghostly presence that escapes the sphere and hovers like fear itself over this tiny world and the helpless creatures within it. — EB

Night Gallery — 1970-1973

Rod Serling’s series Night Gallery took on a darker, more sinister tone than The Twilight Zone. He introduced each episode of this horror anthology from an old museum, and the stories were represented by paintings on the wall. Episodes like “The Doll,” with its murderous child’s toy, or “The Caterpillar,” with its killer earwig, were as good as — and sometimes even creepier than — Zone. — KJP

Tales From the Darkside — 1984-88

“Man lives in the sunlit world of what he believes to be reality …” So begins the eerie opening to this somewhat overlooked series from producer George A. Romero’s (Night of the Living Dead) production company (Romero himself wrote a few episodes, and Stephen King contributed two). In some cases tinged with black humor, there were some memorable pure horror episodes, such as “The Last Car” and “The Cutty Black Sow.” — JP

Dare To Watch On: SCI FI Channel

Trend: Horror, Uncut And Uncensored

As films grew steadily gorier, it was only natural that horror jump from network television to the uncensored realm of HBO and Showtime.

Tales From the Crypt — 1989-96

Tales From the Crypt was one of a few infamous comic books that in the 1950s put parents and the U.S. Senate in an uproar over the “corruption” of children who read these tales that combined horror with wry humor. It’s likely that among the children so corrupted were the notable co-producers of this series adaptation, which included Richard Donner and Robert Zemeckis. The series aired on HBO, allowing the creators to explore all of the glorious gruesomeness of the original comics — and then some. The best episodes of Crypt came in the early seasons, with adaptations of stories from the comics. The coolest is “And All Through the House,” with an escaped psycho dressed as a Santa who brings tidings of Christmas fear. Consider me corrupted. — JP

Masters of Horror — 2005-07

Returning to the anthology format of Lights Out, this show allowed great directors to create short films based on the works of great horror writers. If you could stand the gore, this Showtime series was truly terrifying. Horror doesn’t get any better than the twisting Joe Lansdale story “Incident on and off a Mountain Road,” or any darker and funnier than Joe Dante’s zombification of the U.S. armed forces in “Homecoming.” Sadly, the series only lasted two seasons — but what a brilliant nightmare it was! — EB

Trend: Character-Dominated Horror, A Scary Story Plus An Ongoing Storyline

When the “monster of the week” format grew stale, series creators added alien abductions, apocalyptic twists and mysterious disappearances to create ongoing story arcs.

The X-Files — 1993-2002

Though the alien conspiracy story arc constituted the bulk of this show’s content, there were plenty of other paranormal frights and gross-outs. The stand-alone episodes included encounters with overgrown flukeworms, a homicidal parasitic twin fetus, demons, telepathic psychos and, most memorably (and disturbingly), an inbred family featured in one of my all-time favorite episodes, “Home,” which FOX aired with a rarely-before-seen TV-MA rating. — SS

Dare To Watch On: SCI FI Channel and TNT

Trend — Horror Gets Popcultured

Gruesome banter, joke-cracking villains and lots of pop culture references mark the new breed of horror series that blend laughter with fright.

Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel — 1997-2003/1999-2004

Creator Joss Whedon proved that gold could be spun from dross in this marvelous pair of series born from the uneven 1992 film Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Though both series were often more campy than creepy, the Buffy episode “Hush,” in which everyone in Sunnydale loses the ability to speak — or scream — and the floating Gentlemen begin to harvest hearts, created one of the most terrifying hours in modern television. As for Angel, has there ever been a better series finale? — EB

Supernatural — 2005-present

Jared Padelecki as Sam and Jensen Ackles as Dean in Supernatural
Having your mother killed by an apparition is bad enough. But when your obsessed, ghost-hunting dad goes missing on a spiritual quest of a different sort, it’s time for a road trip — one filled with urban legends and ghosts aplenty. Among the most memorable episodes: “No Exit,” in which Jo finds herself pursued in the sewers by the ghost of Chicago serial killer H.H. Holmes, and “Crossroad Blues,” in which an unscrupulous doctor was mauled by an invisible hellhound. — KJP

Dare To Watch On: The CW

Dexter — 2006-present

Michael C Hall as Dexter
Horrific murders, power-hungry police officers and Dexter — a good guy serial killer. This series, with the freshest concept in years, will likely spawn a number of imitators, but I expect none will have the charm of the original. Since one episode flows perfectly into the next, it’s hard to choose just one favorite, but the Season 1 finale, “Born Free,” may be the winner for the riveting suspense and the feeling it gave that maybe, just maybe, Dexter would let his darker nature hold sway. — EB

Dare To Watch On: Showtime

Miniseries — The Wealth Of King

Stephen King writes novels with so many pages that they can be used for workout weights. It’s no wonder that he has so many miniseries based on his books. Here are three of our favorites.

The Shining — 1997

Stephen King wrote the script, which made for a faithful adaptation of one of his most frightening books — and his fans were thankful. Critics think Jack Nicholson made the ultimate Jack Torrance, but even a loving family would hesitate to spend months in isolation in the haunted Overlook Hotel with Nicholson’s Jack. Steven Weber makes Jack so likable at the beginning that his descent into madness is much more heartbreaking. — EB

Salem’s Lot — 1979

Fie on that 2004 remake! For my money, director Tobe Hooper made this the only Lot that matters, wrapping his signature nerve-rattling style around Stephen King’s horrific vampire tale about a writer who returns to his hometown to find the neighbors looking a tad pale and, er, long in the tooth. I don’t remember much after my sister snuck outside and slapped her hand on the TV room window just as an undead Ralphie Glick came a’scratchin’ at his brother’s bedroom window. And I haven’t been able to watch the thing since. — LLA

Richard Thomas stars in Nightmares & Dreamscapes Autopsy Room 4

Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From The Stories Of Stephen King — 2006

This eight-episode limited anthology series, which aired on TNT last summer, featured a stellar cast in tales based on short stories by Stephen King. The ominous “The End of the Whole Mess” features brothers whose best intentions have the worst results. Americans honeymooning in London find themselves trapped in another dimension in the bizarre “Crouch End.” And those afraid of witnessing their own autopsy will get creeped out of their skin in “Autopsy Room Four.” — RAB

Real-Life Frights

Truth is often stranger than fiction, and real places can be even more frightening than imaginary ones, as these series have proved.

A Haunting — 2005-present

Something about “true-life” shows about the supernatural, especially ghosts, seem to get to me more than fictional ones, and this series in particular does a good job of pressing my buttons. Supposedly re-creating real incidents of hauntings, each episode is sort of a mini-movie kept together nicely by Anthony Call’s eerie narrative voice, and making it hard for me to watch just before bedtime. “A Haunting in Connecticut” and “The Haunting of Summerwind” are a few that ghost fans will enjoy. — JP

Dare To Watch On: Discovery Channel

Grant Wilson Jason Hawes in Ghost Hunters

Ghost Hunters — 2004-present

One of the series that began the current trend of ghost shows, it’s still one of the best. Watching the T.A.P.S. team of paranormal investigators on a case is thrilling fun. A lot of times things don’t turn up, but a few episodes — one in which a chair moved by itself across a doorway, and another in which a figure peered down from the top of a lighthouse stairwell — stand out in memory and can still offer chills down the spine. — JP

Dare To Watch On: SCI FI Channel