Myst (series)/Nightmare Fuel

Myst
""Ah, but the red and blue books, those were different. I wrote those to entrap overgreedy explorers. But I had no idea that my own sons would become entrapped.""
 * All of the first Myst is Nightmare Fuel due to the fact that you're pretty much completely alone on the island, and all the book worlds. The brothers/father in the books don't count.
 * If you read the books in the library, you learn that the worlds weren't always empty. Sirrus and Achenar murdered every last inhabitant of 3 populated worlds. These are the only worlds that they haven't completely destroyed. All of those burned out books on the shelf used to describe the other ones.
 * If you get one of the bad endings, the game doesn't stop. You just remain trapped forever, until you turn the game off.
 * Myst is fairly bright and happy, with nice ambient music. But the sense of loneliness can get to one after a while. Then there's Achenar's rooms in the Stoneship and Channelwood Ages, which are filled with torture devices. The music in has probably the scariest music you'll ever hear.
 * Try the bad endings of Myst with the brothers, where you return the final page to Sirrus or Achenar and get trapped forever in that brother's book. The worst part of that is that the brother laughs at your foolishness and then proceeds to  rip the pages out of your prison, one by one by frigging one, while tormenting you the entire time.
 * The hologram of Achenar trying to speak the Tree-Dweller language in the Channelwood temple. As if the music in there, the altar that eats its sacrifices, and the masks on the wall weren't creepy enough. The music, by the way, is a remix of Achenar's Leitmotif.
 * Atrus himself is kind of horrifying in Myst, when you realize that  and when you free him and return to the library.
 * The edge on the  thing is somewhat dulled when Atrus explains that   in the first place, and in order to even use the books   first:


 * It's even more dulled by the Retcon that

Riven

 * Riven accomplishes scary in a game where you know you won't be attacked. Ever. Using only music and lightning. Scary!
 * Except that you get attacked  and even killed   if you mess up badly enough.
 * There's also the bad ending of Riven where you trap yourself in the trap book while you're in Tay..
 * In Riven, there are the wahrks (no, that's not a misspelling). The name is a portmanteu because the creatures are as big as whales, and as vicious and deadly as insane sharks. As you progress through the game, you see hints of the creatures' all over, and you learn that they are used in Gehn's gallows, where they rip apart and eat people that have made Gehn mad. And where do you learn this little tidbit? In a school building. On a toy. Used to teach kids their numbers. And it doesn't end there. Eventually, you reach an underwater lab on one of the islands, where you have to solve a color puzzle using totem poles which sit in front of an underwater windshield. And guess what happens when you click the red one? The view tilts up and reveals a warhk that swims in front of the windshield and bares its teeth at you. And if you click the button three times, nothing will happen for a few seconds before the wahrk suddenly rams the lab window. After all the the lonely atmosphere, and all of the depictions of the wahrk, a real one is so completely frightening that at least one player shut off his game in abject terror.
 * Hard to get across now, but Riven was particularly shocking for many Myst fans because they were used to the deserted, almost immobile views of Myst, and then suddenly you have a situation where characters can walk into view and start talking to you.

Myst III: Exile

 * Just about everything Saavedro does is creepy to the max.
 * That painting in Amateria. Not helped that
 * If you watch Saavedro pace in the tower before you enter, you can see him messing with the telescope puzzle things. Now, if you can easily see half of J'nanin through those things, especially the areas you've already been in... what makes you think that Saavedro couldn't see you walking around down there?
 * One of the endings: Imagine.

Myst IV: Revelation

 * Myst IV features you trying to rescue Atrus' kidnapped daughter; you can view her fairly disturbing abduction and attempts to escape in flashbacks. What the badguys have in mind for her is scary in and of itself, not to mention the Creepy Child moment near the end.
 * Also in Revelation, there is the scene where the camoudile goes right over The Stranger
 * Related to this, there's a weird "Let's choose a spirit guide!" ceremony, just before the part when you go and look for the aforementioned guides. There are three Serenian acolytes, each meditating at a different shrine and in different outfits. And they all have creepy, placid masks on. After the strange ceremony (which involves sticking your hand into a silver liquid that burns your handprint onto a sheet of cloth, along with strange glowing lines that correspond to the spirit that chose you), A fire acolyte comes up and gives you the stock pronouncement of which spirit chose you. Then the camera moves and HOLY CRAP THERE'S A FREAKY MASK PERSON RIGHT THERE!!!!! Of course, that didn't help the frustrating and fiddly puzzle right after that involving getting an offering to said spirit so that it'll transport you to the next puzzle. Serenia was nasty like that. We did get some cool music on the first link, though.

Uru

 * There's a wahrk skeleton on the other side of the mountain from Zandi's trailer. You'll want to wet your pants retroactively when you realize just how very damned big it is. (The mandible is standing upright. It's big enough to walk UNDER.)
 * Perhaps the creepiest thing ever was in Uru, in the Teledahn Age. The can scare the shit out of you, especially if you've read Book of D'ni and are wondering if this is actually a Terahnee age.
 * In URU Live, near the end of the game's second run, there was a storyline where Willow "Wheely" Engberg was trapped in a room with a Bahro, a race of creatures enslaved by the D'ni centuries ago. As the players watched the live roleplay, Wheely became more and more frantic, screaming over the comm system as the Bahro repeated "Noloben" over and over again and advanced on her, and when the rescue crew reached the room, well...
 * It gets even worse when you recall what the whole plot of Uru Live basically was - a war between two factions of the now freed Bahro, which the DRC, Yeesha, AND the explorers of the cavern are all caught up in. Of those two Bahro factions, one uses their newfound freedom to peacefully try to engage with the explorers, while the second faction vows vengeance for their previous suffering and isn't shy about killing people, hence Wheely's fate. The scary thing? You literally cannot tell the difference between which Bahro want to harm you and which are on your side. Even scarier is that the 'bad' Bahro's leader looks like some sort of zombie version of a Bahro, with a huge scar where a patch of his skin was ripped off  and bright red eyes.

The Novels

 * in Myst: The Book of Ti'ana.