One of the most sinister songs I can think of. Not only does its forced sense of good, clean fun chill me to the ribs, but the song was also unforgettably used in In On It, by Daniel MacIvor — an unsettling play I saw at the Thick House in San Francisco that still haunts me 10 years on. — Chloe Veltman

Martin Simpson, “House Carpenter”

“What hills, what hills are those, my love?” Christ, a decade after hearing it, this is still the scariest song I know. An arrangement of the traditional Scottish ballad “The Daemon Lover” (spoiler alert!) by English folk hero Martin Simpson, “House Carpenter” is a narrative of pure, queasy comeuppance as a faithless woman abandons her family to set sail with a long-lost love, only to discover her truly hellish mistake once they’re alone at sea. The stomach-churning reveal — “she espied his cloven hoof…” — is the stuff of satanic horror movies, propelled along by the inevitability of Simpson’s relentless fretwork that increasingly sounds like taunting. How anyone can listen to this one after dark is beyond me. — Carly Severn

Rebbie Jackson, “Centipede”

What do you do when you’re born into a super-talented family with no discernible talent of your own? Fake it ’til you make it — or, in the case of Rebbie, eldest of the Jacksons, fake it ’til you make a horrifying song about a horny centipede. This song terrifies me for a variety of reasons (the use of the phrase “snake that’s on the loose” as a metaphor for someone’s penis, for starters), but the terror mostly stems from the fact that centipedes are creepy, and centipedes that want to have intense sex with you are even creepier. — Emmanuel Hapsis

Reinhard Lakomy, “Gespensterduett”

When I was growing up in Berlin, almost every night, I listened to a vinyl LP (yup, this is how old I am) from German composer Reinhard Lakomy. As the most-published musician in the German Democratic Republic at the time, one of Lakomy’s famous records was for kids called Traumzauberbaum. Every time when “Gespensterduett” began playing, I was startled, and hid behind my hair under the blanket just wishing the song would be over… listening to it now, it all comes back. — Johanna Reis

Neko Case, “Make Your Bed”

In this spooky, stripped-down song, Neko Case sings the part of a vengeful woman who puts her man “to rest at the bend in the river” and invites his “young girl” to make her bed beside him. If Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” is one response to infidelity (a plaintive plea), “Make Your Bed” is another, less forgiving approach (a postmortem tune). Case’s sweet voice belies a song full of violence and madness, with lines that always give me the chills: “Only one thought pacifies me / That the murky black water grounds your bones into sand / When the catfish have stripped off your hide.” — Sarah Hotchkiss

Goblin, Score to ‘Suspiria’

I imagine this soundtrack — which opens with a haunting, sing-song refrain, then builds into an wall of anxious, electro-prog chase music, punctuated by a menacing male voice whispering taunts — would be scary even if you haven’t seen the 1977 cult film for which it was written. But if you have, Goblin immediately transports you to an austere German dance academy, where behind every closed door lies a sort of salacious teachers’ lounge for murderous witches — or, sometimes, just a sh*t ton of potentially fatal barbed wire, for no apparent reason. Regardless: I dare you to drive around at night in a sparsely populated rural area with the “witch, witch, witch” part playing, and just try to keep your cool. — Emma Silvers

Geto Boys, “Mind Playing Tricks On Me”

The songs that scare me are less “blood and gore” and super hood-specific. This one, for example, scared the sh*t outta me as a kid, especially the last verse when Bushwick Bill flips out and punches the concrete. Let’s just say crackheads were a very real thing for a kid growing up in Oakland in the ’80s and ’90s! — Jamedra Brown Fleischman

Nurse With Wound, “Salt Marie Celeste”

This very simple, hourlong ambient piece begins quietly but ominously, with gradually intensifying swells of digital noise. It grows into an atmosphere inky black with distinctly maritime swells — overlain with wooden creaks, groans and skitterings. By itself, it’s genuinely unsettling. And then there’s what it’s named for: the Mary Celeste, a merchant ship famously found adrift and abandoned in the Atlantic in 1872. It’s still not known what happened to her crew, who were never seen or heard from again. If you’re a sucker for nautical horror, turn off the lights and put on your headphones. — David Marks

Sword Heaven, “Town Hag”

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