What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word “monster”? The boogeyman? The Devil? Dracula? An 80’s slasher villain, like Freddy, Jason, or Michael Myers? Frankenstein’s monster—or perhaps the good Dr. Frankenstein himself? Or maybe something more grounded in reality—a serial killer like Richard Ramirez, or a murderous political leader like Hitler?

Well, I’m not out to bash the bad boys of horror (after all, I’ve just named several of my favorite fictional characters of all time), but I think, for once, it’s time to shine the spotlight on a few of their fearful female peers. After all, let’s face it—we women can be damn scary when we want to be. So this Halloween, I’d like to share a few of my personal favorite scary female monsters from fiction—and by “favorite,” I mean the ones that most deeply scarred my psyche. Here are my top 13, counting down from least to most distressing.

NOTE: Beware of SPOILERS, for obvious reasons.

13. Ungoliant (The Silmarillion)

Shelob, the giant spider from The Lord of the Rings, may be better-known, but her similarly oversized arachnid-shaped mother is the true eight-legged horror of Middle-Earth. An evil spirit of mysterious origins, she once attacked Melkor himself (the biggest, baddest evil there ever was)—who only survived because not one, but two of his Balrog friends came to his rescue. The worst part? Her fate is unclear—she may have devoured herself, or may be roaming the land still, creeping in the shadows of the Mountains of Terror

I personally don’t have a problem with spiders—as long as they stay out of my bed and away from my ears—but Ungoliant is another story entirely.

12. The Night Hag (Folklore)

If I were a more rational person, this entry would probably be much higher on this list—because this one just so happens to be real. Well, sort of. Sleep paralysis is the very real experience of feeling unable to move when falling asleep or just waking up. Often, it is accompanied by a sense of anxiety or even panic, and may also involve brief hallucinations. For many people, it seemed as if something were sitting on their chest—in tales from ye olde Newfoundland, it often took the form of an old woman or witch, spawning the story of the Night Hag who comes and sits on your chest to steal your soul or breath.

I personally have not seen the Night Hag’s grim visage for myself, but I have experienced an episode of sleep paralysis where I was dead certain there was a shadowy figure standing over me in my  bedroom, and I couldn’t so much as open my mouth to scream. It was an utterly terrifying, all too real experience—even if the figure itself wasn’t real. But was the shadow the Night Hag, or one of the many other forms this phenomenon takes in other versions of the legend? Honestly… I hope I never find out.

11. Asami Yamazaki (Audition)

Asami Yamazaki is the only fully human monster (physically speaking, anyway) on this list. While there are many other frightening fictional female stalkers and murderers out there to choose from, including Annie Wilkes (Misery) and Alex Forrest (Fatal Attraction), Asami Yamazaki takes the cake in terms of her sheer coldness. There is no love, twisted or otherwise, behind her actions—she is fueled purely by childhood trauma-inspired rage and a sickly sweet delight in revenge. She torments and mutilates her victims without batting an eye, and while (SPOILER) she does finally get her comeuppance, much of the damage she did in life can never be undone

Her mortality, rather than taking away from the terror she inspires, is actually a key ingredient of her fear factor—Asami Yamaki is scary because she is human, and represents many of the worst crimes humans commit against one another every day.

10. The Crones of Crookback Bog (Witcher 3: Wild Hunt)

There are a lot of nightmarish female monsters to choose from in the Witcher series. In fact, I nearly didn’t list the Crones in favor of discussing Noonwraiths instead, but the wraiths’ similarity to another entry farther down this list eventually made my mind up for me. And make no mistake—Brewess, Weavess, and Whispess certainly earned their place here. They are at once mythic and macabre, combining almost Silent Hill-ish sensibilities with obvious references to ancient beings like Baba Yaga of Slavic folklore and the Fates of Greek mythology. The ears they demand in tribute (yes, human ears) are used to keep a close eye—er, ear—on their territory.

Of all the foes I faced in Witcher 3, their “faces” might just stick with me the longest.

9. The Smiling Titan (Attack on Titan)

I didn’t know what I was getting into when I began watching the first episode of Attack on Titan. Friends had warned me not to get attached to any particular characters, so I knew someone was probably going to die, but I was not prepared for how horrific it would be when they did. The Smiling Titan may not be the most physically formidable Titan of the show, but she remains the most viscerally upsetting to me purely because of the gut-punch of an entrance she made in the first episode, when she suddenly and viciously chomped those pearly whites of hers down on an innocent victim’s midriff. And never, not once, does she stop smiling.

Like many of the other entries listed here, the Smiling Titan is a warped humanoid monster—just familiar enough to recognize, but twisted well beyond the typical human comfort zone. Her sheer size and strength don’t help, either. She is by far the largest monster on this list.

8. Medusa (Greek Mythology)

While it’s easy to write off a monster as familiar as Medusa—I honestly can’t remember a time when I didn’t know who, or what, she was—she is not a force to be trifled with. The scariest monster is often the one you can’t see coming, and if you look at this particular Gorgon, you risk looking her in the face and turning instantly to stone. While Perseus’s story shows us how this might be overcome, the question remains—what do you do if you meet up with Medusa and don’t have a shiny, reflective surface handy?

As a kid, I was equally terrified of the Basilisk in the Harry Potter series for similar reasons. The thought of a monster you couldn’t even look at without dying was awful—in part because it’s just as hard for me not to look at something I’m not supposed to as it is to not think about something I’m actively trying not to think about.

7. Rusalki (Russian Mythology)

I hadn’t actually heard of rusalki until I was researching this post, but once I did, I knew from the way my stomach flipped that they would probably wriggle their way onto this list. Though often likened to mermaids, rusalki aren’t merely vicious half-human, half-fish folk—they’re the spirits of drowned women who lure their victims (primarily young men) to watery graves. Sometimes, it’s said to be a simple drowning; other times, they’re said to tickle their victims to death, which actually sounds pretty painful and awful when you think about it. At first, they appear beautiful, but their faces become distorted upon closer inspection

Also—here’s the part that really got me—they have a habit of coming up out of the water and climbing trees, where they’ll sit and comb their hair in the middle of the night. It’s not a particularly malicious act, and in fact some rusalki legends paint a gentler portrait of their kind, but the simple fact that you’re not safe from them even on land sent a pretty strong shiver down my spine. They also remind me of the ghost in a book that gave me a pretty good fright, once upon a time.

6. Banshees (Celtic Mythology)

No list of scary female monsters would be complete without banshees. The shrieking terrors of creepy Celtic lore, banshee are one of the many fairy folk said to roam places like the rolling green hills of the Emerald Isle. But these are not the kindly fairies, or even the mischievous ones, of childhood fantasies—banshee are heralds of woe whose cries are said to foreshadow the impending death of a loved one. They typically take the form of spectral fairy women, who may be beautiful or hideous and shrouded.

Not much is worse than having a strange woman scream outside your window and realize that someone’s time is up—and not necessarily know whose.

5. The “Other” Mother (Coraline)

It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about the book or the movie. In both cases, Coraline’s “Other” Mother is one of the scariest female monsters to terrorize young and old audiences alike. An otherworldly apparition, the “Other” Mother looks and sounds just like the titular Coraline’s mother (at first, anyway) except for one thing—she has black buttons where her eyes should be. And worse, she thinks black is Coraline’s color, too.

While this specific “Other” Mother only has eyes for Coraline herself during the events of the story, the ghost-children our young heroine eventually crosses paths with suggest that she has been preying on children for some time and is likely able to transform into just about anyone’s “Other” Mother she chooses to. She’s the ultimate disfiguration of the familiar—a person who is beloved and unquestioningly trusted becomes a demonic, manipulative monster who definitely doesn’t have your best interests at heart.

4. Xenomorph Queen (Alien franchise)

There was a time when xenomorphs wouldn’t have even been included on this list. When I watched the first two Alien movies, I had been burning through classic horror films like nobody’s business. So maybe I was just burned out, or maybe I was feeling overly logical. (After all, I wasn’t exactly planning a trip to space anytime soon.) Whatever the reason, at first, I wasn’t impressed. I liked Ripley, and appreciated that the cat survived, but the aliens just didn’t grab me.

Then, earlier this year, I finally played Alien: Isolation. Something about being trapped in close quarters with just one xenomorph—even if it wasn’t actually the Queen herself—was all it took to change my mind. And looking back, really, the Queen was some of the strongest nightmare fuel to ever slink into cinemas. Thanks a lot, Ridley Scott.

3. Hannah Washington (Until Dawn)

At the beginning of Until Dawn, Hannah Washington seems little more than cannon fodder for the plot. After being humiliated by her so-called friends, she and her sister Beth die a grisly accidental death in the woods—or so the player is led to believe. Eventually, it is revealed that while Beth died, Hannah did not, and was left to fend for herself. Abandoned in the snow-capped mountains when her friends returned home, she began to starve. As a last-ditch effort to survive, she succumbs to cannabalism, digging up Beth’s corpse and consuming it. That choice began her transformation into a wendigo—a doomed, disfigured spirit hungry for human flesh.

Hannah’s story is all the more horrifying for its tragic element. She did not deserve any of what happened to her, and never meant to become a monster—she is a prime example of how unfair life (and death) can be, and how the road to hell is all too often paved with good, or at least innocent, intentions.

2. Bloody Mary (Folklore)

I’m not frightened of too many “summoning” type stories—partly because you literally have to ask for such a haunting to happen, and partly because I spent way too much of my childhood optimistically chanting “Beetlejuice” to no avail. And while the Candyman movie is one of my favorite, truly scary movies I’ve seen, I’ve never been particularly worried that Candyman himself would show up at my doorstep.

But Bloody Mary, in spite of never having a decent movie made about her yet, will send me running for the hills quicker than you can say her name three times fast. I know, on some level, that it’s a totally irrational fear, but there’s a splinter of something inside of me that I’ve never been able to extract that curls up into a trembling, cowardly little ball the moment anyone so much as lights a candle in a dark bathroom. Perhaps it’s rooted in a primal of the dark, or perhaps I have a problem with mirrors—or maybe it’s just a damn creepy story.

For the precious few of you who don’t already know the story, Bloody Mary is supposed to be the vicious ghost of a witch who (according to most versions of the legend) can be summoned by speaking her name a certain number of times while holding a candle and looking into a mirror in a dark room. Typically, she then attacks the summoner. It is thought by some to be connected to old superstitions about being able to catch a glimpse of one’s future husband in a mirror. It also harkens back to the belief that if the spirit of a recently deceased person saw their own reflection in a mirror on their way out of the house, they would be trapped there forever. As for Mary herself? She might be Mary Tudor, nicknamed “Bloody Mary” in life for the many Protestant lives she ended; Elizabeth Bathory, who was believed to have bathed in the blood of many an innocent virgin to prolong her youth and vitality; or Mary Worth, a woman executed for witchcraft during the Salem witch trials.

1. Lisa (P.T.)

I am a huge fan of the Silent Hill series. Once (for a day, anyway) I was the top contributor to the series wiki. I have cosplayed as both Heather Mason and the Memory of Alessa from Silent Hill 3. I’ve played the games and watched the movies (and sometimes watched the games, too), and Mary Elizabeth McGlynn’s awesome vocal tracks have become a permanent part of my October playlist.

But as obsessive as I sometimes get about it, there remains a dark, shadowy place even my warped mind simply will not go. And its name is P.T.

The “playable trailer” for the Silent Hills game that never was broke a lot of people back in 2014 with its claustrophobic setting, first-person POV, and ultra-realistic graphics. Contrary to prior installments, there weren’t a whole lot of monsters to contend with, and the “creatures” that did show up were neither as visually imaginative or distorted as iconic figures like Pyramid Head or Mannequins.

But Lisa was different. Lisa, the ghost of a woman who had been murdered while pregnant, doesn’t look much different from your typical monstrous ghost. And yet, she triggers an extreme (and extremely irrational, I know) flight response in my nervous system that I have not, in five long years, been able to overcome. Oh, I played P.T. for myself—twice in fact—but never alone. There’s something about Lisa, about the sounds she makes and the way she twitches and the fact that she is ALWAYS RIGHT BEHIND YOU (gah), that finds the limit of my courage and pole-vaults right over it. Even as I’m writing this, I’m looking over my shoulder at every little sound, half-convinced she’s following me still, waiting for the right moment to pounce.

Honorable Mention: Onryō

The first draft of this list looked very different from the version you’re reading. Initially, I ranked every scary female monster I could think of from most to least scary, but that led me to a conundrum for one simple reason—more than half the list was comprised of onryō, or at least onryō-like beings. And while I could very definitely write several thousand words on why onryō are so scary, that’s not what I set out to do with this particular post.

Onryō, if you don’t know, are female yūrei, or ghosts, in Japanese folklore who bear—well, a grudge. Unlike other vengeful yūrei who seek revenge only against those who wronged them, onryō make no such distinction. The Grudge is perhaps the most obvious example

I consider Lisa to be one such ghost, although she also bears a strong resemblance to other types of yūrei, such as an ubume (pregnant ghost). As such, I am using her here as a stand-in for all the other terrifying onryō as well, most of whom came directly after her on my original list. Teke-teke, the ghost of a woman cut in half, and Samara/Sadako, of The Ring and Ringu fame, were tied for first before P.T. came along, and Kuchisake-Onna (the Slit-Mouthed Woman) wasn’t far behind. And, of course, Alessa Gillespie (from the Silent Hill series) and Alma Wade (from the F.E.A.R. games), while not technically ghosts, still certainly share some of the typical onryō characteristics, such as long, flowing black hair and a paranormal thirst for vengeance—and they, too, ranked highly on my initial list.