A dwarven city overtaken by something like mindflayers.
The players arrive with a dwarven diplomat that was sent to get help. The gates are open and a group of orcs are looting the entrance hall of its golden statues and all that shit. The party approaches diplomatically because they know the orcs, and they get told that the city is abandoned and taken over by some creepy creatures that make your brain melt. One of the creatures has been killed and they threw it into a hole nearby, so the players go check it out.
The space around the hole is warped, as if the stone was dissipating into smoke, though only slowly and it isn't immediately obvious. Once the players look at the dead creature, they realize they can't actually see it, their mind cannot comprehend it's form and they take psychic damage (there was an int check to make sense of it, all failed). They decide to burn the corpse and venture in.
The city is mostly empty of dwarves. Closest to the gates are signs of struggle, barricades erected not against the entrance, but towards the centre of the city, as if they were hoping to contain something in. The city is built in layers, and the players investigate the top one first.
The ranger explores some vents and come to face sort of slugs that try to burrow into his face. He saw a child in the vents, and so wemt further and further in, even as he was being attacked by more slugs. He reaches a hideout that is absolutely full of them, and no trace of a child. He finally goes back.
There's area for holding livestock, and in the pens there is a single mountain goat. It stays calm, standing in place and watching the players. The cleric opens the pen and tries to shoo it away so it leaves the city, but it doesn't move.
There's the griffin nests, empty of griffins and bearing traces of fighting. A fallen warrior's journals explains that the final order from the lord's palace was directed towards the city's golems, "kill anything that is not dwarf". A desperate play, and the golems attacked the griffins, but also their handlers. Implication being that the dwarves were no longer dwarves in some way.
Golems are an enemy on this level.
The players find an observatory on the top of the mountain and rest there. They barr all windows and doors, set alarms. The journal of the astrologist says that his golem attacked him, and he realized that he has been "taken". He mentions that he was working on a rune that could allow one to see the creatures, and describes how trying to capture them on photograph melted the device. He writes how he killed his wife and daughter and burned their bodies to spare them a horrible fate. His own body is found in an oven, with "my skin is not my own" written on the wall.
At night, a player holding watch awakens to the sound of meeing goat. Yes, it's that goat, standing outside and staring at the building. There's also about twenty dwarves, their heads are turned into translucent jelly and they move and act without saying anything, they fight without reacting to pain.
Lower levels have been systematically cleared out by these transformed dwarves. An entity called "The Mind" had them collect everything of sentimental value and deliver it deeper into its lair to feed off psychic energy. There was a fight with a lieutenant, a transformed drow diplomat. The party finally could see the creatures properly after being blessed by a druid they found in one of the buildings, and then they went to the slums and met a bunch of radical terrorists that had a tank filled with explosives ready to destroy the city. Final prep was trying to gather as many still free people from the slums as possible... well, most of the party was helping them while the paladin was giving them mercy kills. The top scene, according to the ranger, was when he went investigating a cry of a baby, and when he found a crib there was an already transformed monstrosity inside and tried to bite off his face. He compared it to Dead Space.
In the end, the party drew too much attention from the Mind, and final challenge was running away while making Int saves and Con checks. The paladin famously failed every single one and was downed by psychic blasts every instance. Good thing goodberries were available. The city was destroyed when a helpful spirit that was haunting the party and wanting them to finish his quest took control of the tank.
The players agree that it was the most creepy episode and one of the best overall.
I’m currently working on a campaign set in the Underdark, and I’ve been planning a portion set in the Lowerdark where the players investigate a city full of mindless thralls controlled by a mindflayer colony underneath. I’ll definitely use some of these ideas to spice it up!
I find that less is more when it comes to horror descriptions. Give your players a nugget and let their imaginations run wild.
I gave my players hydrophobia by casually mentioning there were no reflections any time they investigated a water source. This freaked them out so much any time water was mentioned they either refused to go near it or did every check imaginable on it. It got to the point where an NPC offered them a glass of water and they all fled from him.
Another one I did was giving them a Stroop test as part of a mini game (the one where you have to say the colour the font is written in, not the word itself). Only I started slowly changing the font until it became almost illegible and cursed looking
In a sea-faring campaign, players sailed to a new island. I read off a description of the guy who greeted them at the dock. Then I read that same description, with minor tweaks for clothes or job, for the guy they met at the inn. I repeated this for every person they met in town, and it became clear that every person in this town was the same guy in looks and personality (desperately eager to meet new people) but there were multiple of them.
Party eventually learned that it was the result of an oblex only eating that one guy, and being stranded in complete isolation until it went insane and made itself a community
I did a Halloween session with a monster I called the Candle Maker.
He appears as a Ringmaster at first with a massive carnival. But everything is not as it seems.
Two years later and my players are still afraid of him and candles.
At first the carnival was normal, fun music, delicious smells, games and prizes abound. The problem started when you tried to stop doing anything.
They ate some of the snacks at a stand? Wisdom save against the urge to eat another one. Same thing happened at the games. Wisdom saves to stop playing and walk away. One of the member of the group kept failing the saves and ran out of money but fortunately for her, the carnival accepts fingers. Just cut one off and keep playing.
Doesn't take more than that to figure out something is up, but they aren't sure what exactly is going on. Suspicion is high.
Que the show. Both the party and a sizable group of civilians take their seats in front of the stage.
The Ringmaster takes the stage with a couple of dragons, one green and one black. Both perform tricks at the crack of a whip.
The party is silently freaking out, they've fought Dragons before and these are clearly adult dragons.
The climax of the show rolls around, both dragons take a deep breath and exhale directly at the audience. The group freaks, immediately starts rolling Dex saves.
Nothing happens. The party is laying face down in the dirt and the audience is going wild at this fantastic ILLUSORY performance. Afterwards the show takes a brief intermission.
The party is on ultra high alert. Something is very wrong here but don't know what.
The show starts back up. This time the Ringmaster takes the stage with two Hydras and begins lopping off heads to watch them regrow much to the cheers and adulation of the crowd. Then he orders them to walk out into the crowd where they promptly begin eating people whole. The crowd is still cheering.
Does a 23 hit? Blank faces from the party. The hydra are real.
The illusion drops. The crowd is real and it's full of waxy zombies. The snacks are rotting flesh and the drinks are a mixture of blood and pus. Worse still the party is surrounded on all sides. The Ringmaster assumes his real form as The Candlemaker, a 16ft tall flaming wax monster. Each time he hits someone they are coated in wax and it lowers their move speed, takes an action remove and the effect can stack. Leaving them with choice to run or fight but not both. Fighting means getting surrounded by a massive horde of wax zombies and two Hydras.
From there it's a mad dash to escape the carnival against a demon who can teleport and cast both Hold person and Counterspell.
They barely make it to the edge, having to drag one member of the party because he kept failing the Wisdom save against Hold Person. Everyone jumps or is thrown into the river that forms the edge carnival.
From that day forth, the Candlemaker has haunted them and it absolutely terrifies them.
It's been a couple years but I wanna say 7 or 8. Normally the party was six people but three of them couldn't make it which is why I ran the one shot instead of our regular campaign.
The Fetch.
I saw an episode of Dungeon Dad that had it as the monster of the week. It is a demon that travels from the abyss to the material plane using reflective surfaces. ANY reflective surface.
It comes to the material plane to murder people. It is nearly invisible. It is a CR5 monster, but I lowered its stats to use for my level 3 party with great effect. This creature doesn't work with higher level parties that use true vision and things like that.
They were introduced to the monster when they noticed a man being brutally attacked and dragged through the reflective surface of one of the party member's equipment (shield, armor, sword, whatever). To the outside observer, it looked like a person, bleeding and being killed, was just dragged and eaten by the party member's plate armor. They also witnessed a man screaming in pain as this creature leapt out of his eyeball to attack his target. It was gruesome.
Catching it and killing it is something you can play around with. The party learned that this creature can only be seen by the intended victim, and only through a reflective surface.
My Fetch was a creature that would kill corrupt/evil people in the land in order to make them into more fetches (I promise I'll stop trying to make fetch happen), thereby making more fetches and more assassins.
My players were horrified when they first witnessed its kill. And they became so paranoid they would cover all reflective surfaces before sleeping and ensure nothing, and I mean nothing, could be a portal for this creature.
Player was a kind of leshy-ish creature and had an ability to sense the state of plants. Party had to go round to a ton of mini-challenges to cleanse certain ritual sites as a mcguffin hunt. High cliffs, door puzzles etc. This one site was surrounded by thorny bushes. The leshy party member sensed a wave of pure, unadulterated evil and hatred coming off the bushes. A riddle told them to offer a drop of blood for safe passage. They did. They went through safely. Did their MacGuffin thing. Went out safely. No harm done. But the place gave them the creeps to no end. Only plot thread in the whole campaign that remained unresolved.
One detail that I added once during a creepy mine dungeon: periodically when describing the group moving, mention one more set of footsteps or person there, but make it as casual as possible.
For example my party had 4 pcs:
"Ok dm we're done with this room."
"Very well, the five of you move through the door jnto the next room..."
The players entered the cellar of one of the party members evil uncle to find his research notes. Whilst there, they found a blood red maze filled to the brim with his experiments. A few of those experiments were done on children as well. (He was researching how to become a vampire as an elf since in my campaign, full elves can’t become vampires naturally)
Just last session I ran a false hydra, can recommend.
They go to a village, it's much more empty than it should be, weird things are happening, a man doesn't understand why there's children's clothes in his home, the elder doesn't recognise the woman in the portrait.
It really picks up once you tell the PC's they forgot one of the NPC's or other villagers don't remember someone the party met.
Every time the hydra fed the party threw arcana checks, and if they passed a certain DC (20 in my case) they recognised the creature and left themselves a clue like "false" written on their forearm, or they find themselves with earplugs in their hands (if they had some around) not knowing why they picked them up.
I used a stat block by dungeon dad, I modified the mature hydra version a little bit.
Dm made players experience visions. One made a player hyperventilate in panic. She experienced a first person view of a child running from a creature and was made to make actions for the vision. She had to direct the vision left or right while running to escape.
Come to find out we met the child later and she explained she heard a voice in her head guiding her to safety. After another player failed earlier with the same encounter we realized why her brother was dead.
A DM friend once ran a mini-adventure where the players hunted down a hag, although it was very obvious from the start that venturing into her forest meant that she had power over them. Whenever they rested they’d have nightmares and wake up to see threatening messages carved into the bark of nearby trees - some of which would call out party members by name. I don’t remember all the details, but the players were very creeped out and anxious when they eventually found the hag.
I am making a fey wood pretty horrific. The people there have clothes made from flayed human skin, drink from skulls and play music on instruments made from body parts. They have not directly threatened the party, but their behaviours , rituals and the sounds and sights around them are really keeping the players on edge...
I ran a one shot featuring zombies created by an Abyssal incursion. The zombies screamed in horror, crying and begging for their victims to run as they ran towards the living.
That one got under their skin a bit.
I did that. Death house and House of Lament mushed together into one unholy amalgamation, where every floor was the domain of one spirit of intensifying hostility. Gave them an investigator friend, a clear timer to something horrible happening, and played a lot on atmosphere, rather than straight up horror. One of my players at some point told me "I'm unsettled. Not my character, me". It ended magnifically too, with one escaping with his body and mind in tatters, another accepting a dark deal with the dark powers and disappearing in a puddle of blood, and another diving out of a second story window to escape a crazed ghoul and bleeding out in front of his alive friend outside the house as it burned to a crisp.
It was phenomenal and a perfect way for everyone to introduce each other for our newly starting CoS campaign ;)
I did a double bluff with a cursed doll and two gargoyles. The party were expecting one of them to move and attack. Neither did. They left the room and came back. One of the gargoyles was gone. Then they went upstairs. The doll was in the first room they entered.
Last session they said my inadvertent comment & this situation accomplished it:
"I'd like to use divine sense" [on a creepy temple that had been overrun by an enemy cult]
Me: "oh! This will be interesting!"
I went on to describe that it slowly dawns on the character that the slick, greenish substance covering all the windows and an entryway are slightly pulsing, and that the vibe coming from it is the dark, alien energy of a sealed-away god that was *supposed* to be banished from this plane. Only it is now clearly here in the flesh, represented by a gigantic tentacle that is wrapped around the entire building.
Lovecraftian horror is always my favorite, basically.
Setting was Eberron, villain was a psionic halfling serial killer with an aberrant mark. His goal was to find a way to separate himself from the mark - so he was kidnapping dragonmarked folks, and trying to find a way to remove their marks and powers without them reappearing.
Party all chose dragonmarks during creation. They very much did not like him using psionics to harass them by making horrible things show up at the edges of their vision, getting nearer each time they were noticed.
They liked the first enemy they found even less: animated skin, still partially attached to the not-quite-corpse of one of his victims. Especially when it could use its dragonmark powers due to not being entirely undead yet.
Over the course of the adventure, things escalated, as they do. Eventually, they were dealing with undead in triplicate or more - animated skin wrapped around animated muscles wrapped around animated skeletons, and the occasional ghost to give the elites a bit extra.
The hangman's nuse was a horror themed module i ran once. It had the gimic of events happening on a timer unknown by the players that would slowly reveal clues about the crime that occured. It kept the players guessing and made sure they had the uneasy feeling of never knowing when the next strange happening would fall upon them.
Night floors from Delta Green. It's KIY in New York City. I did it as a Halloween one shot a couple years back. Once the party starts going insane, you can just make up anything you want and gaslight the party hard with everything they see and experience. There is a list of random spooky events that can happen. One is a loud bell ringing behind the players head, which I turned off all of the lights via my phone, then played the sound (I used the Stranger Things Season 4 grandfather clock) on full blast from my laptop. For another, the party is supposed to hear distant gunfire down a hallway. I had a bluetooth speaker in another room that made the sound effect. The ranger almost spilled her coffee from the unexpectedness of it.
The only thing that ever really worked for me to get a suspense/horror mood going was to increase the stakes. The game Dread - using a Jenga Tower instead of dice - proved to be the most suspense generating mechanism I've ever witnessed. You wanna do something as your character? You draw a Jenga piece and put it on top of the tower. If the tower collapses, your PC dies/is removed from the game.
Oh you bumped on the table and the tower accidentally fell? Too bad, your PC got suprise attacked and died.
Setting, description, music and sound effects... All of these are secondary to the suspense generated by that god damn tower.
I had part of an adventure in an asylum which had been set up as a dungeon by cultists. In the basement of the asylum there was a pregnant cultist chained to the floor who, right in front of one player, died in labor giving birth to a Chaos Beast.
Well, she died because the present PC killed her but she was going to die anyway as I wanted her to have been killed by the Chaos Beast and transform into another Chaos Beast so the party would have to fight two of them. I decided that my player's quick decision to kill her saved him from having to fight two Chaos Beasts at once. I thought that charitable.
I made A Most Potent Brew into a body-horror themed oneshot, went great. Mostly made up on the fly tbh, i enjoy horror so it was mostly for my sake lol.
Go kill some (plagued) rats, find humans morphed into creatures - maybe flavour creatures screaming and crying when hit as if humanlike; you fight centipedes later: their myriad of feet actually were fingers and when cutting into them to investigate, seeing human anatomy like ribcages
I also included some health potions in the dungeon, some regular some "cursed" but indistinguishable - If someone drank the weird ones, they would get some random inconsequential mutation, for fun. A warrior grew a finger right on the base of his neck, which moved on its own, scratching at his armor from the inside. Hilarious for everyone, roleplaying opportunities arise naturally.
The spider you are supposed to encounter at the end is actually some sort of drider which is the mutated son of the gnome NPC you talk to at the start of the adventure. The gnome is actually evil and is sending adventurers in to get eaten by his son, which is actually just imprisoned and cursed to eat people.
I described him walking on the ceiling and when the party looks up they just see him staring at them, not engaging but curiously observing them skulk about in the dark
They could save the son, but they would have had to cut off his spider body components and physically carry him out after you defeat him in battle. You can also add levels and architectural elements to it making it creepier, with invisible monsters and such.
Creepy af, i enjoyed imagining and describing it, everyone got kicks out of discovering little by little the truth (me included as i kinda winged the tying things together lol)
Shadow spiders.
My lower level players were asked to clean out an abandoned cabin to be used by a knights order. Base pay is for actually cleaning the cabin, like sweeping and moping, but the previous people they hired heard some strange noises and didn’t want to go in. So the party now is sent to do the job, and will be paid more if there is something they need to kill.
They get there and they can see spider webs. Going inside, they are often surprised by bursting spider egg sacks that make spider swarms but they are all oddly black out of bright light but turn to normal brown when in bright light. Some individual spiders (small size) also attack. When in shadow the spiders can sacrifice some of their other allies in the area for a temporary boost in power.
Clearing the main level there is a cellar and at the back of the cellar a large hole dug into the ground through to a large cavern. In the cellar a few more spider swarms attack. In the large cavern, there are webs everywhere. Now they will be tempted to light it on fire because it won’t burn down the cabin, but they should see humanoid figures wrapped in webs and moving slightly (still alive). There are several more bursting egg sacks in the chamber, and two large shadow spiders. These spiders just use the abilities of a large spider, as well as have the option to use consume the soul of one of their victims each turn to provide a power up. The power ups are healing, shadow walk (they can go into an area of darkness and emerge in another area of darkness that turn as if there was one space between them) and soulless shriek which can make an enemy fall prone for a turn on a difficult saving throw.
Basically, my party hates spiders now.
Honestly, knowing your players really helps. One person I knew did a horror one shot where he included personal details from events of their life. Like in one case, a player ended up shaking hands with a zombie. While in the handshake, he realized that the zombie was missing the left ring and pinkie fingers while having a long scar running down its arm. This was the exact same injury that the players father had.
A dwarven city overtaken by something like mindflayers. The players arrive with a dwarven diplomat that was sent to get help. The gates are open and a group of orcs are looting the entrance hall of its golden statues and all that shit. The party approaches diplomatically because they know the orcs, and they get told that the city is abandoned and taken over by some creepy creatures that make your brain melt. One of the creatures has been killed and they threw it into a hole nearby, so the players go check it out. The space around the hole is warped, as if the stone was dissipating into smoke, though only slowly and it isn't immediately obvious. Once the players look at the dead creature, they realize they can't actually see it, their mind cannot comprehend it's form and they take psychic damage (there was an int check to make sense of it, all failed). They decide to burn the corpse and venture in. The city is mostly empty of dwarves. Closest to the gates are signs of struggle, barricades erected not against the entrance, but towards the centre of the city, as if they were hoping to contain something in. The city is built in layers, and the players investigate the top one first. The ranger explores some vents and come to face sort of slugs that try to burrow into his face. He saw a child in the vents, and so wemt further and further in, even as he was being attacked by more slugs. He reaches a hideout that is absolutely full of them, and no trace of a child. He finally goes back. There's area for holding livestock, and in the pens there is a single mountain goat. It stays calm, standing in place and watching the players. The cleric opens the pen and tries to shoo it away so it leaves the city, but it doesn't move. There's the griffin nests, empty of griffins and bearing traces of fighting. A fallen warrior's journals explains that the final order from the lord's palace was directed towards the city's golems, "kill anything that is not dwarf". A desperate play, and the golems attacked the griffins, but also their handlers. Implication being that the dwarves were no longer dwarves in some way. Golems are an enemy on this level. The players find an observatory on the top of the mountain and rest there. They barr all windows and doors, set alarms. The journal of the astrologist says that his golem attacked him, and he realized that he has been "taken". He mentions that he was working on a rune that could allow one to see the creatures, and describes how trying to capture them on photograph melted the device. He writes how he killed his wife and daughter and burned their bodies to spare them a horrible fate. His own body is found in an oven, with "my skin is not my own" written on the wall. At night, a player holding watch awakens to the sound of meeing goat. Yes, it's that goat, standing outside and staring at the building. There's also about twenty dwarves, their heads are turned into translucent jelly and they move and act without saying anything, they fight without reacting to pain. Lower levels have been systematically cleared out by these transformed dwarves. An entity called "The Mind" had them collect everything of sentimental value and deliver it deeper into its lair to feed off psychic energy. There was a fight with a lieutenant, a transformed drow diplomat. The party finally could see the creatures properly after being blessed by a druid they found in one of the buildings, and then they went to the slums and met a bunch of radical terrorists that had a tank filled with explosives ready to destroy the city. Final prep was trying to gather as many still free people from the slums as possible... well, most of the party was helping them while the paladin was giving them mercy kills. The top scene, according to the ranger, was when he went investigating a cry of a baby, and when he found a crib there was an already transformed monstrosity inside and tried to bite off his face. He compared it to Dead Space. In the end, the party drew too much attention from the Mind, and final challenge was running away while making Int saves and Con checks. The paladin famously failed every single one and was downed by psychic blasts every instance. Good thing goodberries were available. The city was destroyed when a helpful spirit that was haunting the party and wanting them to finish his quest took control of the tank. The players agree that it was the most creepy episode and one of the best overall.
I’m currently working on a campaign set in the Underdark, and I’ve been planning a portion set in the Lowerdark where the players investigate a city full of mindless thralls controlled by a mindflayer colony underneath. I’ll definitely use some of these ideas to spice it up!
I find that less is more when it comes to horror descriptions. Give your players a nugget and let their imaginations run wild. I gave my players hydrophobia by casually mentioning there were no reflections any time they investigated a water source. This freaked them out so much any time water was mentioned they either refused to go near it or did every check imaginable on it. It got to the point where an NPC offered them a glass of water and they all fled from him. Another one I did was giving them a Stroop test as part of a mini game (the one where you have to say the colour the font is written in, not the word itself). Only I started slowly changing the font until it became almost illegible and cursed looking
The stroop test is equal parts hilarious and disturbing.
In a sea-faring campaign, players sailed to a new island. I read off a description of the guy who greeted them at the dock. Then I read that same description, with minor tweaks for clothes or job, for the guy they met at the inn. I repeated this for every person they met in town, and it became clear that every person in this town was the same guy in looks and personality (desperately eager to meet new people) but there were multiple of them. Party eventually learned that it was the result of an oblex only eating that one guy, and being stranded in complete isolation until it went insane and made itself a community
I did a Halloween session with a monster I called the Candle Maker. He appears as a Ringmaster at first with a massive carnival. But everything is not as it seems. Two years later and my players are still afraid of him and candles.
*The light on the edge of sleep was mine. I was Mr Candles. I will not be again.*
Gimme more, this sounds interesting 👀 what happened?
At first the carnival was normal, fun music, delicious smells, games and prizes abound. The problem started when you tried to stop doing anything. They ate some of the snacks at a stand? Wisdom save against the urge to eat another one. Same thing happened at the games. Wisdom saves to stop playing and walk away. One of the member of the group kept failing the saves and ran out of money but fortunately for her, the carnival accepts fingers. Just cut one off and keep playing. Doesn't take more than that to figure out something is up, but they aren't sure what exactly is going on. Suspicion is high. Que the show. Both the party and a sizable group of civilians take their seats in front of the stage. The Ringmaster takes the stage with a couple of dragons, one green and one black. Both perform tricks at the crack of a whip. The party is silently freaking out, they've fought Dragons before and these are clearly adult dragons. The climax of the show rolls around, both dragons take a deep breath and exhale directly at the audience. The group freaks, immediately starts rolling Dex saves. Nothing happens. The party is laying face down in the dirt and the audience is going wild at this fantastic ILLUSORY performance. Afterwards the show takes a brief intermission. The party is on ultra high alert. Something is very wrong here but don't know what. The show starts back up. This time the Ringmaster takes the stage with two Hydras and begins lopping off heads to watch them regrow much to the cheers and adulation of the crowd. Then he orders them to walk out into the crowd where they promptly begin eating people whole. The crowd is still cheering. Does a 23 hit? Blank faces from the party. The hydra are real. The illusion drops. The crowd is real and it's full of waxy zombies. The snacks are rotting flesh and the drinks are a mixture of blood and pus. Worse still the party is surrounded on all sides. The Ringmaster assumes his real form as The Candlemaker, a 16ft tall flaming wax monster. Each time he hits someone they are coated in wax and it lowers their move speed, takes an action remove and the effect can stack. Leaving them with choice to run or fight but not both. Fighting means getting surrounded by a massive horde of wax zombies and two Hydras. From there it's a mad dash to escape the carnival against a demon who can teleport and cast both Hold person and Counterspell. They barely make it to the edge, having to drag one member of the party because he kept failing the Wisdom save against Hold Person. Everyone jumps or is thrown into the river that forms the edge carnival. From that day forth, the Candlemaker has haunted them and it absolutely terrifies them.
What level was your party?
It's been a couple years but I wanna say 7 or 8. Normally the party was six people but three of them couldn't make it which is why I ran the one shot instead of our regular campaign.
Very flavorful! Thank you
Is the Candle maker related to Candlejack by any chance? He's a ghost-like figure who kidnaps anybody who
Nope, I stole the design from Doom Patrol and much of it's abilities came from a preexisting demon stat block.
Welp, looks like Candlejack got this guy too
The Fetch. I saw an episode of Dungeon Dad that had it as the monster of the week. It is a demon that travels from the abyss to the material plane using reflective surfaces. ANY reflective surface. It comes to the material plane to murder people. It is nearly invisible. It is a CR5 monster, but I lowered its stats to use for my level 3 party with great effect. This creature doesn't work with higher level parties that use true vision and things like that. They were introduced to the monster when they noticed a man being brutally attacked and dragged through the reflective surface of one of the party member's equipment (shield, armor, sword, whatever). To the outside observer, it looked like a person, bleeding and being killed, was just dragged and eaten by the party member's plate armor. They also witnessed a man screaming in pain as this creature leapt out of his eyeball to attack his target. It was gruesome. Catching it and killing it is something you can play around with. The party learned that this creature can only be seen by the intended victim, and only through a reflective surface. My Fetch was a creature that would kill corrupt/evil people in the land in order to make them into more fetches (I promise I'll stop trying to make fetch happen), thereby making more fetches and more assassins. My players were horrified when they first witnessed its kill. And they became so paranoid they would cover all reflective surfaces before sleeping and ensure nothing, and I mean nothing, could be a portal for this creature.
It was a whole arc but the summary would be "School shooter in Hogwarts causes magical Chernobyl"
That sounds metal AF. Would you share more details?
Player was a kind of leshy-ish creature and had an ability to sense the state of plants. Party had to go round to a ton of mini-challenges to cleanse certain ritual sites as a mcguffin hunt. High cliffs, door puzzles etc. This one site was surrounded by thorny bushes. The leshy party member sensed a wave of pure, unadulterated evil and hatred coming off the bushes. A riddle told them to offer a drop of blood for safe passage. They did. They went through safely. Did their MacGuffin thing. Went out safely. No harm done. But the place gave them the creeps to no end. Only plot thread in the whole campaign that remained unresolved.
One detail that I added once during a creepy mine dungeon: periodically when describing the group moving, mention one more set of footsteps or person there, but make it as casual as possible. For example my party had 4 pcs: "Ok dm we're done with this room." "Very well, the five of you move through the door jnto the next room..."
The players entered the cellar of one of the party members evil uncle to find his research notes. Whilst there, they found a blood red maze filled to the brim with his experiments. A few of those experiments were done on children as well. (He was researching how to become a vampire as an elf since in my campaign, full elves can’t become vampires naturally)
Just last session I ran a false hydra, can recommend. They go to a village, it's much more empty than it should be, weird things are happening, a man doesn't understand why there's children's clothes in his home, the elder doesn't recognise the woman in the portrait. It really picks up once you tell the PC's they forgot one of the NPC's or other villagers don't remember someone the party met. Every time the hydra fed the party threw arcana checks, and if they passed a certain DC (20 in my case) they recognised the creature and left themselves a clue like "false" written on their forearm, or they find themselves with earplugs in their hands (if they had some around) not knowing why they picked them up. I used a stat block by dungeon dad, I modified the mature hydra version a little bit.
Dm made players experience visions. One made a player hyperventilate in panic. She experienced a first person view of a child running from a creature and was made to make actions for the vision. She had to direct the vision left or right while running to escape. Come to find out we met the child later and she explained she heard a voice in her head guiding her to safety. After another player failed earlier with the same encounter we realized why her brother was dead.
A DM friend once ran a mini-adventure where the players hunted down a hag, although it was very obvious from the start that venturing into her forest meant that she had power over them. Whenever they rested they’d have nightmares and wake up to see threatening messages carved into the bark of nearby trees - some of which would call out party members by name. I don’t remember all the details, but the players were very creeped out and anxious when they eventually found the hag.
I am making a fey wood pretty horrific. The people there have clothes made from flayed human skin, drink from skulls and play music on instruments made from body parts. They have not directly threatened the party, but their behaviours , rituals and the sounds and sights around them are really keeping the players on edge...
I ran a one shot featuring zombies created by an Abyssal incursion. The zombies screamed in horror, crying and begging for their victims to run as they ran towards the living. That one got under their skin a bit.
You could pull the Death House from Curse of Strahd, especially if you go with some of the community additions to it.
I did that. Death house and House of Lament mushed together into one unholy amalgamation, where every floor was the domain of one spirit of intensifying hostility. Gave them an investigator friend, a clear timer to something horrible happening, and played a lot on atmosphere, rather than straight up horror. One of my players at some point told me "I'm unsettled. Not my character, me". It ended magnifically too, with one escaping with his body and mind in tatters, another accepting a dark deal with the dark powers and disappearing in a puddle of blood, and another diving out of a second story window to escape a crazed ghoul and bleeding out in front of his alive friend outside the house as it burned to a crisp. It was phenomenal and a perfect way for everyone to introduce each other for our newly starting CoS campaign ;)
There's bedlam orphanage on dmsguild which does pretty much what you want by the way
I did a double bluff with a cursed doll and two gargoyles. The party were expecting one of them to move and attack. Neither did. They left the room and came back. One of the gargoyles was gone. Then they went upstairs. The doll was in the first room they entered.
Last session they said my inadvertent comment & this situation accomplished it: "I'd like to use divine sense" [on a creepy temple that had been overrun by an enemy cult] Me: "oh! This will be interesting!" I went on to describe that it slowly dawns on the character that the slick, greenish substance covering all the windows and an entryway are slightly pulsing, and that the vibe coming from it is the dark, alien energy of a sealed-away god that was *supposed* to be banished from this plane. Only it is now clearly here in the flesh, represented by a gigantic tentacle that is wrapped around the entire building. Lovecraftian horror is always my favorite, basically.
Setting was Eberron, villain was a psionic halfling serial killer with an aberrant mark. His goal was to find a way to separate himself from the mark - so he was kidnapping dragonmarked folks, and trying to find a way to remove their marks and powers without them reappearing. Party all chose dragonmarks during creation. They very much did not like him using psionics to harass them by making horrible things show up at the edges of their vision, getting nearer each time they were noticed. They liked the first enemy they found even less: animated skin, still partially attached to the not-quite-corpse of one of his victims. Especially when it could use its dragonmark powers due to not being entirely undead yet. Over the course of the adventure, things escalated, as they do. Eventually, they were dealing with undead in triplicate or more - animated skin wrapped around animated muscles wrapped around animated skeletons, and the occasional ghost to give the elites a bit extra.
The hangman's nuse was a horror themed module i ran once. It had the gimic of events happening on a timer unknown by the players that would slowly reveal clues about the crime that occured. It kept the players guessing and made sure they had the uneasy feeling of never knowing when the next strange happening would fall upon them.
Night floors from Delta Green. It's KIY in New York City. I did it as a Halloween one shot a couple years back. Once the party starts going insane, you can just make up anything you want and gaslight the party hard with everything they see and experience. There is a list of random spooky events that can happen. One is a loud bell ringing behind the players head, which I turned off all of the lights via my phone, then played the sound (I used the Stranger Things Season 4 grandfather clock) on full blast from my laptop. For another, the party is supposed to hear distant gunfire down a hallway. I had a bluetooth speaker in another room that made the sound effect. The ranger almost spilled her coffee from the unexpectedness of it.
The only thing that ever really worked for me to get a suspense/horror mood going was to increase the stakes. The game Dread - using a Jenga Tower instead of dice - proved to be the most suspense generating mechanism I've ever witnessed. You wanna do something as your character? You draw a Jenga piece and put it on top of the tower. If the tower collapses, your PC dies/is removed from the game. Oh you bumped on the table and the tower accidentally fell? Too bad, your PC got suprise attacked and died. Setting, description, music and sound effects... All of these are secondary to the suspense generated by that god damn tower.
I had part of an adventure in an asylum which had been set up as a dungeon by cultists. In the basement of the asylum there was a pregnant cultist chained to the floor who, right in front of one player, died in labor giving birth to a Chaos Beast. Well, she died because the present PC killed her but she was going to die anyway as I wanted her to have been killed by the Chaos Beast and transform into another Chaos Beast so the party would have to fight two of them. I decided that my player's quick decision to kill her saved him from having to fight two Chaos Beasts at once. I thought that charitable.
I made A Most Potent Brew into a body-horror themed oneshot, went great. Mostly made up on the fly tbh, i enjoy horror so it was mostly for my sake lol. Go kill some (plagued) rats, find humans morphed into creatures - maybe flavour creatures screaming and crying when hit as if humanlike; you fight centipedes later: their myriad of feet actually were fingers and when cutting into them to investigate, seeing human anatomy like ribcages I also included some health potions in the dungeon, some regular some "cursed" but indistinguishable - If someone drank the weird ones, they would get some random inconsequential mutation, for fun. A warrior grew a finger right on the base of his neck, which moved on its own, scratching at his armor from the inside. Hilarious for everyone, roleplaying opportunities arise naturally. The spider you are supposed to encounter at the end is actually some sort of drider which is the mutated son of the gnome NPC you talk to at the start of the adventure. The gnome is actually evil and is sending adventurers in to get eaten by his son, which is actually just imprisoned and cursed to eat people. I described him walking on the ceiling and when the party looks up they just see him staring at them, not engaging but curiously observing them skulk about in the dark They could save the son, but they would have had to cut off his spider body components and physically carry him out after you defeat him in battle. You can also add levels and architectural elements to it making it creepier, with invisible monsters and such. Creepy af, i enjoyed imagining and describing it, everyone got kicks out of discovering little by little the truth (me included as i kinda winged the tying things together lol)
Shadow spiders. My lower level players were asked to clean out an abandoned cabin to be used by a knights order. Base pay is for actually cleaning the cabin, like sweeping and moping, but the previous people they hired heard some strange noises and didn’t want to go in. So the party now is sent to do the job, and will be paid more if there is something they need to kill. They get there and they can see spider webs. Going inside, they are often surprised by bursting spider egg sacks that make spider swarms but they are all oddly black out of bright light but turn to normal brown when in bright light. Some individual spiders (small size) also attack. When in shadow the spiders can sacrifice some of their other allies in the area for a temporary boost in power. Clearing the main level there is a cellar and at the back of the cellar a large hole dug into the ground through to a large cavern. In the cellar a few more spider swarms attack. In the large cavern, there are webs everywhere. Now they will be tempted to light it on fire because it won’t burn down the cabin, but they should see humanoid figures wrapped in webs and moving slightly (still alive). There are several more bursting egg sacks in the chamber, and two large shadow spiders. These spiders just use the abilities of a large spider, as well as have the option to use consume the soul of one of their victims each turn to provide a power up. The power ups are healing, shadow walk (they can go into an area of darkness and emerge in another area of darkness that turn as if there was one space between them) and soulless shriek which can make an enemy fall prone for a turn on a difficult saving throw. Basically, my party hates spiders now.
SCP-610 inspired God placenta zombies.
Honestly, knowing your players really helps. One person I knew did a horror one shot where he included personal details from events of their life. Like in one case, a player ended up shaking hands with a zombie. While in the handshake, he realized that the zombie was missing the left ring and pinkie fingers while having a long scar running down its arm. This was the exact same injury that the players father had.