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Spooky season is here, and as many GMs know, D&D is the perfect staging ground to gather your friends around the table just to scare the daylights out of them in the name of Halloween. As often as D&D can be light-hearted and jovial, longtime players know how dramatically the vibe can take a turn when the session unexpectedly takes a turn towards the horrific. When the party starts to suspect they're being stalked by a lich preying on their friends, or when a haunting revenant traps a teammate within its ravenous walls, locking them inside its twisted halls, D&D reminds you it's a game that is just as capable of making you laugh as it is of making you scream.

Sometimes, a good D&D session can be just as frightening as even the scariest horror movies. D&D can be fruitful ground to explore the macabre and the haunted with the right ambiance, plot, and perhaps most importantly… monsters. And with a wealth of spooky creatures to choose from, there’s no denying that horror is written into the very DNA of Dungeons and Dragons itself. Between iconic stories and settings like Castle Ravenloft, Curse of Strahd, or the newly released Stranger Things: Welcome to the Hellfire Club adventures, D&D is a welcoming home for the horror fans, GMs and players alike. 

The Gibbering Mouther

AC 9, HP 52, (CR 2), Speed 20ft, Con (+3), Immunity: prone, Darkvision 60ft

Latest Appearance: Monster Manual, 2024

This is a tried and true monster that checks all the necessary boxes of the quintessential horror encounter, and one I’ve run more than a few times. The Gibbering Mouther is a terrifying and outright grotesque creature that will always be handy for a GM to have in their back pocket for the countless times their party finds themselves in cramped, dark caves and underground tunnels. Originating from the Underdark, the Gibbering Mouther is a horrifying abomination that lives in the darkest and dampest places, awkwardly rolling and writhing as the sound of pained, tortured screams emerge from its tendril-like organs. With its Gibbering ability, the Gibbering Mouther erupts into tortured screams reverberating from its many mouths, causing party members to lose their turn or, worse, attack their own allies. Even worse, as the party tries to make their escape, they’ll find themselves subject to the Gibbering Mouthers' Aberrant Ground ability, which converts the 10ft area surrounding it into difficult terrain. Finally, once it’s got your party members within its clutches, the Gibbering Mouther’s Bite ability threatens to absorb its target completely, leaving nothing behind but their equipment.

Using The Gibbering Mouther to Scare Your Players

• Heard, Not Seen: While the Gibbering Mouther is pretty disturbing to behold face to face, its sonic abilities are an underrated aspect of its true horror. While your players will certainly balk and gasp in fear at its horrifying form, the scariest thing you can do as a GM is to hold off on revealing it. Instead, rely on its Gibbering ability to gradually erode the players' sanity and force them into making saving throws that will confound them. Giving the Gibbering Mouther the advantage in the first round of combat. 
• Familiar Faces: When the Gibbering Mouther defeats its target, it consumes them, adding another set of eyes and teeth to its hulking mass. Describe the familiar features of a beloved NPC fallen victim to the Gibbering Mouther’s amorphous form. Allow your players to feel stricken with fear as the voice of their old friend joins the cacophonous chorus of the monsters' awful Gibbering shriek. 

The Nightwalker

AC 14, HP 297, (CR 20), Huge, Undead, Speed/Fly 40ft, STR +6, CON +7, Immunity: necrotic and poison, Resistances: Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, Thunder; Bludgeoning, Piercing, and Slashing from nonmagical attacks

Latest Appearance: Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, 2018

Among the long list of notable undead creatures in D&D, one particularly horrifying beast stands tall above the rest. Coming in at around 20 feet tall, the Nightwalker is, in many ways, the pinnacle of undead monster variety. Picture this: you lead your party through the Shadowfell, a plane of darkness and oppressive shadow. Suddenly, the shadows part, and you catch a brief glimpse of a creature the size of a house, slowly lumbering towards you. In seconds, the towering undead descends with unnatural silence. Within its presence, you're subject to its Annihilating Aura, which doles out 4d6 necrotic damage on a failed DC21 Con saving throw and grants the Nightwalker advantage on its next turn. This provides the perfect opening for its Finger of Doom, a devastating ability with 300ft range that paralyzes its target upon a failed save. You watch as the Nightwalker wordlessly levels its obsidian black claw at you, and find yourself stricken with a fear so profound you're completely unable to move, forced to watch helplessly as it tears your party apart with Enervating Focus. With massive hands, the Nightwalker swipes at your friends, dealing 5d8+6 necrotic damage and reducing its target's hit point maximum until long rest, picking apart your well-composed party within a few short seconds.

Using The Nightwalker to Scare Your Players

• Line of Sight: The Finger of Doom allows the Nightwalker to drastically affect the battlefield by taking out key damage dealers or tanks. Increase your Nightwalker’s likelihood of success by staging the encounter where the Nightwalker has line of sight over the entire party, able to harm them individually with his targeted moves, all the while corrupting them with his Annihilating Aura AOE. Drop the party into a hedge maze, where the Nightwalker looms above, toying with them like mice. Or trap them in an empty chamber, with nothing between them but the lurking darkness and the Nightwalker’s wrathful gaze.
• No Second Chances: If you really don’t want to pull any punches, the Nightwalker has an often unseen feature that can strike fear into the hearts of any D&D player. If one of the party members should fall to the Nightwalkers' attacks, it’s up to you when to let your players know about the Life Eater ability, which nullifies any attempt to revive a creature reduced to 0 hp by the Nightwalkers attack. Anything short of a wish spell, of course. 

The Doppelganger

AC 14, HP 52, (CR 3), Medium, Monstrosity, Speed 30ft, DEX +4, Immunity: charmed/sleep, Deception and Insight proficiency

Latest Appearance: Monster Manual, 2024

 

You didn’t even notice when you’re teammate disappeared, replaced by an interloper who wears their face to invade your forces. The doppelganger is the ultimate tool for a GM looking to capitalize on paranoia with its arsenal of tricks designed to aid its camouflage. With its Shapechanger ability, the doppelganger effortlessly slips into the visage of your trusted Barbarian ally, who wordlessly blinks your way with an off-putting grin. Your party is beyond saving now. With its ability to Read Thoughts, the Doppelganger can predict your every move, fading into the background moments before you begin to question its presence, only to reemerge once you’ve forgotten it. Fortunately, you managed to see through its clever disguise just in time to stop it from using its Slam attack, but you aren’t fast enough to prevent it from using its Unsettling Visage. Its face morphs into something unholy, and you are paralyzed with fear. Forced to watch as it uses Shapeshift as a bonus action, stealing your face and then heading off to infiltrate your party without you.

Using The Doppelganger to Scare Your Players

• Live Another Life: Taking faces is what Doppelgangers do. When a Doppelganger shapeshifts, they don’t drop their form until they shapeshift again or die. Making their transformations, effectively, unlimited. While they aren’t able to adapt the exact mannerisms and intricacies of the being they’re imitating, they can easily use their Read Thoughts ability to pilfer the mind of the original for pertinent information that will help them maintain their cover. Have your Doppelganger replace a trusted NPC that the players constantly encounter, and gradually erode their trust by sabotaging them from within their circle. Play it slow, and watch your players slowly descend into madness as they try to figure out who can and can’t be trusted.
• Trust No One: Doppelgangers make for the perfect monster to drop into a “whodunnit” style adventure. Drop your Doppelgangers into a murder mystery-style encounter where players have to find the culprit, while it slowly begins to dawn on them that key suspects have been replaced by Doppelgangers. Turning an otherwise difficult social encounter into a maze of paranoia. 

The Blue Slaad

AC 15, HP 123, (CR 7), Large, Aberration, Speed 30ft, STR +5, DEX +2, CON +4, Resistances: Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, Thunder

Latest Appearance: Monster Manual, 2014

If you encounter a Blue Slaad, you’d better get rid of them quickly, or you’ll be subject to a fate much worse than death. This massive, hulking creature is covered in scars and oozing with wild power, but the real threat goes beyond just its intimidating appearance. With razor-sharp claws ready to strike in a relentless Multiattack, the Blue Slaad infects its victims with its signature Chaos Phage. Those struck by the Blue Slaad’s infected claws are subject to a horrifying transformation that revokes their ability to regain hit points, and even worse, transforms them day by day until they gradually become a Slaad themselves. Even if you manage to escape the Slaad, the impact of your encounter will continue to haunt you forever. 

Using The Blue Slaad to Scare Your Players

• Find The Cure: The Blue Slaad is a high CR creature typically suited for higher level parties, but that doesn’t mean you can’t throw it at your lower level players. The Blue Slaad makes for a great monster to kick off a sidequest or shorter adventure for lower-level players, not yet kitted out with Cure Disease and Wish spells (Maybe the only spells that can counteract the effects of the Blue Slaad transformation). While it might be unfair for you to TPK your party of level ones with a Blue Slaad, remember that all it takes is a single attack for the Blue Slaad to infect someone. Make the Blue Slaad your party's BBEG, and have them kick off a quest to cure one of their party members before taking their revenge on the monster.
• Egg Infections: The Slaadi are a complex species with extensive lore and backstory revolving around their reproduction. Unfortunately for humanoids, the Slaadi reproduction process involves implanting their eggs within a humanoid host, at which point a horrifying transformation begins. Illustrate these horrors in great detail, as you recreate grotesque scenes of Slaadi transformations, like your very own Alien “Chestburster”.

The Bagman

Last Appearance: Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft

In D&D, there are few treasures prized more than the Bag of Holding. It may not seem like much, but every experienced D&D player knows this unassuming satchel is really one of the most extraordinary items in the game. Despite its look, the Bag of Holding is roughly 2ft square and 4ft deep on the inside, able to hold up to 500lbs of weight. With that much space, anything could be housed inside the Bag of Holding! Even the stuff of nightmares…

With no official stat-block, the Bagman doesn’t outright provide any features or abilities. Instead, the Bagman is depicted as legend or folklore, meaning it's up to the GM to paint the picture of this allusive creature as they see fit. Just be warned, as the story goes, the Bagman crawls out of one bag of holding every single night, claiming a victim before dragging them back into the extradimensional space of infinity within the Bag of Holding that the Bagman calls his home. Among households and campfires across the realm, the story of the Bagman is shared, and with it, a warning. Legend has it that whispering “follow my voice” into a Bag of Holding summons the Bagman to come for you. Resist temptation. Do not let the Bagman out.

Using The Bagman to Scare Your Players

• JUMPSCARE!: Making the Bag of Holding its home presents a golden opportunity for a good old-fashioned jumpscare. Wait for your players to come to a moment of rest, and when they next open the Bag of Holding, describe the Bagman’s deathly grasp as it shoots out of the bag to pull one of the party members within. Within a matter of seconds, your players will be one party member down and forced to either enter the bag in pursuit or flee before the Bagman returns. 
• Something's Missing: If you’d rather build suspicion over time, The Bagman is in the perfect position to steal your players' possessions one by one. You can describe clues of the campsite being pilfered in the night as the Bagman slips out of his confinement to stalk the party, or even can describe the slightest sensation of a cold and deathly hand brushing against the players as they reach within the bag. 

Terrify Your Table

Let’s talk philosophy. What makes any monster truly effective isn’t its damage output or challenge rating. It ultimately comes down to the GM's capacity to unsettle their players and shake up the narrative foundation they rely upon. Regardless of what monster you choose to terrify your table, pay attention to where your players place their investment. While a good jumpscare is always fun, true horror doesn’t need surprises or gratuitous gore. Instead, it capitalizes on the psychology of terror. A common trick GMs use to scare their player is to introduce a beloved NPC, strictly so that the players can watch them be defeated. When it comes down to it, it doesn’t matter if the catastrophe comes from a Gelatinous Cube or a Gibbering Mouther. Lastly, it’s worth mentioning that it never hurts to communicate with your players before hand to discuss boundaries and sore subject matters. While it may be fun to spook your players, always make sure everyone knows they’re safe around the table!