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Officer Weaver's possession is both the most inexplicable and also the scariest scene in the script. The sudden trance and zombie-like departure compares favorably to Kyoshi Kurosawa's "Cure" and more recent films like "Longlegs" and "Weapons." Even after finishing the story, it's not entirely clear how or why Officer Weaver was possessed, but it's a testament to the writing that it feels like a creepy omission instead of a plot hole.

STRETCHERby Ethan Evans

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Forcing Timmy to become Santa Claus is an act of cruelty and body horror that is many times worse than Santa's own transformation. It's absolutely horrifying, and plenty sad too! He has his childhood ripped away in an instant, a sacrifice on the altar of holiday joy. Really makes The Santa Clause seem a little more sinister, actually.

MILK AND COOKIESby Jeremy Jackson

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When Sandra does her first voice-shift at her landlord, that is the first time her scary-side rises all the way to the forefront. Until then, she was using it strategically, but in this moment it threatens uncontrolled destruction - if only for a second - and implies that there are bigger and more explosive moments to come for the protagonist.

STRIPESby Jeff Gerein and Bren Macdonald

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The reveal of this newly grafted entity, a horrific visual with unimaginable power so much greater than the sum of its borrowed parts to be able to overwhelm York so easily and completely. It is the moment everything builds up to and it cements itself firmly in cosmic horror as an entity that may very well be unstoppable.

THE GRAFTEDby Benjamin J

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The appearance of the poltergeist is much-heralded and the writer needed to really make it count on the page to avoid losing the audience with a disappointing monster. Thankfully, its design meets reader expectation, and the method in which the poltergeist tries to counter the protagonistic pair--by singing their song, backwards--is unsettling. It would play even better on the screen.

GONE SONGby Annie Wilder

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Eddy’s Game of Life Breakdown, surrounded by smiling puppets, chanting and increasing volume as he forgets who he is, what he teaches, and even his wife's name. The cheery board game mutates into a sort of psychological minefield, and Eddie's unraveling becomes painfully visible, and we're right along that pain with him.

MR. BLUEBERRYby Seth Taylor

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When the second bump under the tapestry forms. Did her son come back but with another entity attached? Did she do everything in order or has she forgotten something out of sheer exhaustion? Tons of reasons flooded my mind which is exactly how leaned in you want your reader to be!

TAPESTRYby Jason Sheedy

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The final reveal that Nora has Cindy's heart in her backpack toes a line between horrifying reality and psychological hallucination, settling on a magical realism fence that serves as the perfect capstone to Nora's embrace of her own warped reality. Is she really drinking Cindy's blood? Is Cindy's heart really beating in her hydration vest? Unimportant, because what really matters is that Nora thinks she has what she wants. That's the scariest part of it all.

NO GUTS, NO GLORYby Renuka Singh