10 best horror anime series to watch this Halloween

With Halloween right around the corner, here are the ten best horror anime series you need to add to your watchlist.

Halloween is right around the corner, which means it’s the perfect time of the year to watch some horror anime series. Anime doesn’t lag behind any other popular TV show or movie in the horror genre. 

Making a genuine horror anime isn’t as easy as it appears. For one thing, hand-drawn animation can’t quite convey horror media’s frame-by-frame tension and shock value. 

As a result, truly terrifying horror anime with spooky moments and eerie animation is quite rare. Here’s a list of the top 10 horror anime series to watch this Halloween.

1. Ghost Hunt

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Ghost Hunt features eight individual cases of ghost-hunting, drawing references from real-life stories and ghost theories, making it all the more relatable. The protagonist, Mai Taniyama, begins to work for Kazuya Shibuya after accidentally destroying his ghost-hunting equipment.

As she moves on from one case to another, Mai’s dormant psychic abilities begin to awaken. The crew consists of a researcher, monk, Catholic priest, Shinto priestess, spirit medium, and a high school girl.

2. Another

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The series centers around a sequence of odd, gruesome deaths surrounding a mysterious group of students. One curious transfer student is entrusted with determining why his peers are dying over and over.

There’s one girl with an eyepatch who appears to be the only one who is the key to contacting the spirits swirling about them, thanks to her capacity to speak with the supernatural world.

3. Ghost Stories

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Ghost Stories is just as light-hearted as it is spooky. The series follows Satsuki Miyanoshita, who moves in with her family to the place where her late mother was born.

However, Satsuki and her brother soon find out that their new school is said to be haunted – and the ghosts are after them. As the siblings struggle with the paranormal activities, they discover their mother’s secret and how she is connected to all this.

4. Hell Girl

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Hell Girl is an anthology horror anime series that features a vast collection of one-shot stories centering on a person who has been tormented by another. A Hell Correspondence website exists where anyone can submit a request to have their tormentor sent to hell. The website becomes active at the stroke of midnight, accepting all kinds of bizarre requests. The Hell Girl, Ai Enma, will visit those who put in the request. She will send the target’s soul to hell, but the requester will also end up in hell when they die.

5. Junji Ito Collection

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Junji Ito Collection is another anthology horror anime series that features all kinds of mysterious and traumatizing stories. It is a collection of animated horror stories based on the works of Japanese artist Junji Itou.

These stories include a cursed jade sculpture that opens holes all over its victims’ bodies, terrible nightmares that last decades, an appealing apparition at a misty crossroads who gives cursed advice, and a slug that develops inside a girl’s lips. 

6. Serial Experiments Lain

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This 90s classic won the Excellence Prize in the 1998 Japan Media Arts Festival. The story centers around Lain Iwakura, an introverted fourteen-year-old. She is one of the many girls from her school who is receiving disturbing emails from her classmate, Chisa Yomoda.

However, Chisa recently committed suicide, but the messages say she’s alive within a virtual world of communication called “Wired.” Since then, Lain finds herself in the middle of surreal and bizarre events.

7. Yamishibai: Japanese Ghost Stories

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This anthology horror anime series follows a mysterious, yellow-masted Storyteller who appears at dusk where children gather. He recites sinister tales based on Japanese urban legends to his young audience.

He adds visuals to his already insane narration by including a kamishibai, a Japanese paper-scrolling device. There are seven seasons currently, each sharing various ghost stories of Japan.

8. Tokko

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Tokko follows Shindo Ranmaru, who keeps dreaming about a girl with a bloody sword and believes she’s his parent’s killer. On his graduation day, he meets Rokujo Sakura, the girl he has been seeing in his dreams.

Turns out, both of them are assigned to Tokko: Special Mobile Investigation Force. Shindo tries to unravel the mystery of his parent’s deaths and the mass murder of residents in his hometown of Machida. However, he soon discovers the mysterious creatures that threaten to overrun the entire city of Tokyo.

9. Higurashi: When They Cry

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Appearances can be deceiving. Despite the cute character design, this horror anime series is gruesome and filled with madness and paranoia. The story centers on a cursed town where the inhabitants often meet untimely deaths.

The blame goes to a supernatural being, but there’s more to it than that. Keiichi Maebara has his normal life turned upside down when he moves to the little village of Hinamizawa in the summer of 1983 and quickly becomes inseparable friends with schoolmates.

10. Shiki

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A series of mysterious deaths start taking place in the peaceful, unassuming small town of Sotoba. It all begins with the tragedy of Megumi Shimizu when an unnamed illness claims her life. However, frequent deaths lead the local doctor, Toshio Ozaki, to suspect something more sinister than a mere disease is at play.

He teams up with Natsuno Yuuki and siblings Kaori and Akira Tanaka, two of Megumi’s friends, to unravel the mystery behind the deaths in Sotoba. Their investigations lead to a new family in the Kanemasa mansion, who are anything but human.

How to watch Crunchyroll from outside your location in 2023

Crunchyroll is the world’s best hub for streaming anime, whether it’s One Piece, Attack on Titan, or Jujutsu Kaisen – and thanks to ExpressVPN, you can access the platform’s full library even if you’re outside the US.

If you’re abroad, here’s what you need to do to access Crunchyroll’s full selection – and it really is this simple:

1. Sign up for ExpressVPN, which has ultra-fast servers and offers a secure, private connection wherever you are in the world
2.  Connect to a location anywhere in the US; Express VPN allows you to choose from 24 different spots, from New Jersey to Santa Monica
3.  Visit Crunchyroll online and start streaming all of your favorite animes – and perhaps some you’ve never watched

Accessing Crunchyroll’s US roster makes a difference; for example, Hong Kong users only have access to less than 100 titles, while the US has nearly 1,000 movies and TV shows.

You can also stream anime on Crunchyroll for free with an ad-supported plan, or you can pay for a subscription – there’s even a 14-day free trial if you can’t quite make up your mind.

You can check out our other anime coverage here.

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