Watch · GhostsNo. 9476 · The 2026 edition
The best haunted house movies, from Beetlejuice to The Shining.
The best haunted house and ghost movies, from Ghostbusters-grade fun to Overlook Hotel dread — with a straight answer on how scary each one gets.
Every haunted house movie makes the same promise: the house is the problem, and leaving is harder than it should be. This list gathers twenty of the best haunted house movies — ghost stories, cursed hotels and one videotape included — ordered by how many viewers have rated them, so the classics come first.
The scare levels cover the whole range. Five are mildly spooky and fine for a family night. Nine are properly scary. Six are rated terrifying and belong to adults with a spare lamp on. Each note below tells you which is which.
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01
The Shining
The Overlook Hotel is the haunted building every other one gets measured against. Kubrick, Jack Nicholson and one very long winter — terrifying, and not one to watch alone.
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02
The Sixth Sense
M. Night Shyamalan’s quiet ghost story: a boy who sees dead people and the psychologist trying to help him. Scary, sad, and best watched knowing nothing else.
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03
The Conjuring
James Wan builds a farmhouse haunting from creaks, doors and a game of hide-and-clap you won’t play again. It launched a whole Conjuring universe, and it’s terrifying without leaning on gore.
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04
Ghostbusters
The comedy that made ghost-hunting a job with a jumpsuit. Mildly spooky — the library ghost at the top still gets kids — and quotable from start to finish.
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05
Hereditary
Less a haunted house than a haunted family, with Toni Collette going places few actors go. Terrifying and punishing; the one on this list to approach with care.
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06
The Others
Nicole Kidman keeps the curtains drawn and the doors locked in a fog-bound island mansion. Scary rather than gory, elegant throughout, with an ending worth protecting.
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07
Beetlejuice
A haunting told from the ghosts’ side: a newly dead couple want the living out and hire exactly the wrong help. Mildly spooky, very funny, and that dinner-party calypso still lands.
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08
Sleepy Hollow
Tim Burton’s fog-soaked Headless Horseman, with Johnny Depp’s squeamish Ichabod Crane doing the investigating. Gothic and scary, and heads do roll, in quantity.
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09
The Ring
Naomi Watts, a cursed videotape and seven days to work it out. The girl from the well made a generation nervous of its own televisions. Terrifying, and still effective.
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10
Insidious
It’s not the house that’s haunted, as the poster warned, and James Wan follows that idea somewhere much stranger. Scary, with big jump scares rather than lingering dread.
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11
The Conjuring 2
The Warrens cross the Atlantic for a North London family under siege. Scary, longer and bigger than the first, and it’s the film that introduced the Nun.
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12
Corpse Bride
Tim Burton’s stop-motion love triangle, where the land of the dead turns out to be the livelier party. Mildly spooky, brisk, and a gentle start for kids.
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13
1408
John Cusack plays a professional skeptic who checks into the one hotel room he shouldn’t. Stephen King source, nearly a one-man show, and scary in a claustrophobic way.
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14
Dark Shadows
Barnabas Collins comes home to Collinwood after two centuries in a box and finds his descendants need more help than the house does. The haunted-mansion comedy of the bunch.
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15
Paranormal Activity
A couple, a camera on a tripod and a bedroom door that won’t behave. The micro-budget original proves how much dread fits in a static shot. Scary in the patient way.
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16
Silent Hill
A mother searches a fog-and-ash ghost town for her missing daughter. It keeps the video game’s nastiest creatures intact; terrifying, and not a casual pick.
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17
Talk to Me
An embalmed hand, a party trick and a ninety-second rule someone was always going to break. The Philippou brothers’ debut plays possession like a viral dare. Terrifying.
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18
Poltergeist
The suburban haunted house, perfected: a TV full of static, a clown doll nobody should own and a tree with intentions. Scary, and a lot of fun with it.
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19
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
Thirty-six years on, Lydia Deetz is back in Winter River and her daughter opens the door to the afterlife. Busy, silly, mildly spooky — best as the second half of a double bill.
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20
The Orphanage
J.A. Bayona’s Spanish ghost story: a mother, her childhood home and a son with an invisible new friend. Scary and heartbreaking in equal measure.
Every haunted house movie comes down to one question: why don’t they just leave?
Start friendly with Beetlejuice or Ghostbusters, graduate to The Others, and save The Shining for when the house has gone quiet. The full watchlist has more ghost stories, each with its scare level marked, for the nights this list runs out.