10 Scariest Movie Ghosts EVER

The Shining is a haunted house story in which the spectres aren’t directly harming its inhabitants, but rather driving the family patriarch (Jack Nicholson) into a murderous frenzy.

Built on an Indian burial ground, the Overlook Hotel is home to many ghosts from its colourful past. Empty ballrooms become suddenly full with Jazz Age revellers, with bartenders, waiting staff, and costumed deviants all arriving for the undead party.

The woman in the bathtub, who transforms from beautiful temptress to a rotting and cackling hag, was a close contender for The Shining’s scariest ghoul. But the iconic young twins are still the most chilling.

Director Stanley Kubrick deliberately chooses not to cast twins to play the parts of twins. This choice of forced symmetry gives the girls an immediate uncanniness. The way the girls are dressed and framed and lit just makes them look… dead. And yet they smirk and stare directly down the lens towards us. They are not doing anything ‘scary’. They just are.

When they invite Danny to play with them “forever and ever”, Kubrick intercuts their eerie words with bloody images of their dead bodies beside a huge axe. Little girls are supposed to be pure and innocent, and the true horror of the Grady twins is that they represent an innocence corrupted - violently butchered by their own father.