35. Mary Shelly
Like many others on this list, Mary Shelly was able to scare in a place far deeper than just our gooseflesh. With Frankenstein, she dug deep into the human body, flaying open hearts and minds and souls to present us with a tale that is as much about blind discrimination as it is about graverobbing and reincarnation. Blood and guts are there to share, but it's her eternal examination of our desires to play God that will stick with us forever and ever, amen.
34. David Lynch
David Lynch isn't a director of traditional horror movies or television shows, but in many ways he's still one of the scariest storytellers of our time. His characters are often so bizarre, so psychologically impaired, and so unsuited for their environments that they come off as crazy beyond measure and no one you want to meet in an alley, night OR day. There's no mistaking David Lynch's genius. From Eraserhead to The Elephant Man, from Blue Velvet to Twin Peaks, from Mulholland Drive to Inland Empire, he's developed a filmography peppered with moments of pure, unadulterated fear.
33. Robert Kirkman
The man behind The Walking Dead, Robert Kirkman is a comic book creator turned execute producer for television and he has done more to further the world's infatuation with zombie culture than anyone else in the past several years. The TV adaptation of the tale of survival in an age of restless flesh-munchers has seen many highs and lows in terms of the mood of its viewership, but the book it's based on has almost never been anything but absolutely brilliant. Kirkman stated, from the very beginning of The Walking Dead's comic run, that the story was never going to be about the zombies, about how they came to be, or why they are what they are. Instead, the story will always be strictly about the survivors and how they live in a world that has changed in absolute and irreversible ways. It's about the horrors of life, not of death. And that's the genius of Robert Kirkman, another Master of Fear.
32. Alan Moore
Alan Moore is perhaps the greatest comic book writer in the history of the medium. Hmm? What's that? Oh, you're right, there's no "perhaps" about it. He IS the king. Period. But his name doesn't immediately dredge up images of horror story panels, does it? But the truth is that Moore is an undeniable Master of Fear. First of all, his legendary run on Swamp Thing features several stories that are full-on tales of horror (check out #21-The Anatomy Lesson and #45-Ghost Dance). But beyond the traditional tropes of the genre, most of Alan Moore's work has touched on, if not violently grasped at, the various ways that fear takes over our everyday lives--through political repression, feelings of inadequacy, the loss of loved ones, and outliving your place in the world. Master Moore works in the mires of fear and he takes you down into their swampy depths with him every time you open one of his books.
31. Chris Carter
In the 90's and 2000's, Chris Carter was responsible for two excellent television shows that constantly, and often frighteningly, explored elements of the supernatural and extra-terrestrial. The X-Files and Millennium were cross-over series that sought the bloody Truth, no matter how creepy, crawly, or cracked it might be. The X-Files is, of course, the far more popular (and longer running) of the two, but Millennium deserves to be mentioned, despite its short network engagement, for being an even more wickedly horrific version of the adventures of Mulder and Scully. And the man behind them both was Chris "Master of Fear" Carter.