From haunted houses to scary movies and even roller coasters, some of us go out our way to make ourselves scream. Now, virtual reality has opened the door to a new theater of terror, and some of the experiences you can have make The Shininglook like The Lion King.
The hardware you own makes a difference. Mobile VR headsets, such as the Samsung Gear VR and Google Daydream View, make up for the limited freedom of movement they provide you by exploiting it for terror — you’re essentially tied down, so you have no choice but to face your fears. Room-scale VR headsets, such as the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, give you the freedom to explore your surroundings deeper, allowing you to walk right into a monster.
I decided to torture myself with some of the scariest VR experiences I could dredge up. The selections range from facing evil dolls and the boogeyman, to being eaten alive and staring at a killer from the perspective of a severed head. If you have a VR headset and nerves of steel, take a deep breath and step into one of these immersive frightfests.
Play With Me (Free)
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In Play With Me, you navigate through a dark home, attempting to find a way out while a demented clown slinks around in the darkness. He warns you to not look directly into his eyes, which makes you afraid to even look around. The game makes good use of the positional tracking in the Gear VR to exacerbate this effect; the shadowy figure of the clown will usually crawl past the corner of your eye as you begin to look in a different direction. Opening doors requires you to point, click, and wait a few seconds before it opens. More times than I’d like to admit, I had to take deep breaths before opening a door, because in a second’s notice, you can be face-to-face with glowing, demonic clown eyes.
Download on: GEAR VR
It: Float — A Cinematic VR Experience (Free)
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Few places are natural playgrounds for horror like the deep sea, and Narcosis puts all those aquatic terrors in your face. In this VR game, you traverse the ocean floor in an industrial diving suit while you try to find your way to the surface before your oxygen, and sanity, run out. At any point, you can come across gigantic sea spiders, or just a regular fish that flits into your line of view a bit too quickly. To make matters worse, the deep breaths your character sucks in after a fright drain the diving suit of more oxygen — and compound your fear even more.
Download on: OCULUS RIFT, HTC VIVE
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard VR ($36)
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I’ve never thought about being eaten alive, but after the Walking Dead: Feast VR experience, it’s now the main plot of all of my nightmares. In Walking Dead: Feast, your perspective is from the head of a deceased body, with a front-row seat to a horde of the undead ripping organs with their teeth and spewing blood everywhere. The 360-degree field of view gcreates a supreme sense of hopelessness: No matter where you look, zombies are swarming toward you for their next meal. Fear will course through your body, even if you have never watched a single episode of The Walking Dead. You’ll only be able to access this experience by first downloading the AMC VR app.
Download on: GEAR VR, GOOGLE DAYDREAM
Paranormal Activity: The Lost Soul ($25)
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Based on the same Paranormal Activity films that scared you into installing security cameras in your bedroom, Paranormal Activity: The Lost Soul has you explore a creepy house with just a flashlight to find out all of its gruesome mysteries. The room-scale freedom of movement in The Lost Souls creates an atmosphere where you’re fearful of every step. One door could lead you to a child’s bedroom, and the very next door puts you in the middle of a satanic shrine. This is the type of house you run past when trick-or-treating.
Download on:PS VR, HTC VIVE, OCULUS RIFT
Sisters: Faye & Elsa — Parts I-III ($1 each)
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Boogeyman is s strategy horror game where you are tasked with keeping petrifying monsters out of your room by shining a flashlight on them. There are five ways for terror to seep into your room: the door, closet, window, air vent, and sides of the bed. This game does a masterful job of immersing you in fear by forcing you to listen for movements in the dark, and rely on dim moonlight, since you need to conserve your flashlight battery. Before you know it, you’re flashing your light on the creatures climbing through your window, and by the time you turn your attention back to the door, it’s already too late.
Download on: OCULUS RIFT
ABE VR (Free)
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The Dark Corner app offers nine horrifying VR experiences, each one capable of scaring the headset off your face. Catatonic finds you being rolled through an insane asylum, and you’re only able to look left and right at the frightening patients before they eventually all surround you. In Burlap, you stare at a psychopathic killer from the perspective of a severed head that he plans to attach to a body. In 11:47, you are trapped in a dark dungeon, where a momentary flickering of light reveals zombies and other creatures that go bump in the night. As for the rest of the experiences, you will just have to be brave enough to strap on a headset and find out for yourself.
Download on: OCULUS RIFT, GOOGLE DAYDREAM, GEAR VR
Source: Digital Trends