Bits of doom that are scary?

[7x47]

I was wondering if there is anybody that is scared of any parts in the first 2 iWads.

 

For me personally, it's whenever Romero's head is destroyed. The explosion always makes me jump every, single, time! However there are no stages/sections that actually make me feel scared or anything. 

[Sonikkumania]

I was very young when I played and watched Doom but I still remember some creepy things, like Icon of Sin music, dark tunnels and rooms, and Pain Elementals. They used to creep me out.

[out_of_service]

I remember being able to play Doom way back in the 90's when it originally came out and having the crap scared out of me. If I remember correctly it was a lot of the levels featured in The Shores of Hell, especially Halls of the Damned. But what really gave me the spooks was the PSX incarnation of Doom. I have lots of great and horrifying memories of that lol.

[VoanHead]

To be honest, I hate the midi track “They’re Going to Get You” that played during E2M4 and E4M6. Listening to it for a good while makes me feel a little uneasy and would rather IDMUS to a different track :P. 

[Murdoch]

I think the only spot in the original games that creeped me out was that bit in I think E1M3 when you grab the blue key, the lights go out, and a monster closet opens behind you. To 14 year old keyboard only playing me, that was quite a jump scare.

[Herr Dethnout]

I will say that E1M8, the change of phasing from a Metal and funky ambience songs to a Lonely, sad, and atmospheric song, and the fact that you start in a little dark area with only the Nuke light feels really scary. Extra points for the spectres in the boss fight and the end of the wad where you are being killed by a bunch of monsters in a dark sector.

Also, E1M2 Computer Area is creepy AF, so dark that you can't see whats going on. :/

Edited October 27, 2022 by Herr Dethnout

[Wyrmwood]

The PSX and N64 versions always seemed much creepier just with the change in music. Never found Doom scary but I was getting a bit creeped out playing map 12 in Doom64, it has that track with the baby crying in the background and there's lightning flashing in the sky. Really atmospheric.

 

 

[E1M10]

Recently played through the first two episodes after not having played for over two decades... as a full grown man, who enjoys watching horror, I still found the dark maze areas in E1M2, E1M4, E1M5 and especially E2M6 to be very unnerving... E2M6’s maze had me running back to the light whenever I heard a sound, lol. (I didn’t adjust the brightness / contrast at all.)

 

Of course, the faces in E2M4 with They’re Going To Get You playing creeped me out as well. 

[Somniac]

Doom used to scare seven shades of shit out of me when I was younger. So many moments I could think of, but one that comes to mind is MAP30: I was legit too scared to go through the teleporter. The utterly bizarre music and that scrolling face texture just screamed "something truly horrible lies beyond this"...nowadays its all a little too quaint and nostalgic to truly unnerve me, but occasionally a hint of that comes back when revisiting certain maps in the IWADs. I find E4M1 just as oppressive and somber as I always have. 

 

 

[PeterMoro]

E2M6 Halls of the Damned was damn scary. That all dark area, wow. Hearing the imps and demons in the darkness roaming for you was freaky AF.

[yakfak]

if you mod bullet boxes so that they're a custom enemy the E1M2 computer maze is terrifying

[taufan99]

Both the 32X and SNES ports feel rather unsettling, what with all enemies facing in front of you. This is moreso true in the case of the latter port, as the graphics have been cut down to alleviate the limitations of the SNES. Even today, thinking about the SNES port gives me creeps at times.

[spineapple tea]

E3M4 was pretty spooky when I was young and playing in DOSBox due to not knowing about source ports yet, specifically the part where you're walking past the windows showing this weird bloody room full of hanging bodies. E2 as a whole just had the creepiest atmosphere of any of the episodes (E2M4, E2M6, E2M7, the usual suspects), but something about E4, specifically E4M6, felt off. To my young brain, it felt the most like a real place (specifically where you get one of the keys).

[Nightmare2989]

Map 11 hunted was something that scared me as a kid back in the day 

[Womp the Cat]

When they Cyberdemon would march around e2m8 as a kid that was terrifying. you could hear him coming before seeing him.

[D0M0]

Sigil was scary for me for some reason. The cyberdemons in the wad are half dread filling and half cruel monster placement. 

[mrthejoshmon]

Very young (like 6? I was really young when I played Doom), playing Doom proper for the first time on the Playstation, get to Central Processing, grab the red key only to have 2 Nightmare Spectres appear behind me, keep shooting but they don't die and instead advance unphased by the bullets, trapped against the wall as the horrific biting sounds play (PSX Pinkies do the hitscan attack instead of the PC melee, they get you good) followed by the death scream I always hated as a child.

 

Took a while to man up for that again.

 

Get to Tower of Babel, the solemn music is playing (an absolute masterpiece btw), head outside to shoot the lost soul attacking, hear the bizarre terrifying sound of the PSX Cyberdemon, it stomps around and I am unable to see it, the stomping getting louder and closer, check the corner and the fucker 1 shots me, HUD face gibs and I don't know how to react. That was an amazing way of first experiencing the Cyberdemon.

[idbeholdME]

A long time ago, the starting area of The Crusher used to be such an area for me. Combined with a very bad CRT monitor where everything looked way darker than it should be, randomly stumbling into the revenant in almost complete darkness was not a pleasant experience.

[Vaeros]

Not sure if it was scary or not, but when I was younger I got some uncanny valley vibes about that wall of faces from E2M4 and the music just makes it even more ominous and unsetting (especially when you hear it in AdLib like I did in the old days). I remember staring at it for long minutes thinking what kind of lore or some shit was behind of that creepy looking wall.

 

[7x47]

3 hours ago, Vaeros said:

Not sure if it was scary or not, but when I was younger I got some uncanny valley vibes about that wall of faces from E2M4 and the music just makes it even more ominous and unsetting (especially when you hear it in AdLib like I did in the old days). I remember staring at it for long minutes thinking what kind of lore or some shit was behind of that creepy looking wall.

 

Understandable, I wonder how hard it would to be to make a texture like that.

[DannyMan]

Playing the game with no music at all.

[Dragonfly]

[Lila Feuer]

Hearing and/or seeing the Cyberdemon for the first time on E2M8 is probably the most pants shitting iconic moment in the entire original series.

[Man of Doom]

Heh, I can actually think of three such moments, all of which when I was actually really young:

 

1. Playing for the very first time, it was very clearly E1M2; I never actually got anywhere past the starting level, and just fighting the Zombiemen was actually pretty challenging not only in that I would keep missing but their death screams were absolutely bloodcurdling to me back then.

I think the cherry on top of all that was when I finally managed to exit the game, I ended up being greeted with the sound of Doomguy’s death scream which was just dandy.

Keep in mind, I was like closer to five years old around this time.

 

2. I’d say a year after the first time I ever played Doom, I got to see the demo for E1M5, and it scared the daylights out of me. Back then, something about the Pinkies, the candelabras in what was obviously a futuristic base setting, Doomguy continuing to take damage as his face got bloodier and bloodier, the fast pace in which everything was going on, it all looked so very alarming. But at the same time, I wanted a piece of that action.

 

(and thus began my journey of always playing Doom with degreelessness mode on when I was a kid, and also getting the shareware episode after that night)

 

3. This actually happened with Doom II, and on the Icon of Sin level, no less.

So I was playing the whole game with god mode and I was feeling fairly confident in my abilities to take on the game, right? Well, I got to MAP30 and going by the music alone, I could tell something was off but I pressed on regardless.

I was more in awe at the Icon of Sin rather than terrified, but I was determined to beat it nonetheless. Unfortunately, that determination didn’t last for long as when I was heading for one of the lifts, I ended up dying like almost instantly right after I got there (with god mode still on), and there was an Imp’s corpse right in front of me.

I remember just jumping at that little incident and I just quit right then and there.

 

(and speaking from hindsight, it became obvious that I got really unlucky right then and there and I had ended up getting telefragged by one of the spawn cubes)

[Herr Dethnout]

8 hours ago, Vaeros said:

Not sure if it was scary or not, but when I was younger I got some uncanny valley vibes about that wall of faces from E2M4 and the music just makes it even more ominous and unsetting (especially when you hear it in AdLib like I did in the old days). I remember staring at it for long minutes thinking what kind of lore or some shit was behind of that creepy looking wall.

 

Well, that faces look really uncanny. Is like creppy but funny meme material at the same time.

[TheMightyWhoosh]

The Soulsphere in E1M3 with the pulsating light and the eerie midi gave me the heebie jeebies.  
 

This is from Doom 64; however the ‘music’ track for ‘Breakdown’ is deliciously distressing. 

[TheSlipgateStudios]

When I encountered the Bruiser Brothers for the first time playing Doom 1.

[smeghammer]

E1M2. The dark maze just after the red key door. Back in the day, with keyboard only, creeping around that was a proper jump scare for me.

[xdarkmasterx]

I know what you're thinking. "Did he fire six shots or only five?" Well to tell you the truth in all this excitement I kinda lost track myself. But being this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world and would blow your head clean off, you've gotta ask yourself one question: "Do I feel lucky?" Well, do ya, punk?

 

[unerxai]

The scariest moment was meeting a Demon for the first time in the E1M4 blue door maze (easy difficulty). Hearing the sounds was terryfing to the point I'd close the game.
 

After a certain age (around 9 or so) I stopped being scared by games, with the exception of System Shock 2.