The Creepiest Monsters You'll See In The Silent Hill Series
What would you do if you entered a town shaped by your deepest fears? Considered by many as one of the greatest horror game series of all time, the Silent Hill franchise taps into many human terrors through psychological methods. Its approach to horror especially shines in its monsters, which combine familiar and surreal elements to make uniquely terrifying creatures.
Everyone finds different concepts scary, and while Silent Hill creature designs have a distinct theme among them, they also draw on different kinds of fears. Silent Hill games dive into the mind of their protagonists through enemies and environments that reflect their darkest thoughts, resulting in monsters that define each plotline's themes.
These Silent Hill monsters have some of the series' creepiest designs. You'll find creatures from the original four games as well as entries outside of the main series. Keep in mind that due to the nature of this list, it will include spoilers for the Silent Hill series and cover difficult topics such as sexual assault.
Grey Child
At the beginning of the first Silent Hill game, the main character, Harry Mason, runs down a dark alleyway where small, child-like creatures corner and attack him. Welcome to Silent Hill.
Known as Grey Children, these monsters become especially haunting when they confront you in Silent Hill's dark environments. They leap at Harry and pin him while holding long knives in their hands. The Grey Children begin a series-wide tradition of monster designs based on the psychological themes of each game. Silent Hill's plot follows a father looking for his daughter, and the Grey Children subvert childhood innocence through their maniacal behavior.
Censorship boards removed these monsters from the European and Japanese versions of the game because they thought that the creatures looked too close to children. In these localizations, you'll instead find Mumblers, monsters that also appear in Annie's Bar and the Sewers.
The Grey Children also appeared in the 2006 Silent Hill movie, where advanced CGI fleshes out their concepts in more detail than their PlayStation models. Their stretched, distorted faces add a haunting touch to an already scary monster.
Abstract Daddy
Out of all of the monsters in the Silent Hill series, Abstract Daddy may have the darkest backstory. It appears as a mass of flesh and limbs fused together on a bed and fights you in a room seemingly made out of flesh.
The series' second entry explores how different characters experience Silent Hill, and the Abstract Daddy appears in the side character Angela's version. When the nightmares of the main character, James, and Angela combine, James must fight the Abstract Daddy. Throughout its appearance and boss arena, it represents the sexual trauma that Angela received from her father and brother. Its overtly sexual motifs include two isolated mouths on either end that try to eat James during its boss fight. Throughout the Abstract Daddy's zone, you'll see metal pistons thrusting through a wall of flesh, resembling sexual assault.
However, none of the parts of Abstract Daddy that you can see are scarier than what Angela might see. According to character designer Masahiro Ito, only Angela knows its truest appearance.
Nurses
Many of the Silent Hill games feature nurse enemies because they often touch on medical themes in their character backstories. Silent Hill and Silent Hill 2 have two of the series' most iconic nurse monster designs.
The original Silent Hill's nurse monsters, the Puppet Nurses, have gigantic parasitic growths on their backs. You can tell that these growths have a life of their own because they move independently from the nurses. While the game's PlayStation graphics don't portray these creatures in much detail, the official art provides a new perspective on them.
Like many of their fellow creatures from Silent Hill 2, the Bubble Head Nurses have sexualized themes representative of the main character's sexual frustration. Donning low-cut nurse uniforms and swollen heads, they turn the concept of the "sexy nurse" into something sinister. You can also sometimes see a small baby's face at the bottom of a Bubble Head Nurse's mask that symbolizes James and Mary's desire to have a child.
Mannequins
Horror stories across different media forms use mannequins as a scare. They cross the uncanny valley line just enough for some people to feel anxious around them in real life, let alone when they come to life in a horror game. Silent Hill 2 taps into this fear with its Mannequin monsters while making them a little more surreal than your typical mannequin creature.
The Silent Hill 2 Mannequin monsters set themselves apart in their genre by consisting of only legs. They have two legs on top and two on the bottom connected by a torso — no face to look at. As they move and attack, they perform animalistic behaviors like rubbing their top legs together like insect jaws. Simply put, something just doesn't feel right about them.
This monster design also plays into the game's themes of sexual frustration. Many of the monsters in Silent Hill 2 represent James' sexually aggressive thoughts, including these dehumanized versions of women's bodies.
Robbie the Rabbit
Robbie the Rabbit, the mascot of Silent Hill's Lakeside Amusement Park, takes another common fear — mascots — and gives it a Silent Hill flair. He never appears as a monster for you to fight. Instead, he shows up in some of Silent Hill 3 and 4's environments, watching your every move. He also has less notable appearances in games such as Silent Hill: Homecoming and Silent Hill: The Arcade.
Silent Hill 3 peppers its amusement park environments with life-sized Robbie the Rabbits, sometimes slumped over or with blood on their mouths. The game never specifies whether these figures are giant dolls or mascot costumes, so you never know if they have someone inside of them.
In Silent Hill 4, Robbie breaks down the fourth wall to confront you, the player. Throughout the game, you can peek through a hole in your apartment wall to see your neighbor, Eileen's, room from a first-person perspective. There, she has a Robbie the Rabbit doll that lies on her bed. After certain events put Eileen in the hospital, you'll see Robbie pointing directly at you, accusing you of his owner's injury.
Ghosts
Silent Hill 4 has 11 types of Ghost monsters that pursue Henry, the player character, throughout the game's levels. They resemble the victims of the game's antagonist, Walter Sullivan.
Depending on how you like to experience horror games, the Ghosts' scariness comes from their in-game mechanics. Each of these monsters is invincible, meaning that you better run unless you want to use an incredibly rare item to stop them. They appear all over the game's levels, adding a sense of dread and panic to the gameplay. On the other hand, some players might find this mechanic annoying, so your mileage may vary.
As the game progresses, Walter Sullivan kills more people, adding to the types of ghosts who can appear in Silent Hill 4's worlds. They bring unique threats to the game's later levels, such as Jasper Gein's fiery attacks and Cynthia Velasquez's hair that traps the player. Whenever another person dies in the main storyline, you have to look out for your next pursuer and adapt accordingly.
Asphyxia
Asphyxia from Silent Hill: Homecoming has a Human Centipede-like appearance made up of connected human bodies. It gets its name from the pair of hands constantly covering its mouth.
If you need any extra limbs, Asphyxia has them aplenty. You can count several arms and torsos on its body, but it only has one pair of legs, leaving most of its movement to the pairs of arms trailing behind its legs. Some of its arms cover its naked body — a remnant of its previous humanity.
Despite having so many body parts to move around, Asphyxia stays pretty nimble during your boss fight with it. It shimmies and sways as it unleashes attack after attack on Alex, the main character. Most interestingly, it can swing its multi-limbed tail at you. At the end of its boss fight, it dies from the main character uncovering the hands covering its face and forcing it to breathe. There's something unsettling about a monster that dies when exposed to something that we need to live.
Twin Victim
Silent Hill 4 features the Twin Victim enemy, a monster consisting of two giant baby faces with long arms. It brings a lot of unique scares to the Silent Hill monster roster thanks to its bizarre appearance and behaviors.
Much of the Twin Victim's scariness comes from its contrasts. Its twin infant faces conflict with its long arms that it uses as legs and its gigantic size. You might expect it to make baby sounds when it talks, but it communicates in low grunts. When you keep your distance, it stays peaceful, but it leaps into violent action when you disturb it. After you attack it and make it fall, it throws a tantrum and cries like a child.
It also doesn't help that the Twin Victim menacingly points and whispers at you from afar, slightly breaking into the fourth wall. The monster almost dares you to make it angry by invading its territory.
Raw Shocks
To understand what makes the Raw Shocks in Silent Hill: Shattered Memories creepy, you have to understand what makes the game itself scary. Just as the town of Silent Hill adapts to the characters' psyches in previous games, it changes based on your psychological profile in this one. Every time you perform certain actions or answer questions from Cheryl's therapist, the game changes the environment in Harry's world, including the Raw Shocks. In other words, the Raw Shocks represent your version of Silent Hill.
Over the course of a playthrough, the Raw Shocks take on traits associated with the player's psychological profile. These features include sexualized female traits, signs of disease, abstract forms, and holes in their flesh. They can develop features associated with different psychological profiles, resulting in a uniquely terrifying monster.
Raw Shocks are also one of the few immortal enemies in the franchise. Unlike many of the other games, you have no way to fight back in Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, since the Raw Shocks are its only hostile monster. If you consider your shotgun your security blanket in survival horror games, you can't count on it this time around.
Scarlet
In Silent Hill: Homecoming, the boss Scarlet escalates your run-of-the-mill "creepy doll" horror into an unsettling arachnid monstrosity. She morphs from a small talking doll to a gigantic, doll-like creature that has flesh under its porcelain.
Scarlet becomes less doll-like as you break her porcelain exterior. When you attack her, you'll find that her plates protect red flesh beneath them. If you break her head, her mouth cracks open, making it easier for her to bite you with her needle-like teeth. In the second phase of her fight after you break most of her shell, she begins to move on all fours like a spider at high speeds.
Yet, some of her elements still make her feel a little out of place in a Silent Hill game. Her red and white color palette contrasts many other monsters' fleshy and rusty tones, and something about her still feels a little too human-like for the series. However, these differences also give her a distinct design among her fellow bosses that brings a new type of horror to Silent Hill.
Lying Figure
Silent Hill 2's Lying Figure enemies appear to be trapped in a straitjacket of their own flesh, providing a one-of-a-kind sense of claustrophobia. Like other monster designs in the game, they distort the human form just enough to make it feel alien while evoking familiar feelings.
The Lying Figure's trapped existence builds on Silent Hill 2's themes of isolation and lost intimacy associated with James' backstory. When his wife, Mary, became terminally ill, they both began to feel confined. While Mary dealt with unwanted changes in her appearance and bedrest, James didn't have the intimacy he wanted with his wife. Lying Figures appear across Silent Hill, reminding you of these concepts throughout the game.
While the Lying Figures have a surreal appearance, they were inspired by something very mundane. In a documentary on the making of Silent Hill 2, designer Masahiro Ito explained that he got the idea for the monster from watching a coworker. A programmer on the team walked into the office with his hands in his hoodie pockets and his hood up.
Valtiel
Valtiel serves as a religious figure in some parts of the Silent Hill franchise and appears as a background monster in Silent Hill 3. While its appearance is pretty typical for a Silent Hill creature, it strikes fear through its mysterious actions. As the servant of the god that threatens to emerge from Heather and end the world, it has plenty of sinister tasks on its to-do list.
In Silent Hill 3, you'll often see Valtiel performing suspicious actions behind the scenes in the Underworld. As Heather's Underworld churns like a factory, Valtiel turns the valves controlling it. Valtiel also drags Nurses and other monsters around in the background, implying that it has power over them.
Some of its scariest moments happen when you least expect it to appear. During some game over events, Valtiel appears and drags Heather's body offscreen. As the attendant of God in the Silent Hill series, it drags her to the closest Halo of the Sun so Heather can survive to give birth to God.
Pyramid Head
Look, you knew he was coming. Considered the most popular monster in the Silent Hill games, Pyramid Head from Silent Hill 2 taps into many fears through its appearance, symbolism, and sheer power. Nearly 20 years after its debut, it still represents the Silent Hill series in appearances such as Dead by Daylight's Chapter 16 content.
In the Making of Silent Hill 2 short documentary, character designer Masahiro Ito explains the thought process behind his design for Pyramid Head. His approach to his Silent Hill 2 monster designs involved taking humanity and distorting it to make something that doesn't feel quite right. He originally tried to achieve this goal with Pyramid Head by giving it a mask, but he still looked too human to be sufficiently scary. So, he replaced the mask with the iconic pyramid to "suggest the possibility of pain" with strong angles and sharp edges.
From a gameplay perspective, Pyramid Head creates fear through its inevitability as a threat. At multiple points in the game, it pursues you without giving you the ability to fight back, such as when it watches you from behind bars or forces you to run from it in a cramped room.
The monsters of P.T.
In August 2014, Konami announced the next entry in the Silent Hill series through unconventional means — a "playable teaser" that turned out to be an interactive trailer called P.T. While intended as a vehicle for the announcement, P.T. became well-respected as a standalone horror experience, thanks to its iconic monsters.
The primary antagonist in P.T., Lisa, terrorizes the player through a combination of jump scares and ongoing pursuit. She appears in various places throughout the game's repeating hallway, sometimes spooking you before leaving or impeding your progress by snapping your neck. Years after Sony took the game down from the PlayStation Store, dataminer Lance McDonald discovered that Lisa follows the player during most of the game, continuing her reign of fear.
In P.T., the player also encounters the game's infamous baby, a bloody fetus found in the hallway's bathroom sink. It screams and cries in most of its appearances, but after a disorienting sequence of hallway loops, it directly addresses the player and exposes their past actions.