Does anyone find the ghosts in Skyrim scary?

[258789553873]

Personally, I never have, even though I suffer from a phobia of ghosts. Strangely enough though, ghosts in some quest mods I've played DO terrify me (enough where I just outright refuse to play horror quest mods, even though I've never gotten past the initial part of the quest in any of them).

I was thinking about that guy who runs the inn in Ivarstead. The ghost are the local barrow obviously frightens him, but I never once found the ghost in there even remotely creepy.

To me, they're too much like other enemies in the game. They're just standing around waiting for you, and when you show up they run up and attack you like any draugr or bandit. And of course, there's nothing stopping you from fighting back.

To me, ghosts are scary because you CAN'T fight back. Besides being completely invulnerable, you can never know where one is, which makes them impossible to predict. You really can't do anything about a ghost, since because of the latter power you can't even do anything to avoid them. So ghosts like the one in the lighthouse in Falskaar, or that one in Clockwerk (which I've never played, just so we know), are too horrifying for me to face, even though the vanilla ghosts are certainly not. Not even changing their appearance with a mod (so they don't look like Star Wars holograms) makes them scary to me, because their behavior is just so far from ghosts. And they're not even the most formidable enemies to begin with.

[Rez Elwin]

I don't get scared of anything in the vanilla game or mods except one creature from one mod but then again I have no phobias.

These ghosts though are pretty meh. I don't remember fighting a ghost until after I had a higher than silver tier of weapon but are they hurt by everything? I remember the ghosts in Oblivion which didn't look like as you said holograms, and they could not be killed by mundane equipment.

Oblivion has scarier enemies than Skyrim does for sure, like where are the liches and zombies? We do have Dragon Priests which act kinda like the liches do but they don't look that frightening.

[258789553873]

I never got high enough level in that game to fight a lich. As for zombies, I never found them scary, just gross. I much prefer the less gross draugr over the more traditional undead found in Oblivion. As for ghosts, I can't remember if I ever fought any or not. I also don't recall ever being scared by Oblivion. Strangely enough though, I did find the feral ghouls in New Vegas scary in this one scene (never played it much, because I fell into a noob trap and made my first play-through impossible to continue).

[Rez Elwin]

To be fair the zombies are a little funny to fight from their animations, just mentioning their lack of an appearance. Draugr make complete sense here as opposed to the traditional zombie undead but still weird that there are none at all, there is no shortage of necromancers here.

The feral ghouls in Fallout 3 and NV never frightened me because they were slow, the ones in 4 though that crawl out of nowhere are throw themselves at you are a little worse.

[Trehek]

Nah, Skyrim ghosts are bros. I agree with OP that helplessness is part of the recipe for scary ghosts but that's not all of it. Even ghosts which I'm unable to defeat usually don't scare me one bit. There also needs to be a degree of horror to what the ghost does to you, and the ghost needs to be unescapable to give that sense of helplessness. But what makes a ghost truly frightening is when what it does is somehow strange and inexplicable.

For that reason the movie Mirrors was absolute nightmare fuel for me, for example, with its scenes of horrifying, helpless, inexplicable death.

[alexander_dougherty]

No, ghost in games are not scary.
Sabretooth cats jumping out of nowhere and startling you, that's scary

[Chaosium]

I'd gladly fight 10000 ghosts rather than spiders, good lord never ever again will I go in Darkfall Cave.

[Vlad 254]

Well written OP. I find it telling that you have a phobia of ghosts yet do not find them scary in the base game. You also laid out why ghosts scare you so it made me think. I personally am not afraid of ghosts in the base game or rl because I don't believe in them in the first place but that's not to say some video games are not scary. Of course Skyrim does not fall in the "scary video game" category but your point is valid since it does have some quests with ghosts and such. You made me think about scary games even though I'm not a fan of most scary video games but have played a few that others recommended. I did find the game Condemned: Criminal Origins scary, it pretty much had me on edge the entire game. For me the game was so well done from a "scary" standpoint I had to set the mood so I played with all the lights out at night. I was on a console and of course on a big screen tv. That game for me was so good it was responsible for playing a couple of others. Dead Space, lots of gore and constant sense of almost jump out of your chair fear even for someone like me. Layers of Fear was another scary game with great cinematics which added to the scare factor. I never played the Resident Evil games much except one time co-op because a friend who was a huge fan of that franchise talked me into playing. I don't remember that being very scary. But other than a couple of times with my friend I never really got in to it in single player. Playing these games alone more than likely adds to the fear factor. So yeah, Bethesda games ghosts don't fall into the "scary moments" category for me and apparently not for OP, a person who has a phobia of ghosts and that's interesting.

[258789553873]

I don't believe in ghosts. And my reaction is more intense than normal. I would never go into a place that's supposedly haunted, even though I don't believe in hauntings. Abandoned buildings (particularly homes) also terrify me for no reason, regardless of whether they're reportedly haunted or not. Even fake ghost videos horrify me (unless they're REALLY unconvincing, though they don't have to be THAT convincing to scare me honestly).

As for the ghosts in Skyrim, I don't really see them as true ghosts. They're essentially just bandits with a custom texture applied to them. That's it. They're functionally no different from bandits; you can even loot them or backstab them! So obviously, I'm not going to be scared of what amounts to just a bunch of blue bandits. They don't even demonstrate any kind of unique powers. I mean, the things can't even turn invisible!

As for ghosts in quest mods, honestly they don't scare me until I find I can't attack or interact with them in any way. That alone is enough to scare me, because it makes them more like 'actual' ghosts. And as I've said, the thing that horrifies me most about ghosts is their invulnerability. So obviously, I'm not going to be scared of a bunch of blue bandits that I can clearly fight just like anything else.

[Sabaithal]

Not in the slightest. They are literally just generic NPCs with a transparency filter and silly dialogue lines.

[GrimCat]

https://youtu.be/Fe93CLbHjxQ

[Perplex]

Being scared of enemies in any game is just a MeMe. If you actually get scared from internet monsters then you got serious issues. (no i am not talking jumpscares as it can be a cuddly pillow coming at you with a loud noise and you would be scared if you are not ready)

[Rez Elwin]

Originally posted by Perplex:

Being scared of enemies in any game is just a MeMe. If you actually get scared from internet monsters then you got serious issues. (no i am not talking jumpscares as it can be a cuddly pillow coming at you with a loud noise and you would be scared if you are not ready)

You don't know what a phobia is do you? A phobia is described as an irrational fear of something. The key word being irrational, it doesn't matter in what form it takes, even if it just a collection of pixels on a screen a phobia can cause extreme fear.

Some people are much easier to scare than others and that doesn’t mean something is wrong with them. In fact I like watching scary games to see people's reactions because games do not scare me at all, unlike the majority of people. From my perspective I feel like the weird one.

[Perplex]

Originally posted by Rez Elwin:

Originally posted by Perplex:

Being scared of enemies in any game is just a MeMe. If you actually get scared from internet monsters then you got serious issues. (no i am not talking jumpscares as it can be a cuddly pillow coming at you with a loud noise and you would be scared if you are not ready)

You don't know what a phobia is do you? A phobia is described as an irrational fear of something. The key word being irrational, it doesn't matter in what form it takes, even if it just a collection of pixels on a screen a phobia can cause extreme fear.

Some people are much easier to scare than others and that doesn’t mean something is wrong with them. In fact I like watching scary games to see people's reactions because games do not scare me at all, unlike the majority of people. From my perspective I feel like the weird one.

I know what it is. But i have never, ever seen or heard of anyone that has such a strong phobia that creatures in a game set it off. Just because you have a phobia of spiders dont mean that the spiders in Skyrim triggers it.
Find me one person that actually is afraid of creatures in this game and not just say it because it is a MeMe by now. And i will give that person credit for it.

The scary games are all based on Jumpscares.

[Rez Elwin]

Originally posted by Perplex:

Originally posted by Rez Elwin:

You don't know what a phobia is do you? A phobia is described as an irrational fear of something. The key word being irrational, it doesn't matter in what form it takes, even if it just a collection of pixels on a screen a phobia can cause extreme fear.

Some people are much easier to scare than others and that doesn’t mean something is wrong with them. In fact I like watching scary games to see people's reactions because games do not scare me at all, unlike the majority of people. From my perspective I feel like the weird one.

I know what it is. But i have never, ever seen or heard of anyone that has such a strong phobia that creatures in a game set it off. Just because you have a phobia of spiders dont mean that the spiders in Skyrim triggers it.
Find me one person that actually is afraid of creatures in this game and not just say it because it is a MeMe by now. And i will give that person credit for it.

The scary games are all based on Jumpscares.

Phobias can vary in intensity but a true phobia goes beyond simple fear, I used to be scared of spiders when I was younger, but It was never a phobia.

However I do not personally know anybody with a phobia so I cannot give you definitive proof somebody is telling the truth or not, but there is at least one mod that was created that removes all spiders in the game for that exact reason.

[Vlad 254]

I have no fear of ghosts, spiders, rats, or the like and video games do not scare me. That being said if the setting is right and the mood is right and you have an open mind and are looking for some entertainment which would be my case, I then can experience the roller coaster that a good "scary" game provides. Games as I described in my post above, which for me were Condemned: Criminal Origins and Dead Space. So depending on the factors I laid out and the game you are playing, your mileage may vary.