I’ve always been a big fan of manga and the horror genre, but sometimes, you want more than just creepy vibes or grotesque imagery. You want that sharp edge of fear. The kind that gets under your skin and lingers.
This list is dedicated to the scariest horror manga I’ve ever read. These are stories that genuinely unnerved me, made my skin crawl, or sent a chill down my spine. If you’re looking for more general recommendations, check out my full list of the best horror manga.
Scary manga come in many forms. Some build slow-burning dread through atmosphere and mystery. Others strike fast with brutal shock, claustrophobic tension, or uncanny visuals. Fear takes many shapes: ghost stories, psychological breakdowns, body horror, urban legends.
What ties all these picks together is that they’re all terrifying. They aren’t just disturbing, gross or weird, but genuinely scary. They’re the ones that truly creeped me out while reading them late at night.
From haunted schools to cosmic nightmares, creepy urban legends to deadly hidden secrets, these are the manga that deliver raw fear.
Mild spoiler warning: I’ll keep descriptions vague, but sometimes details are necessary to explain what makes an entry scary.
Here’s my curated list of the scariest horror manga I ever read (last updated: July 2025).
18. Hideout
Hideout is a relentless psychological horror manga about grief, madness and the terrifying things people are capable of. It doesn’t rely on monsters or the supernatural, and that’s the reason it’s so disturbing. It feels real.
Seiichi Kirishima is a failed novelist mourning the death of his son. On a rainy island trip meant to reconcile with his wife, he has a darker purpose in mind: murdering her. When she escapes into the jungle and disappears into a hidden cave system, he follows, hoping to finish what he started. Yet the deeper they go, the more unhinged things become, for someone else is lurking in the darkness.
What makes Hideout so scary isn’t just the plot, but the atmosphere. The cave sequences are pure claustrophobic terror, with pitch-black panels, jagged shadows, and a feeling of overwhelming, nauseating dread.
Right from the start, we know Seiichi is not a good person. Yet as the manga continues, we learn what happened, what drove him on this path, and just how deranged a man he truly is. But he’s far from the only monster in this manga, for there’s the cave’s inhabitant who might be even worse.
Hideout is a short read, just nine chapters, but every page is tense and suffocating. The pacing never lets up, the art is breathtaking, and the emotional weight keeps twisting deeper.
There’s no light here, no hope, just a one-way spiral into madness. And that’s what makes Hideout one of the scariest manga I ever read.
Genres: Horror, Psychological
Status: Finished (Seinen)
17. The Drifting Classroom
One of the earliest and most iconic manga ever created, The Drifting Classroom, is a terrifying mix of apocalyptic sci-fi and psychological breakdown that still holds up over 50 years after its initial release.
Written by Kazuo Umezu, often called the godfather of horror manga, the story begins when a mysterious earthquake causes an entire elementary school to vanish. The students and teachers soon discovered they’ve been transported to a barren, post-apocalyptic wasteland. With no food, water, or idea on how to return home, panic sets in.
What makes this manga so scary isn’t just the mystery of where they are, but who they are: these are little kids, some no older than twelve, others much younger, who are suddenly forced to survive in an impossible nightmare. As they are subjected to monster attacks, disease outbreaks, and violent conflicts, the body count rises, and the horror becomes increasingly disturbing.
Early on, the adults fall apart. While the children try to adapt, the faculty descends into madness. One of the most chilling scenes involves the gentle lunch man turning into a cold-blooded murderer, hoarding food, and killing kids to assure his own survival. The horror is extreme, and frighteningly human.
While the art is stiff and outdated, and certain plot twists veer into the absurd as so often in Umezu’s stories, The Drifting Classroom remains one of the scariest horror manga out there. It’s a story of innocence devoured by chaos, and of children navigating a world that’s as unknown as it is deadly.
Genres: Horror, Sci-Fi, Mystery, Psychological, Supernatural
Status: Finished (Shonen)
16. Shikabane Kaigo
One of the newest entries on the list, Shikabane Kaigo, delivers old-school horror with modern precision. With gorgeous, detailed artwork and a creeping sense of unease, this deeply unsettling story has everything to make it one of the scariest horror manga of recent years.
The manga follows Akane Kuritani, a young live-in caregiver who takes on a mysterious assignment deep in the mountains. Her client is Hiwako Miyazono, a wealthy old woman confined to bed in a crumbling Western-style mansion. When Akane meets her, however, she’s stunned, because Hiwako appears already dead. Her skin is discolored, her hands are claw-like, and her face is covered with a burlap sack.
Everything about the job feels wrong. The house rules are strange, the instructions bordering on nonsensical, and the total lack of outside contact create immediate tension. As Akane tries to settle in, she senses that not only is something off about the house, but also her coworkers. They are polite on the surface, but something is hidden behind every glance and gesture.
The horror in Shikabane Kaigo is slow, quiet, and suffocating. The mansion feels lived in and decaying; the characters are distinct and realistic, and the sense of dread builds with every chapter. Tension rises the moment Akane enters the mansion and never lets off again.
The highlight of the work is the art. Hiwako’s body is rendered in disgusting, hyper-detailed realism that makes you recoil. The image alone is pure nightmare fuel.
Only ten chapters are out as of writing this article, but this one’s definitely worth watching for. It’s a tense, atmospheric mystery with sharp psychological edges, and some of the most unsettling visuals in modern horror manga.
Genres: Horror, Mystery, Psychological
Status: Ongoing (Seinen)
15. The Colour out of Space
Of all H. P. Lovecraft stories, The Colour Out of Space might be his most terrifying, and Gou Tanabe’s manga adaption captures its creeping dread with unnerving precision. This isn’t a tale of monsters or serial killers. It’s about something far more unsettling: an incomprehensible, alien corruption that spreads quietly through the land, and eventually through the people.
The story begins with a meteorite crashing onto a remote farm near Arkham. Scientists investigate, but the rock behaves strangely: it shrinks, and emits a bizarre shimmering color no one can quite name. Soon, the land around the crash site changes. Crops grow large but unedible; animals go mad and mutate, and before long the Gardner family, too, begins to suffer.
What follows is a slow, suffocating descent into madness and decay. One by one, the family members lose their minds as they waste away, their bodies warping into grotesque forms.
The horror lies in the inevitability. There’s no monster to fight, no clear explanation, and no way out. It’s just a color, an alien presence that warps everything it touches.
Tanabe’s artwork is stunning and oppressive. His barren landscapes feel desolate and wrong. The corrupted bodies of the Gardners are haunting. The pages radiate stillness, decay, and dread.
This is a masterclass in slow-burn horror. It’s atmospheric, tragic and deeply disturbing. It perfectly captures the fear of being consumed by something you can’t fight or understand. The Colour Out of Space is not just one of Tanabe’s best works, but it’s one of the scariest horror manga ever created.
Genres: Horror, Sci-Fi, Tragedy, Cosmic Horror
Status: Finished (Seinen)
14. Tonari no Jii-san
Tonari no Jii-san is one of the most quietly terrifying horror manga in recent years. It’s a creeping, surreal nightmare.
The story begins with Yuki, a shy girl living in a peaceful countryside town who dreams of becoming a painter. One day, she rides the train with her older sister, who is leaving the town for good. While on the train with her, Yuki witnesses something deeply wrong, an event so strange and disturbing it shakes her to the core. Yet when she returns, no one believes her, and worse, no one even notices anything is wrong.
Was it a hallucination? Is it madness? Or is something far more terrifying going on?
The first two chapters of Tonari no Jii-san are amongst the strongest openers in modern horror manga. They’re weird, surreal, and frightening because of the overwhelming feeling that reality has cracked just slightly.
As the mystery unravels, Yuki meets someone who also noticed things are wrong in their idyllic little town. As they investigate, they bear witness to disturbing body horror, and hints of strange folklore, but none of it truly seems to fit. That’s part of what makes the story so scary: the uncertainty, the unexplainable.
The art is striking. Delicate linework and textured shadows contrast heavily with horrific and surreal imagery. The town feels cozy and claustrophobic at the same time.
Though it’s early in its serialization, Tonari no Jii-san is shaping up to become a modern horror classic. It captures the suffocating terror of being the only one who sees the truth and is easily one of the scariest modern horror manga.
Genres: Horror, Drama, Mystery, Psychological, Tragedy
Status: Ongoing (Seinen)
13. Shiro Ihon / White Book
Shiro Ihon (White Book) is a standout entry in Masaya Hokazono’s Ihon anthology series, and arguably the creepiest. While Hokazono is best known for his grotesque and chaotic works like Freak Island and Pumpkin Night, Shiro Ihon is a grounded collection of ghost stories that’s genuinely scary.
Each chapter offers a standalone horror short, ranging from haunted locations and cursed body parts to vengeful spirits. Despite the diversity in themes, a consistent atmosphere ties them all together.
Unlike Hokazono’s usual flair for excess, the horror in Shiro Ihon is more restrained, but also far creepier. While the art is serviceable overall, it shines during these moments. We witness disturbing facial expressions, mouths agape in silent screams, and contorted human bodies.
Shiro Ihon is not the most polished collection out there, but it knows exactly how to unsettle its readers. While all the Ihon collections are worth checking out, Shiro Ihon delivers the best scares.
If you’re a fan of horror anthologies, enjoy well-executed ghost stories, and tight storytelling, Shiro Ihon won’t disappoint.
Genres: Horror, Supernatural
Status: Finished (Seinen)
12. Nikubami Honegishimi
Nikubami Honegishimi is one of the most terrifying new horror manga in recent years. It’s a disturbing blend of urban legend, spiritual decay and grotesque monster design that will stick with you long after reading.
The story unfolds in two timelines. In 1999, eccentric occult magazine editor Inubosaki and her friend Asama investigate bizarre paranormal events. Each case plays like its own haunting short story, featuring everything from insectoid monstrosities, man-faced dogs, and hair-cloaked ghosts. In the present, Inubosaki’s nephew sets out to uncover the truth behind her untimely death. He teams up with an older Asama who’s now a reluctant psychic, scarred by what he’s seen.
What makes Nikubami Honegishimi so bone-chilling isn’t just the premise or the story, it’s the monsters. They emerge from the page with surreal elegance: twisted limbs, melting features, uncanny faces. There’s a distinct unpredictability to their appearance. Their design is deeply imaginative and terrifying, easily among the most frightening creature work in recent manga.
Asama’s encounters are especially unsettling. While Inubosaki is often untouched by the spirits surrounding them, Asama, because of his psychic powers, often comes into direct contact with them. This is where the horror truly happens.
The art style might be divisive. It’s sketchy, even cartoonish in places, especially with Inubosaki’s exaggerated expressions. When it leans into horror, however, the style becomes something else entirely: raw, visceral and deeply atmospheric.
Still early in its run, Nikubami Honegishimi already feels like a cult classic in the making. Its terrifying visuals, and layers of occult mystery make it one of the scariest horror manga currently being published.
Genres: Horror, Supernatural, Mystery
Status: Ongoing (Seinen)
11. Dragon Head
Dragon Head is one of the most harrowing manga ever created. It may be a survival story at its core, but its unrelenting atmosphere of fear, isolation, and mental collapse makes it one of the scariest horror manga of all time.
The story begins with a train accident. Only three students, Teru, Ako, and Nobuo, survive, only to find themselves trapped inside a pitch-black tunnel, cut off from the world. With no food, no light, and no rescue in sight, panic and paranoia take hold, and one of them quickly descends into madness.
This, however, is only just the beginning.
When they finally escape, the world outside offers no comfort. Cities lie in ruins. The landscape itself is broken. Communication is gone. Society has collapsed without explanation. Every town they enter feels abandoned or wrong. There’s no safety, no logic, no answers, only the lingering dread that the world is fundamentally broken and beyond repair.
What makes Dragon Head so terrifying is its realism. There are no monsters. The horror comes from within: the fear of losing control, of watching humanity break down in the face of the unknown. People turn violent, trust erodes, and sanity becomes fragile.
Mochizuki’s art is raw and textured, capturing the claustrophobia of tunnels, and the vast emptiness of destroyed cities. You can feel the dust, the silence, and the desperation.
It may not have a tidy resolution, but the story’s ambiguity only adds to the fear. Dragon Head is about confronting the void, and realizing that the real monster might be your own delicate mind.
Genres: Horror, Adventure, Tragedy, Psychological, Post-Apocalyptic
Status: Finished (Seinen)
10. Zashiki Onna
Zashiki Onna is one of the earliest and most disturbing portrayals of stalking in horror manga. Published in the early 90s, this short, grounded tale proves you don’t need supernatural entities or graphic violence to create true fear, just the relentless presence of a person who won’t leave you alone.
The story follows Hiroshi, a university student living a quiet, uneventful life. One day, he notices a strange, tall woman lingering outside his neighbor’s apartment. She seems off, uncomfortably quiet, and oddly proportioned. When she suddenly sets her sights on him, Hiroshi’s life begins to unravel.
At first she’s just irritating, showing up at his door multiple times to inquire about his neighbor. Soon enough, however, she intrudes into every aspect of his life. That’s what makes Zashiki Onna so terrifying. There’s no demon, no curse, just a deeply disturbed woman who won’t stop.
The horror is entirely rooted in plausibility. Being stalked, having your privacy violated, and being helpless to make it stop, this is real-world fear. The tension builds gradually, creating a suffocating sense of dread.
The art is raw and has a distinctly 90s aesthetic. It’s gritty, simple, and occasionally rough. But when it counts, it hits. The woman’s presence on the page is unforgettable. Her expressions switch from blank to grotesque to utterly unhinged. Every time she appears, you feel the same chill Hiroshi does.
At only eleven chapters, Zashiki Onna is a quick read, but its impact lingers. It’s a slow-burn psychological story about obsession and helplessness, one that helped define an entire subgenre, and easily one of the scariest horror manga ever ever made.
Genres: Horror, Mystery, Psychological, Thriller
Status: Finished (Seinen)
9. Gannibal
Gannibal is one of the most unnerving horror manga of recent years. It’s a chilling slow-burn mystery drenched in paranoia, rural isolation, and the quiet dread that everyone’s hiding something.
The story follows Daigo Agawa, a police officer transferred to a remote mountain village with his wife and young daughter. The place seems peaceful at first, but unease sets in quickly. The villagers are oddly evasive, his predecessor vanished under strange circumstances, and the powerful Goto family is feared by all. As Daigo investigates, he soon comes to a terrifying conclusion: they might be cannibals.
What makes Gannibal so terrifying isn’t the gore, but the atmosphere. From the moment Daigo and his family arrive, something feels off.
The tension between him and the Gotos is masterfully written. Their passive-aggressive jokes, sudden intrusions, and veiled threats create a constant sense of unease. They don’t need to act overly hostile. Instead, their presence alone is enough to make our skin crawl.
It isn’t just the Gotos, though. The entire village feels equally unsettling. People are watching, monitoring, and if you step out of line, you’ll be shunned, ostracized or worse.
Masaaki Ninomiya’s artwork enhances the unease. Characters are expressive and intense, the village feels cold and claustrophobic. And when violence erupts, it’s fast, brutal and deeply human.
There are no ghosts or monsters in Gannibal, just the horrifying possibility that ancient traditions have festered into something rotten.
Still underrated in the West, Gannibal is an exceptional piece of horror storytelling. It’s smart, suspenseful and relentlessly unsettling. If you’re looking for the scariest horror manga out there, Gannibal is a must-read.
Genres: Horror, Mystery, Psychological, Crime
Status: Finished (Seinen)
8. N
N is one of the scariest horror manga in recent history. Written by Kurumu Akumu and illustrated by Niko to Game, it delivers pure nightmare fuel in the form of fragmented urban horror stories.
Each chapter starts with a seemingly standalone story: a group of boys going missing, two people video chatting, or strange recurring dreams. At first, they feel like eerie one-shots, but something’s always off. The tone is wrong. The people act strange. Their faces twist in ways that aren’t normal. Eventually, all those pieces come together.
Behind it all lurks a shadowy group known only as N, a supposed religious group thought to have disappeared 2000 years ago. Much like PTSD Radio, N builds its horror not through exposition, but through implications. The more you read, the more it goes under your skin.
What makes N truly terrifying is the art. The sketchy, raw linework enhances the unease. Characters‘ faces morph without warning. Blank stares suddenly shift into grotesque, uneasy grins. Sometimes it’s sudden, like a jump scare. Other times it lingers. The facial horror here is among the most memorable in modern manga.
The story rewards careful reading, with subtle connections and hidden clues throughout. In its current final chapters, N ties things together, but too many questions remain for any satisfying resolution.
Though currently on hiatus, N is already one of the scariest horror manga released in the last decade. If you love disorienting stories, disturbing visuals and urban legends, N will be right up your alley.
Genres: Horror, Mystery, Supernatural, Psychological
Status: Ongoing (Seinen)
7. Mieruko-chan
Mieruko-chan is not only one of the most unique, but also one of the scariest horror manga in recent years.
The setup sounds almost comedic. Miko Yotsuya is a regular high school girl who has the ability to see ghosts. Instead of fighting them or fleeing from them, Miko pretends she doesn’t see them. Because in this world, acknowledging their presence makes you a target.
That’s where Mieruko-chan finds its brilliance. The horror doesn’t come from gore or violence, but from the unbearable tension of enduring the terrifying while acting like everything is normal. Miko is constantly surrounded by nightmare fuel, but must navigate her school life with a poker face.
What makes this series so compelling is this blend of slice-of-life comedy with sudden, overwhelming terror. One moment, Miko is chatting with her best friend about snacks or accessories, the next, a hideous specter looms inches from her face. The tonal whiplash is fantastic, and it works exactly as intended.
The contrast isn’t just thematic, it’s visual. The art style is typically cute and even minimalistic, but when the ghosts appear, it changes entirely and the level of detail becomes incredibly intricate. They aren’t just spooky apparitions, but grotesque, decaying, howling monstrosities. The visual clash between the ordinary and the horrific gives each appearance extra impact.
While later chapters introduce more characters and lore, Mieruko-chan never loses sight of its core fear: the horror of pretending everything is normal when it absolutely isn’t.
Creepy, funny, and unexpectedly original, Mieruko-chan is a must-read for any horror manga fan out there.
Genres: Horror, Comedy, Supernatural, Mystery, Slice of Life
Status: Ongoing (Seinen)
6. Yuuan no Kanata
Yuuan no Kanata is one of the most beautifully drawn and scariest horror manga of the last few years. It follows Kanata, a woman who lost the ability to fear after a traumatic incident. To fill the void, she chases the supernatural, hoping to find something that might finally terrify her again.
The manga unfolds through episodic encounters with the paranormal: a suicide-inducing ghost, a grieving father haunted by his dead family, a live-streamer who can see the dead. While Kanata remains the thread connecting each story, the perspective often shifts, giving the manga an anthology-like feel. Each tale is self-contained, yet all contribute to the growing sense of unease and a slow-burning overarching mystery.
What makes Yuuan no Kanata stand out is the art. The supernatural entities are rendered with heavy black ink, layered textures, and eerie negative spaces.
These ghosts and apparitions seem to erupt from the page. They are twisted, screaming, decaying, and the contrast with the otherwise grounded, realistic world is jarring in the best way.
The scariest part, however, is Kanata herself. While others scream or break down, she remains eerily calm, dead-eyed, expressionless, and immune. Her nonchalance doesn’t offer relief; it only heightens the horror. Something is deeply wrong here, and the manga leans into that dissonance.
If you want a modern horror manga that prioritizes tone, atmosphere and fear over gore and shock, Yuuan no Kanta should be at the top of your list. It’s haunting, nightmarishly drawn, and only getting started.
Genres: Horror, Supernatural, Mystery
Status: Ongoing (Seinen)
5. 6000
6000 is one of the most claustrophobic and visually nightmarish manga ever made. Set inside a deep-sea research station located 6000 meters beneath the ocean’s surface, it begins like a slow-burn mystery, and descends into full-blown madness.
When a new crew is sent to investigate a series of strange deaths, things quickly unravel. Hallucinations, distorted memories, and visions of decaying corpses blur the line between truth and madness. The characters, just like the reader, can no longer trust what they see.
What makes 6000 so terrifying is the way it weaponizes space and isolation. The undersea station is a maze of dark corridors and flickering lights. Yet as the story progresses, this layout changes, reality begins to blur, and it becomes harder and harder to tell where the characters are. You feel trapped with them, suffocating in dread.
The art style perfectly matches this tone. Harsh blacks, rough textures, and jagged lines give everything a raw, unstable energy. The visuals are grim, wet, and cold, dripping with rot and grime. When the cosmic horror finally breaks through, it’s unforgettable: twisted corpse-altars, decaying entities that might once have been human, and eldritch horror beyond comprehension.
The story can be convoluted, the characters are thin, but none of that matters when the atmosphere is this overwhelming. 6000 is a deep sea descent into madness, and one of the most terrifying cosmic horror manga of all time.
Genres: Horror, Psychological, Survival, Cosmic Horror
Status: Finished (Seinen)
4. Ultra Heaven
Ultra Heaven isn’t a horror manga in the traditional sense. It’s a psychedelic sci-fi trip through the shattered mind of a drug addict. And yet, few manga are as visually overwhelming, disorienting, or downright terrifying.
Set in a dystopian future where emotions can be manufactured through specialized drugs, Ultra Heaven follows Kabu, a hopeless addict in search of the ultimate high. When he stumbles across a new, illicit substance known only as Ultra Heaven, he takes it, and everything falls apart.
What follows is one of the most disturbing, chaotic depictions of drug overdose in manga history. Reality dissolves into a fever-dream hellscape. Kabu’s sense of time and space are obliterated. People melt, buildings twist, and nothing makes sense anymore. Not to him, and not to us. We’re trapped in his mind, and the mange never lets us out.
This descent isn’t just narrative, it’s structural. The very medium fractures under the pressure. Panels contort, bleed into each other, or vanish entirely. Page layouts disintegrate, following the rhythm of Kabu’s unraveling consciousness. It’s art as madness, and Keiichi Koike executes it with astonishing precision.
While later chapters explore similar ideas through altered states of being, it’s Kabu’s first trip that leaves the deepest scar. It’s an unrelenting assault of sensory horror, one that never confirms what’s real and what’s not. Are we still inside the trip? Has reality shifted permanently? The manga offers no clarity, only dread.
Ultra Heaven is surreal, experimental and deeply unsettling. While it’s not a horror manga, Kabu’s drug-induced fever dream alone makes it an absolute fit for this list of the scariest horror manga of all time.
Genres: Drama, Mystery, Psychological, Sci-Fi
Status: Finished (Seinen)
3. Fuan no Tane
Fuan no Tane by Masaaki Nakayama is one of the scariest horror manga ever made, precisely because of how little it explains.
There’s no plot. No recurring characters. No overarching story. Instead, Fuan no Tane is a series of short, standalone vignettes, each just a few pages long, capturing eerie, supernatural moments. Some involve ghost sightings, other feature bizarre figures lurking at the edge of perception. Many feel like urban legends: stories you’d hear from a friend of a friend, half-believable and wholly unnerving.
Each chapter is built around a loose theme: schools, hospitals, strangers at the door. The details, however, are intentionally minimal. You’re shown just enough to unsettle you, and then it ends. That’s what makes Fuan no Tane so effective. There’s no build-up, no resolution, just the moment of dread.
The art is clean and restrained, which only amplifies the uncanny imagery when it hits. There’s rarely gore or grotesque details, but the subtle distortions, vacant expressions, and unnatural positioning of figures creates a deep sense of unease.
While a few of the stories veer into black comedy, most are haunting in their simplicity. If you’re looking for horror stripped down to its essence, short, strange, and deeply creepy, Fuan no Tane is a must-read.
Genres: Horror, Supernatural, Psychological (Shonen)
Status: Finished (Shonen)
2. PTSD Radio
PTSD Radio is another terrifying manga by Masaaki Nakayama, the creator of Fuan no Tane. While it shares many surface similarities with its predecessor, short chapters, eerie encounters, and minimalist storytelling, it ultimately evolves into something far more ambitious and unsettling.
At first, it feels like another anthology of disconnected supernatural incidents. The stories are brief, only a few pages long, and drop you into moments of pure dread with no context or resolution. As the volumes progress, however, a pattern emerges. The one thing these stories all share is hair.
Ghosts made of hair, strands that slither in the dark, people tormented by baldness, hair is the thread that binds everything. Slowly, a chilling mythos forms around a mysterious entity known only as the God of Hair, whose presence haunts the background of the entire manga. It’s never explained directly, but its influence is unmistakable, and the connections between the stories grow more disturbing the further you read.
This slow convergence sets PTSD Radio apart. Unlike Fuan no Tane, which embraces pure anthology horror, PTSD Radio builds momentum. The creeping realization that everything is linked adds a thick layer of existential dread that lingers long after you finish reading.
The art is a clear step up. Nakayama’s clean, realistic style remains intact, but the horror imagery is now more grotesque, visceral, and creatively staged. There’s a depth to the shadows, a weight to the expressions, and the hair-obsessed spirits are among the most visually disturbing in manga.
PTSD Radio is short, surreal and terrifying, a must-read for fans of Fuan no Tane, and one of the scariest horror manga of the last decades. It is episodic horror done right.
Genres: Horror, Supernatural, Mystery
Status: On Hiatus (Seinen)
1. Uzumaki
Uzumaki is Junji Ito’s masterpiece, and one of the most terrifying horror manga ever created. A surreal, cosmic nightmare about obsession, madness, and inevitability. It’s a landmark work in the genre, and arguably the scariest horror manga of all time.
Set in the coastal town of Kurouzu-cho, Uzumaki follows high schooler Kirie Goshima and her increasingly paranoid boyfriend Shuuichi. Their town has become infected, not by a disease, but by a concept: the spiral.
Each chapter serves as a self-contained tale of spiral induced horror. From grotesque transformations to eerie natural phenomena, Ito uses the spiral to fuel some of the most inventive and disturbing imagery in manga. It’s episodic in structure, but each incident feels more horrifying than the last.
What makes Uzumaki so uniquely frightening is its villain, or rather, the lack thereof. There’s no monster to defeat, no killer to stop. The spiral is an idea, a force of nature, a cosmic inevitability. It cannot be reasoned with or undone. This abstract, unstoppable curse gives the manga a deeply Lovecraftian feel, culminating in a final volume that veers into true cosmic horror.
Ito’s art is peak here. His clean linework contrasts with the grotesque detail of the body horror. Some panels are so visually disturbing they’re burned into your mind longer after reading. It’s a masterclass in visual horror.
Uzumaki is bizarre, bleak, and brilliant. While Kirie maybe be a passive protagonist, and the ending is divisive, the journey is unforgettable. If you read only one horror manga in your life, let it be this one. Uzumaki is pure nightmare fuel, and a towering achievement in horror storytelling.
Genres: Horror, Supernatural, Mystery, Cosmic Horror
Status: Finished (Seinen)
