Nightmare Fuel / Garry's Mod

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As a game where anyone could do just about anything, Garry's Mod is known for creating some very disturbing stuff. YMMV on whether you find anything listed here to be scary, of course.

The Base Game

• The game's engine itself. Many people agreed that many classical Source games look creepy due to Uncanny Valley vibes. Imagine a videogame that look something between sixth and seventh generations of consoles' games. Yes, Source was innovative for 2004 and can display very realistic for it's time graphics. But if you look closely, you will see that levels in classical Source games like Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike: Source and even Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines look kinda off. You will notice that levels have lesser polygons, lesser textures' resolution and even NPCs' faces look not much human. The engine itself is not perfect and could cause funny and not much bugs. Of course, it's possible to make a decent looking Source engine game with nice modern visuals, but just remember that fact.
• Sometimes, turning up the sensitivity of the Face Poser allows you to make some extremely disturbing expressions. Case◊ in point◊.
  • Similarly, for GMod 13, Garry removed the restrictions on facial muscle animation, and added some more ways of manipulating bones. This essentially allows the player to make any kind of Humanoid Abomination they'd like out of the NPCs they have installed. Hoo boy, are the results genuinely terrifying.
• The base game mainly uses Half-Life 2 assets. This means that you can spawn several Half-Life 2 characters and monsters. What's more important is that many maps use Half-Life 2 textures and objects. This means that maps like gm_bigcity are using already made textures from a dystopian post-apocalyptic game in unusual way. Imagine a map that intended to be just an ordinary house. But the house has worn-out wallpaper and very old, cheap furniture.
• Let's talk about pre-installed maps:
  • gm_construct is a big liminal space playground with weird architecture that tries to imitate real life buildings. From the perspective of gamedesign it has logic. We have a pool for water physics, dark rooms for experimenting with light and etc. But what if this location existed in real life? It would look weird. You enter one of these apartment buildings... And it's hollow inside. Even if this building has windows... wait!? Why are these windows are just a flat texture? And why is there a giant mirror in one of basement rooms?
    • The Dark Room. It's a pitch dark basement room where you can't see everything without a flashlight. There is nothing here. Just an empty dark room. But if you have a fear of darkness, you will easily imagine many Boogeymen living in this room. Man, even the entrance to dark room is creepy. It's so easy to enter the garage and notice the entrance to the black nothingness.
    • Of course, you can use spawn some creepy Half-Life 2 monsters here. Or even use a scary playermodel and wait until another player enters the dark room. It's a perfect place to scare your friends, or for them to scare you.
    • Older versions of gm_construct are worse because they are entirely build on Half-Life 2 assets. Imagine spawning in a depressing looking place with post-soviet buildings, dead trees, and cloudy sky. Textures are much darker and moodier.
    • What about the earliest versions? Nothing but a white space with some interactive items.
  • gm_flatgrass is much less scary because it's nothing but just a flat plain with a lonely building on center, right? You can even see a city in distance, and a hill with Mock Hollywood Sign. But if you noclip inside of the building, you will see an empty secret room with a doll. The question is: why does this room exist? The room is without windows and doors. Nothing except a doll and a lamp on ceiling.
    • The old version of gm_flatgrass uses depressing looking Half-Life 2 assets. You're spawning on a small concrete flat platform. And all you can see around is nothing but just a flat surface with dark grass texture. The cloudy sky looks depressing.

Mods

• The blood effect mod Real Life Blood MOD is exactly what it says on the tin, where it is blood decals that are based off of real blood splatters from actual forensics pictures. The thumbnail^spoilerIt looks like a photo of dried up blood smeared on the sides of a bathtub, and a bit on the wall too. doesn't help matters either.
• The Perfectly Harmless Companion Cube. At first, it seems to be a regular Companion Cube from Portal...but when you turn around, you'll notice it's moved closer. Look away for too long, and it'll creep up on you, before pulling out a knife and stabbing you to death. It's even worse if you've lost it.
  • Alternatively, there's mods that offer the weeping angels and SCP-173.
• The corpse01 model reskins are always pretty well within the creepy zone, but there is a reskin that makes the corpse healthy, as well as a pack of three that are RNG, both of these mods make the corpse model fall into the Uncanny Valley easily.
  • However, there exists a reskin on the Workshop for the corpse01 model that instead of using the infamous burned face, it uses the image of an actual skinless face, effectively making the model much worse to look at. For obvious reasons, it will not be linked here.
• Whenever a Nextbot isn't some 2D picture of a meme or Narmy creepypasta character, it can be scary to know that you are in the same map as a predator that always knows where you are, is faster than you, is actively trying to murder you, and the only way you could defend yourself is by trying to lose it in labyrinths, and even that's not guaranteed to save you.
  • If you download a Nextbot that uses the source AI from Gargitron, or Garry forbid, Terminus, things get even worse. At least if you're chased by an Sanic, Obunga, or Angry Munci Nextbot, you at least know it's coming and the bot constantly chasing you is predictable after a few chases. Nextbots like Gargitron and Terminus take all that predictability out the window as now you are dealing with a predator that is not only super persistent, but will also hide from you and prepare to ambush you when you least expect it.

Maps

• The classic map gm_shambles is a good example of a creepy map. It is an old abandoned (or, as the description states, "evacuated", though the scenery definitely shows otherwise) British neighbourhood at night with faint fog. It has only a few enterable houses and they are all missing their furniture, and all of their doors are either missing or knocked down. Some windows are boarded up, some rooms have only a few lights on, some houses have been damaged and some houses even have splatters of blood, indicating that their inhabitants have suffered a grisly fate. There is also a creepy ambience throughout that sounds like a very faint drone and sometimes, church bells may ring... It leaves little to no evidence of what kind of apocalypse had actually happened here, but the only clue of what may have happened is a small newspaper left on the floor of one of the living rooms of a house. There are also some disturbing Easter Eggs around the map, with an example being a well that has a gnome in a middle of a pentagram at the bottom. All of this results in a map so creepy that sometimes some players are not even able to explore the map fully.
  • it is also a bit depressing to go through the map, as it's original creator Fartomaticatron died in January 2015.
  • The daytime version isn't any better.
    • If that's not bad enough, some Trolling Creator decided to make a haunted version of the map, where there are black shadow people that are scripted to appear every once in a while. Have fun!
• Night Paranoia, an open-ended and dynamic horror map which involves the player being required to survive a home invasion by a solo Civil Protection unit. It is very intense to experience, as the player is required to use stealth just to survive. there are ten Multiple Endings, and being spotted can result in a Jump Scare courtesy of a very loud Scare Chord, which could be triggered at any moment...
  • In a way, it also makes the Civil Protection, normally weak Mooks who pose little threat in the main game, a lot more menacing.
• Several classic maps got lots of modifications by various other authors, and they all tend to vary in terms of scariness. But perhaps the scariest ones are the "void" versions: gm_construct_void, gm_flatgrass_void, gm_bigcity_void and rp_bangclaw_void have all the lights in the level completely out and the sky rendered pitch black. Immediately upon spawning, you are left to wander in the darkness, with only your flashlight to guide you through the empty, desolate and lifeless shell of a once normal level. And God help you if you decide to spawn a hostile NPC nearby, doubly so if its a Poison Headcrab or a Nextbot character. Then there is the backstory, where the void unexpectedly started to consume everything in its path; it's never specified what exactly happened, but some sort of Eldritch Abomination is implied to be responsible.
  • Not even the fan versions of gm_construct are safe. gm_construct_15_void is a more survival-oriented approach to the theme. Darkness is almost everywhere; the only place more or less full of light is inside the house near the pond... which is heavily barricaded and designed like a survival shelter, with the ruined cars and debris outside. While the lights may seem comforting at first, they tend to shut off every 30 minutes, leaving you in near complete darkness sans the campfire. The only way to get the power back on is to venture outside and bring a fuel can from a station... which means going in the darkness and potentially getting lost along the way. Once again, spawning monsters in the darkness is one good way of making the experience truly unforgettable.
• Imagine gm_bigcity turning into Silent Hill with fog and cryptic messages thrown around. gm_bigcity_sh does exactly that - the map is plunged heavily in fog, buildings and some bridges are partially or completely destroyed, whole streets are partially blocked off and the demonic pentagrams can lead you in various creepy places. There is a Jump Scare in one alleyway, and there is also a helipad with a broken helicopter, a faulty generator and a dead spec ops soldier lying in a pool of blood. Just what exactly happened there?

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