Here is an extremely unfriendly reminder of the cruel capabilities of human beings with free will, just in time for Halloween, since this is the time of year we slap goofy smiles onto creatures that terrify us and use them to decorate our front yards. If you were starting to think that werewolves were cute and fuzzy… read number three on this list and think again, bucko.

In a world of terrorism, whether it be the actual terrorism white men with legally purchased guns inflict on us every day or the perceived threat that all Muslims inflict on racist America, the horror of serial killers is not in their victim count. It’s in the depths of their depravity—did they torture, rape, maim? Did they only hurt children? Did they do it for years, in plain sight, and nobody noticed?

Horrors that we have yet to conceive of are the often the things that scare us the most. It’s like that old thing people say—you’re not afraid of the dark, you’re afraid of what’s in the dark.

Anyway, here are five serial killers who did a lot of murder. Happy Halloween.

1) Jane Toppan

“That is my ambition, to have killed more people—more helpless people—than any man or woman who has ever lived.”

Jane Toppan was an American serial killer with over 30 confirmed victims to her name. She did most of her murdering while working as a nurse at various hospitals in Massachusetts. She poisoned her victims with her own prescriptions of morphine, atropine, and occasionally strychnine, which causes incredibly painful body wracking spasms that get worse and worse until the backbone is in a constant arch. Then a whole bunch of other terrible things happen, and the victim dies within three hours.

Jane Toppan admitted to getting sexual thrills from her murders, a rarity in female serial killers.

She was arrested on October 26^th, 1901 after murdering four members of the family she was hired as private nurse for. She confessed to 31 murders and spent the rest of her days in the Taunton Insane Hospital in Massachusetts.

2) Béla Kiss

Béla Kiss, born in Hungary in 1877, practiced at least three extremely creepy activities besides murder—he liked to steal money from women he met through personal ads and promised to marry, to puncture the necks of his victims and drain them of blood, like probably by drinking it all, and he attempted to pickle all his victims in large metal drums.

Béla’s various activites were not discovered until he had already been conscripted into World War I. He had a large number of metal drums on his property which he said were full of gasoline, and when the needy soldiers of Hungary opened them up, they discovered that, uh, they were not full of gasoline. They were actually full of dead women. 24 in all.

Because this was the early 1900s, a time of world war, and Eastern Europe, Béla Kiss was never found. Seriously. He killed 24 women, attempted to pickle them in metal drums, escaped from the Serbian hospital where he was recuperating from war related injuries by putting the dead body of another soldier in his bed and running away, and nobody could ever find him.

In 1932, a homicide detective in New York City claimed to have seen Kiss in the Times Square Subway. But as anyone who has ever fallen in love with a stranger on the train knows, people can disappear in seconds on public transportation. Béla was never found, and his exact victim count is not known.

3) Werewolf of Chalons

Remember how before Harry and Hermione grew some balls and started saying “Voldemort” all the time, no one would speak his name? The entire wizarding world called him “He Who Must Not Be Named” or “You Know Who.” That is essentially why we only know the Werewolf of Chalons by this spooky title—his crimes were so gruesome, so unthinkable, so horrific, that the court in Paris ordered all legal documents regarding his case destroyed completely after his execution.

They’re not really overreacting too much, which is the freaky thing. The Werewolf was accused of turning into wolf form, capturing young children, and then bringing him back to his tailor shop where he tortured, raped, butchered, and finally cooked and ate their bodies. At his shop, police discovered barrels full of bleached bones.

He died ranting and raving, blaspheming all the while. Personally, I’d rather take Voldemort any day.

4) Andreas Bichel – The Bavarian Ripper

"I may say that during the operation I was so eager, that I trembled all over, and I longed to rive off a piece and eat it."

We have to at least give Andreas Bichel points for creativity. He lured his victims into his home by telling them that he was a fortune teller in possession of a magic mirror that would show naïve young women their future husbands. Once in his home, he would hack them to pieces while they were still alive, keen on examining their insides.

Andreas confessed to two murders and gave his motive as temptation due to their fine clothes—and indeed, he did try to sell the garments of his victims after their murders. He was, however, suspected of 50 or more murders. Andreas was executed in 1809.

5) Delphine LaLaurie – Madame LaLaurie

You probably know this name and immediately thought about Kathy Bates, or perhaps how disappointing season three of American Horror Story really was. (Please go away, Emma Roberts.) If not, go watch season three of American Horror Story so you can agree with me about how not good it was. But before you go, let me tell you about the real Delphine LaLaurie, who is not Kathy Bates.

Madame LaLaurie, a New Orleans socialite, is remembered by history for killing and torturing the black slaves she kept at her big fancy mansion. Inexplicably, every other slave owner in history is not remembered with similar contempt. Anyway.

The story is actually really dramatic. LaLaurie, who was known to be pretty polite to her slaves, even to the point of emancipating a few, was actually torturing and murdering most of her legal human property on the regular. A twelve-year-old girl leapt to her death from the roof of LaLaurie’s mansion to avoid another whipping at LaLaurie’s hand after she accidentally pulled her mistresses’ hair while brushing it.

Despite this pretty big red flag, LaLaurie’s crimes went undiscovered until April of 1834, when a fire broke out in the kitchen of her mansion. When emergency responders got there, they found the cook chained to the stove by her ankle. Red flag 2. They tried to evacuate the slave quarters because of the raging fire, but the LaLaurie would not give them the key. Red flag 3.

When the firefighters finally broke down the door to the slave quarters, they found seven mutilated (and some still living) slaves, who said they were imprisoned for months. They were suspended by the neck, their limbs were stretched and torn, and some accounts claim those horrifically injured were kept in cages and strapped to operating tables.

As you might imagine, the LaLauries escaped in the angry mob that came to punish them for their evil ways and Madame LaLaurie eventually died in France, where apparently nobody thought to look for her.