Halloween is my favorite holiday, and while binge watching this season of American Horror Story, I couldn’t help but think back to all of the evil, sadistic, or just plain creepy characters Ryan Murphy has so generously bestowed upon all of us. Behold, my list of the seven most sadistic, scary, and/or suspicious characters in AHS history.

1. Tate Langdon, “Murder House”

Tate makes the list much more for the ‘creepy’ angle than the actually scary, but I can understand why he made viewers uncomfortable and entranced.

Despite being a ghost and shooting up a high school, he made viewers fall in love with him when he couldn’t remember his evil deeds and fell in love with Zoe.

And who can blame them? He was adorable at times, and even at his most psychotic, he was wearing makeup any girl would kill for this Halloween season (just look at the photo below!).

2. Dr. Oliver Thredson, “Asylum”

If the characters in the first season of the show were frightening to viewers, “Asylum” offered a few more to heighten the fear and keep the legacy going. To me, none were as frightening as Dr. Oliver Thredson, played by the amazing Zachary Quinto.

Thredson was brought to the Briarcliff Mental Institution to evaluate Kit Walker (another character played by Evan Peters) after he allegedly killed his wife, but as viewers got to know him more, it was clear Kit was so much more sane than Oliver could ever hope to be.

Lost without a maternal influence in his life, he wandered the streets looking for a substitute; when he couldn’t find one, he would use their skin to make furniture and parts of his gruesome “Bloodyface” mask. I can’t use an image of the mask without getting scared all over, so I’ll settle for this gif:

3. Marie Laveau, “Coven”

While there were many strong, powerful women in “Coven,” Marie Laveau brought the perfect blend of creepy voodoo and power, bringing back two waves of the living dead to attack her enemies and casting curses like it was nothing.

What little I knew of voodoo was supplemented with vivid imagery and crazy incantations, and I couldn’t help but want her to destroy Jessica Lange (as much as I loved her) with her snappy comebacks and, frankly, superior magic.

4. Twisty the Clown, “Freak Show”

Twisty was a short lived character, but with my fear of clowns and his fear of...I don’t know, letting people see him and live, he made a terrifying character that was as haunting as he was sad.

From the first time we saw him to the last, he was consistently killing and training Dandy Mott, (a character I kept thinking “He’s pretty, but he’s so weird…..” about) to be his apprentice. Even after his death, Twisty was responsible for a good amount of the trauma the freak show had on their plate.

5. Elizabeth, AKA The Countess, “Hotel”

Elizabeth was Lady Gaga’s first character on American Horror Story, and what an intro! Elizabeth, nicknamed The Countess, was not only seductive and sultry, but also had vampire tendencies that kept the audience wondering who she would come after next.

What started as a sexual practice with a few partners, drawing a bit of blood turned on to full on murder, and this element made the season memorable and impossible to resist, despite the gore and the weird (WEIRD!) habits of the characters.

6. The Butcher, “Roanoke”

The Butcher, Kathy Bates last character on American Horror Story, left quite an impression with me, and not just because I love her as an actress. The Butcher was creepy and territorial, but what made her even crazier was that she had the ‘real life’ version of the actors on the show shaking with fear, since Kathy Bates’ on-screen persona was trapped in her character from the documentary while the real Butcher was skulking around, killing everyone she could, including Bates herself.

The season itself was not a huge hit, but The Butcher at least gave the show a little of its ‘horror’ back.

7. The Entire Cult, “Cult”

With this season still ongoing, this decision could change, but I have to say that my most ‘Halloween worthy’ character is not one in particular, but the entire cult, lead by Evan Peters’ Kai (I sense a pattern with him and evil characters- they’re always so good!).

The clown trope is a popular one this year, but the way the season is going now, these clowns are politically motivated, but also devolving farther and farther from their original goal of scaring people to wanting to destroy Kai himself. With each character having their own motivations, the cult has a dangerous, terrifying aspect, made even more frightening because there were real life people skulking around dressed as clowns just last year (and even on this campus).

Happy Halloween everyone! Did I forget any particularly horrible “Horror Story” characters?