NetHack/Nightmare Fuel

"What could possibly be scary about a game made of numbers and letters?", you're probably thinking. Good question! Why not take a gander for yourself at the frights NetHack has to offer?

Setting
"Oh no, she's using the touch of death! Do you want your possessions identified? (y/n)"
 * The idea that you can eat any sapient or sentient being you kill as long as they're not the same species as you is... harrowing to contemplate at length.
 * Master liches and arch-liches are Demonic Spider (if not Boss in Mook Clothing) levels of frightening to encounter in normal gameplay, and it's even worse when a monster's polymorphed into one (which can happen with shapeshifters and polymorph traps that can spawn below dungeon level 7). Imagine you finally make it to DL 10 after a long and arduous series of splats, and as you're exploring something invisible warps towards you and starts destroying your armor, cursing your inventory, or worse...


 * Even if it isn't as likely as many other outcomes, the fact that something can potentially teleport to you and render you a corpse with no warning will leave you double-checking every move you make.


 * There are lots of "used armor" shops scattered throughout the dungeons. Sometimes these shops contain cursed armor, which can't be removed, except by uncursing it or if the original owner dies wearing it. Now where do you think they got their inventory from?
 * Dying while in a shop confirms it outright - the shopkeeper takes all your possessions in that event (which amounts to making them part of the shop's inventory). Seems reasonable enough... but if you directly steal from the shop (e.g. teleporting out with unpaid items, digging out...), the shop owner will try their damnedest to chase you down. If you should die after that point, guess who comes for the loot?