The 30 Best Ghost Movies Streaming Right Now
A good scary movie makes us afraid of its ghosts. A great one sees ghosts for what they are—specters of the past. That past can be horrific, filled with darkness we can never quite outrun. Ghosts can also be seductive, drawing us back to a past that we ought to have outgrown, teasing us with the idea that we can visit long-dead people and abandoned places, if only in shadow. We love ghost stories, perhaps, because we love the idea that there’s life beyond the grave, and that the past is never really gone. But the logic of story ensures that the gift of that reassurance comes with a price, and reminds us to be careful what we wish for.
With the caveat that neither The Uninvited nor The Innocents, two of the absolute best of the genre, aren't streaming anywhere, here are a handful of the best and most interesting ghost stories.
Dead of Night (1945)
Structured as a series of tales told by a group of weary travelers, Dead of Night is, perhaps, most famous for the segment about a ventriloquist and his dummy, Hugo—a sequence that paved the way for any number of creepy dolls. That's the only bit here that doesn't involve a ghost of some kind, as we're treated to phantom carriages, wailing ghost kids, a mirror haunted by the ghost of a murder to which it bore witness, and a golfing ghost looking for love from beyond the grave. Serious ghost stories were surprisingly scarce in the first few decades of cinema, but this British film gives us several, all rather brilliant. The movie is also justifiably famous for its clever twist ending that hints at science fiction—but I won't spoil that here.
Where to stream: Kanopy, Screambox
Blithe Spirit (1945)
Though he'd later be known for epics like The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, and Doctor Zhivago, director David Lean here crafted a bubbly adaptation of the Noël Coward play, with Rex Harrison as novelist Charles Condomine. When Charles invites a medium over for some research, she accidentally summons the spirit of his dead wife (Kay Hammond), who enjoys wrecking havoc with the lives of both Charles and his new wife (Constance Cummings). If a droll sex farce is more to your taste than outright horror this spooky season, this might be just the thing.
Where to stream: Max, Prime Video, The Criterion Channel, Tubi
Carnival of Souls (1962)
It’s shocking how readily available Carnival of Souls is, given that its history saw it being mostly ignored. The first time I saw it, well into the DVD era, it was on an old VHS tape, because that’s all there was. Yes, it’s technically in the public domain, but even Criterion has made a slot for the micro-budget independent story of a young woman who stumbles into an incredibly atmospheric, existentially dreadful fairground full of sunken-eyed tourists who don’t always seem to be having that much fun. It plays a bit like a mash-up of George Romero and David Lynch, but pre-dated the work of each of them.
Where to stream: Max, Tubi, The Criterion Channel, Shudder, Crackle, AMC+, Prime Video
The Haunting (1963)
Based on the Shirley Jackson novel The Haunting of Hill House, the movie starts out with a fairly stock premise and builds to something unexpected. A scientist invites a disparate group of visitors to spend the night in the reputedly haunted Hill House, a beautiful but oddly designed structure. As in Jackson’s novel, director Robert Wise (about whom we don’t speak enough) creates character drama out of a terrifying night, exploring each character in turn but focusing on sheepish and awkward Eleanor, who spent most of her adult life caring for her mother, only recently deceased. It evolves into a movie about two lost souls who find what they’ve been looking for in each other. Forever.
The book on which it was based has been adapted multiple times, and inspired imitators like goofy-but-fun The House on Haunted Hill. They’re almost all worthwhile on their own terms, and the Mike Flanagan miniseries is essential, though the 1999 remake is probably best avoided.
Where to stream: MGM+, digital rental
Kwaidan (1964)
What look like modern horror tropes (vengeful ghosts and demons, in particular) go back a long way in Japanese culture: J-horror was a thing long before we had a collective term for it—centuries earlier, in fact. So it’s no surprise that some of the best ghost movies come from Japanese filmmakers.
Kwaidan, from an archaic form of the word for “ghost story,” is an anthology film—horror being a genre that very often works better in small bites. The downside is that there are often peaks and valleys in quality. Not so here, with each of the four tales being very different but brilliantly constructed, and also influential: Horror lovers will recognize some of the imagery here that became iconic (as in the first story: “The Black Hair.”) The film is also stunningly beautiful, with tremendous use of color.
Where to stream: Max, The Criterion Channel, digital rental
Kuroneko (1968)
A revenge story with surprisingly feminist themes, the stark, spare Kuroneko starts simply and grows more complex before an impressive, if ambiguous, climax. Two women, mother and daughter-in-law, are raped and murdered by a troop of traveling samurai. Vowing vengeance and making a pact with the underworld, their spirits seduce wandering warriors and then murder them ruthlessly. Eventually, a military hero is sent to deal with the deadly spirits. He's a samurai who soon learns that the two ghosts are those of his wife and mother.
Where to stream: The Criterion Channel
The Stone Tape (1972)
So creepily influential was this British TV movie that it gave a name to a long-established idea in paranormal research that ghosts aren't so much the spirits of the dead, but instead playbacks of traumatic events that took place in particular locations. Here, a tech company heads off to an old Victorian mansion to work on some new developments in sound recording (circa 1972), and find themselves in the middle of a haunting something that appears to involve a maid who worked in the house a century before. Trying to work out the science in the hopes of applying it to their own research, the team soon discovers that there are older forces at work in the house. Unsurprisingly for a movie set in the world of audio recording, it's the sounds here that are the most chilling.
Where to stream: Shudder, AMC+, digital rental
House (1977)
A flying disembodied head bites someone in the ass; a girl is eaten by a piano: a woman disappears into a refrigerator. That’s just a taste of the fundamental and deliberate weirdness of House (or Hausu), the story of six friends invited to visit a spooky old house. It’s hard to make out any real themes or even much of a plot: the movie is almost entirely a triumph of style over substance, but what style! The bright, candy-coated visuals of the earlier parts of the film only pave the way for the bloodbath to come. The whole experience is like a music video fever dream—not scary, really, but unforgettable.
Where to stream: Max, The Criterion Channel, digital rental
The Changeling (1980)
Once again: Unless you like the idea of living in a horror movie, please think twice about cheap real estate. In this case, it’s a giant and inherently creepy Victorian mansion that, for some reason(!), nobody has lived in for over a decade. George C. Scott can’t see the problem, and, following the deaths of his wife and daughter in an auto accident, decides that the place might represent just the change of pace he’s looking for. Of course, all the best haunted houses have at least as much to do with the baggage we bring into them as with the events of their pasts, and Scott’s character has plenty as he investigates the increasingly weird happenings in a house that most people would vacate before even unpacking.
It’s a cult classic for a couple of reasons: the always reliable Scott’s performance, and also the technical proficiency of the haunted house scares is a cornerstone of that particular genre.
Where to stream: Peacock, Tubi, Shudder, AMC+, digital rental
Beetlejuice (1988)
Before his aesthetic became a brand, Tim Burton was genuinely one of the most original and transgressive filmmakers of his generation, bringing a specific spooky, dark-comedy weirdness to each and every project. After creating a single, extremely memorable ghost trucker in Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, he took us on a full-fledged tour of hell with Beetlejuice, and, as with all of his early projects, goes to great lengths to make the case that the outsiders (the dead, in this case), are generally having more fun.
Where to stream: Max, digital rental
Pet Sematary (1989)
An extremely unsettling juxtaposition of heady themes and exploitation, director Mary Lambert's Pet Sematary takes one of Stephen King's most challenging books and adds touches that border on camp (think Fred Gwynne's "Ayup!" neighbor Jud Crandall, and endlessly mimicked Maine accent). None of it quite works on paper, but it's full of indelible imagery (creepy cats, murderous toddlers, etc.) and is possessed of a real power to leave us creeped the hell out. You might make the case that the reanimated corpses of the film don't count as ghosts, but the narrative is framed around dead jogger Victor Pascow, a gory specter who shows up to warn Dale Midkiff's Louis Creed to stay out of that damned Pet Sematary. If only he'd listened.
Where to stream: digital rental
Candyman (1992)
With all the trappings of a slasher movie (including a very memorable slasher in Tony Todd’s Daniel Robitaille), Candyman became a cult classic by defying its genre conventions—not only by foregrounding Black characters, but by building a gothic romance into its story of a vengeful ghost in the Chicago projects. Robitaille was murdered for his love affair with a white woman, the evil and trauma of that event and others like it spreading for decades. When his vengeful spirit encounters the woman who could be the reincarnation of his beloved Helen, Candyman haunts her to a tragic conclusion. The '90s-era sequels aren't essential, but the 2021 Nia DaCosta reboot-cum-sequel is the best of them all.
Where to stream: Shudder, Peacock, AMC+, digital rental
Ghostwatch (1992)
With a bit of War of the Worlds-style swagger, Ghostwatch descended upon an unsuspecting British public way back in 1992, presenting itself as a live Halloween TV special at the site of an allegedly haunted house. Real-life TV presenter Sarah Greene is on hand, as is comedian and Red Dwarf star Craig Charles, each playing themselves for what looks like it's going to be a night of spooky fun. That's before our presence, only ever referred as "Pipes," makes itself known and all hell breaks loose, almost literally. It's all based on the "true" story of the Enfield Poltergeist, which was also the subject of the second Conjuring movie.
Where to stream: Shudder, AMC+, digital rental
Beloved (1998)
Audiences weren’t quite sure what to make of Beloved upon its release in 1998: its director (Jonathan Demme) and stars (Oprah Winfrey, Danny Glover, and Thandiwe Newton) suggested a prestige drama, but it’s also very much a ghost story, and not a gentle one—the opening scene leaves that in no doubt. The plot involves Winfrey’s character, Sethe, who escaped from slavery years before but finds that the specter (quite literally) of her enslaved life, and the brutal, impossible choices she was forced to make, won’t leave her be.
Where to stream: digital rental
The Sixth Sense (1999)
Time, and two decades of only sporadically effective M. Night Shyamalan twists, may have dulled its impact somewhat, but repeat viewings make one thing clear: This movie is more than just its ending, and it retains its chilling atmosphere and effectiveness even when viewed with that well-known conclusion in mind. Haley Joel Osment, who was somehow turned down for the lead role in The Phantom Menace, gives one of film’s all-time great kid performances, and Bruce Willis has never been better.
Where to stream: Max, digital rental
The House on Haunted Hill (1999)
While The Sixth Sense was making an early case for elevated horror back in 1999, House on Haunted Hill was a bit of trashy fun, placing Famke Janssen, Taye Diggs, Ali Larter, Bridgette Wilson, Peter Gallagher, and Chris Kattan in a former psychiatric facility (for the criminally insane, naturally) where Geoffrey Rush offers one million dollars to anyone who lasts the night. If it's not terrifying, it's slick and fun, with some brilliantly gory effects from make-up masters Gregory Nicotero and Dick Smith (this would be Smith's last credit). If the carnage here is too much for you, there's no rule against revisiting the 1958 Vincent Price-led original, which is similarly goofy fun without so much blood.
Where to stream: Tubi, digital rental
The Others (2001)
There’s a twist ending here, which I won’t spoil, but what impresses me most about Alejandro Amenábar’s gloomy ghost drama is its rewatchability—the atmosphere is so relentlessly chilling that the scary bits still work, even when you realize that you were meant to be looking elsewhere. Nicole Kidman is excellent as the stolid but brittle mother to two children in an isolated house in the Channel Islands, waiting endlessly for her husband (Christopher Eccleston) to return for the war. The youngest child happens to be extremely photosensitive, to the point that he can never be in direct daylight—cleverly and conveniently ensuring that large portions of the house remain dark at all times. And what’s the deal with the friendly but secretive servants (including
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