Medicine is about healing: setting bones, soothing burns, diagnosing and curing diseases. It's supposed to be a restorative practice. Due to their diligence, selflessness, and hard work, many consider doctors and nurses to be among society's most upstanding members.
In horror games, however, all that is good must be tainted. Medicine is no different. Indeed, it is this very perversion of healing into harmful and healthy into diseased that makes nurses in horror games so terrifying. Whether they are ordinary humans with twisted intentions or supernatural monsters barely recognizable as the healers they once were, these nurses are enough to give any patient pause for thought when wandering a hospital's empty halls at night.
8 Flat-Faced Nurse (AfterHours)
AfterHours is far from being one of the best horror games of all time. It does, however, contain one of the scariest nurses to have ever graced the medium. The flat-faced nurse looks like creepypasta: black and white nightmare fuel with just a splattering of red, her medical cap and uniform doing nothing to disguise the monstrosity lurking beneath.
Her iconic flattened face gives her the appearance of a paper doll that's come to life, and it's the last thing players want to see as she chases them through narrow corridors. Abandoned hospitals aren't exactly an original setting, but with the flat-faced nurse on the prowl, AfterHours at least makes the most of it.
7 Fog Nurse (Hospitality VR)
Hospitality VR is billed as a "VR Experience" rather than a game, but that will come as no comfort to players. The protagonist is in a wheelchair and can do nothing more than turning their head to take in the awful sights and sounds that surround them. That's life in a haunted hospital, after all.
The nurse appears in the fog, red-eyed and leering, only to pounce at the helpless protagonist. Though her appearance may be brief, it is arguably one of the most jarring experiences with a nurse in a horror game for one simple reason: in VR, there's nowhere to go and nothing to do to escape. The player and the character are mutually trapped, and even for horror aficionados that is likely a new and disturbing experience.
6 Bedside Nurse (Life After Us: The System)
Is the bedside mannequin in Life After Us: The System a nurse? When the protagonist encounters it, the mannequin is standing at a patient's bedside, arms outstretched, cradling a baby. The patient on the bed, however, is very much dead. On the wall above the mannequin is a bloody smear that spells out "He took my baby."
Life After Us: The System is often horror of an unconventional kind, to be sure, but this subtle twist on the nurse and midwife is particularly chilling. From the filthy room to the mother's arms outstretched in desperation, everything about the scene is haunting. This is the kind of horror imagery that leaves itself imprinted on the mind long after the game is done.
5 Reaper Nurses (Dark Deception)
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Wearing a medical bag over their heads to hide their true appearances and casually cruising around the waxed floors of the hospital on rollerskates, the Reaper Nurses of Dark Deception are a little unconventional to say the least.
Worse is the gigantic syringe they use to impale any poor soul who's unfortunate enough to be caught by one of them. As if that weren't enough, Reaper Nurses can also turn invisible and throw giant pills which stun the player, leaving them completely helpless. Unlike most of the scariest nurses in gaming, the Reaper Nurses are talkative, even charming, using conversation to lure their victims into traps. Not even words are safe with them around.
4 Bubble Head Nurses (Silent Hill 2)
While some gamers might shiver at the memory of the Silent Hills series' trickiest puzzles, it's another, more visceral terror that sticks with most. It's hard to choose which rendition of Silent Hill's iconic nurses is the most terrifying, but the Bubble Head Nurses that James Sunderland encounters in Silent Hill 2 are strong candidates for the title.
The grimace of their bloody, lipless mouths is off-putting, but far worse are their smooth, eyeless skulls. These nurses boast a convulsing walk, paired with a low-cut uniform that might've been provocative were it not splattered with blood. The Bubble Head Nurses are an immediate indication that something is very wrong, if somehow the rest of the town's horrid imagery had left that unclear.
3 Tsubaki Tono (Fatal Frame 4)
Tsubaki Tono was a nurse at Rougetsu Hall and Haibara Hospital prior to her mysterious death in Fatal Frame IV: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse. Given that Fatal Frame is all about photographing ghosts, it's a great go-to for spooky imagery, whether via a jump scare or a more subtle, lingering creepiness.
Tsubaki returns as a hostile spirit after her death. Her autopsy only goes so far in unraveling the mystery of her passing, and as players learn more about her story, it only gets darker. She may not be grotesque or gory in the same manner as some other iconic horror nurses, but few are more quietly disconcerting than her.
2 Sally Smithson (Dead By Daylight)
Sally Smithson went mad and committed a massacre at Crotus Prenn: an asylum where she once worked. Upon entering the Entity's Realm, she gained the power to teleport with Spencer's Last Breath. This power makes her the most powerful killer in Dead by Daylight, capable of blinking through walls and floors to catch fleeing survivors off guard.
With the right knowledge and a tremendous amount of skill, a talented nurse can be almost unstoppable in Dead by Daylight. Hearing her cry of pain when she begins to teleport and that chilling sigh of relief as she begins to reappear is a surefire sign that things are about to become a whole lot more terrifying in the Fog.
1 Classic And Modern Nurses (Silent Hill)
There are two hospitals in Silent Hill: Alchemilla and Brookhaven. Whether it is the emergency room or the psychiatric ward that one stumbles into, it is the nurses who will be on welcome duty. Because they are twisted personifications of fears and anxieties, including fears of hospitalization and illness, their form changes from game to game, from puppet nurses to faceless ones.
What never changes, however, is the feeling of disquiet upon encountering them as they stumble, twitching, after their prey. Many horror games profit from a healthy dose of the symbolic and obscure, Silent Hill even more than most other series, and over the years the enigmatic nurses have become almost as iconic a threat as Pyramid Head himself.