31 Horror Fonts for Seriously Scary Designs – 2025
The best fonts evoke emotion—and these hair-raising horror fonts are guaranteed to send a shiver down your spine.
We’ve trawled the market to pick out the very best horror fonts out there so that you don’t have to. Feel free to browse the list below and if you see a typeface that catches your eye, click on it to head to the download page.
And don’t worry, we’ve made sure to include a mix of different font types and moods so there should be something on here to match every type of project.
Whether you’re working on Halloween product branding, a horror movie poster, spooky book cover, or any other type of creepy artwork, you should find something that fits the bill on this list.
Let’s get started!
What are Horror Fonts?
Horror fonts are fonts that incorporate elements of the horror genre. They’re deliberately designed to evoke fear and make you think of ghosts, ghoulies, and things that creep around in the dark.
Horror fonts can be any font classification: serif, sans serifs, experimental, script, blackletter… Anything goes—as long as it’s scary!
We also made the decision to include less-scary fonts on this list that still have a horror theme, such as kid’s Halloween fonts.
The 31 Best Horror Fonts (Free & Paid)
1. Horror Joys – Our Top Pick
Horror Joys is a bone-chilling typeface inspired by horror movies. The rough hand-drawn letterforms have all the characteristics of a scary font. It comes with all the usual glyphs: uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and punctuation, plus a bonus package.
Why it’s our top pick:
The reason we like Horror Joys is because of how versatile it is. It’s the perfect choice for all your horror-themed designs, from movie posters to death metal album covers and everything in between.
Price: Personal and commercial use license included with an Envato Elements subscription ($14.50/month).
2. Scary Things
Scary Things is a clean and sharp serif font by designer Saridezra. The sharp edges on the glyphs call daggers, Dracula, and other fanged beasts to mind. The thick stroke width and straight lines make this a highly readable font and it’d look great on all kinds of designs, but it’d particularly well-suited to thriller and horror movies and book covers.
3. Sadistic
Sadistic is every bit as terrifying as it sounds. It’s an evil-looking typeface with glyphs designed to look as if they’ve been scratched into the paper over and over again by some maniacal murderer with a sharp object.
4. Escape!
Escape! Is another unique horror font with a cool, retro-inspired style. It’s perfect for death metal art, retro horror movie covers, and other creative design projects. It comes in two versions: regular and Slant. In addition to the font itself, the download also comes with some free bonus PSD illustrations and backgrounds that you can add to your designs.
5. Pandora
Pandora is an eerie, strange typeface with something distinctly dark about it. It’s characterized by odd shapes and an abundance of unnecessary crossbars and lines that hint at the occult. It comes in three versions: Ep.1, Ep.2, and Ep.3. Each subsequent episode gets progressively weirder. It’s an all-caps font that comes with numerals but no other glyphs.
6. Gendarwo
Gendarwo is a scary typeface that looks as if it’s dripping blood—or maybe it’s slime. Either way, it’s definitely spooky. While there’s definitely a horror theme there, this one’s not quite as terrifying as some of the other fonts on this list.
It’s a little cliche and doesn’t take itself too seriously, which makes it a good choice for more casual and fun horror-themed designs, like haunted houses, Halloween party flyers, and scary books for children.
7. Astrobia
Astrobia is a modern, futuristic font with a minimalist style. It’s perfect for Sci-Fi horror book covers and movies as it calls to mind aliens and interdimensional beings. It comes in 6 different styles and 3 weights. You can mix and match styles to create contrast within your designs.
8. Yokai
Yokai is a unique rough brush font that’s available for free. The font name, ‘Yokai’, refers to the supernatural spirits and entities that are common in Japanese folklore. And true to its name, there’s definitely something supernatural and alien about this typeface.
9. Sorrow
Sorrow is another creepy font that’s perfect for horror-themed designs. It’s a chaotic hand-drawn typeface that looks as if it’s been messily scribbled out by some deranged mind.
10. Bloody Scary Font
The aptly-named ‘Bloody Scary’ is a horror typeface by Creatype studio. It features a natural-looking brushed texture and letterforms that look like they’re melting or dripping blood. It comes with a bunch of scary alternates and ligatures that you can use to create variety in your typography designs.
11. Frightful
Frightful is a cute spooky font that’s themed around monsters. It’s perfect for child-friendly Halloween designs and full of visual interest. The glyphs look a lot like the doodles you might do in your schoolbook as a child: Each character has a different funky pattern, from wavy stripes to spots, bubbles, and everything in-between.
12. Dark & Black
Dark & Black is a spine-tingling tilting serif inspired by classic Roman letters. It features subtle levels of distress such as light scratches and warped terminals, which gives it an eerie, weathered look. These subtle touches are only visible up close, so it works best on large displays. The font includes basic and extended Latin letters, numbers, punctuation, and kerning.
13. Wolves vs Monsters
Wolves vs Monsters is a cool retro horror font. The designer took inspiration from scary movies from the 80s, and it definitely evokes that time period. Use it on horror-themed designs where you’re trying to evoke that retro feel. It includes all the usual glyphs plus swashes and comes in two versions: Regular and Slant.
14. Mummified
Mummified is exactly what you think it is—a font that looks like it’s been mummified! The glyphs are designed to look like they’re wrapped in bandages, and it comes in two styles: lined and filled. It’s great for spooky kid’s designs, YouTube covers, online games, etc.
15. Oyuki’s Ghost
Oyuki’s Ghost is a disturbing font designed by David Kerkhoff. There’s something unsettling about the messy scrawled letterforms. You can use the demo version in your personal projects for free, but you’ll need to make a donation to the designer for commercial use or contact the designer to purchase the full version. Check the download page description for more details on licensing.
16. Sticky Web
Sticky Web is a spooky font that looks like it’s covered in spider webs. This is another one that’s perfect for casual designs where you want to add a little extra fright factor without taking it too far.
17. The Ghost
The Ghost is an interesting ghost-themed typeface. The wispy letterforms have an ethereal look that makes you think of lost souls, spooky spirits, and friendly phantoms.
18. Exorcist
Exorcist is the kind of font that’ll give you nightmares. It’s truly demonic and looks like it’s possessed by the devil, with sharp edges and angular shapes.
19. Silent Moon
Silent Moon is a simple but scary handwritten font that’d work well in all kinds of artwork and designs. There’s something eerily beautiful about it.
20. Nightscary
Nightscary is a violent, horror font featuring rough handwritten letters and bold splatters. It looks as if it’s been splattered in blood, which makes it a good choice for slasher movie posters, horror games, and true crime YouTube channel covers.
21. Suzanstein
Suzanstein is another melting font that looks like it’s dripping slime. It combines a retro aesthetic with elements of horror for a truly monstrous look. The name is a nod to Mary Shelley’s gothic horror novel Frankenstein.
22. Horror Dingbats
Here’s a free horror-themed dingbat font that gives you access to a bunch of cool scary decorative glyphs to use in your designs. It only includes the special decorative symbols and no other glyphs, so you’ll need to use it alongside a regular font that includes letters, numbers, and punctuation.
23. The Crow
The Crow is a vintage ornamental font that comes in 8 different styles, including regular, grunge, inline, and shadow. It’s very decorative with lots of intricate details.
24. Deep Horror Font
Deep is a unique horror font that was inspired by old scary movies. It features wavy strokes that make the glyphs look as if they’re being viewed underwater. The font pack includes two versions: regular and italic.
25. Horror Area Font
Horror Area is a playful Halloween font that’s child-friendly and well-suited to fun, spooky-themed designs. We like the way the letter ‘O’ is designed to look like a skull. It comes with all the usual glyphs and multilingual support for dozens of languages.
26. Horrible Brush
Horrible Brush is a creepy brush font with an unusual texture. Unlike most brush fonts, this font doesn’t look like the brush has been dipped in paint, but something much more sinister. It comes in TTF and OTF formats.
27. Scratch
Scratch is a haunting handmade font by designer Midnightgrim. True to its name, it looks like it’s been scratched out, with brutally straight lines and sharp edges. It comes with all the glyphs you need and in pretty much every format: OTF, TTF, WOFF, WOFF2, and SVG
28. Elastika
Elastika is a mysterious-looking horror font that’s truly haunting. It’s highly decorative, with lots of detail, so it works best at display sizes.
29. John Bones
John Bones is a skeleton-themed horror font that’s cleverly designed to look as if it’s made out of bones. It’s great for Halloween posters and product packaging, horror fiction books, spooky games, and other scary designs.
30. Stigma Halloween Font
Stigma is a crafty, pixelated Halloween font with a distinctive style. It combines pixel-art with scary themes to create its own unique aesthetic that’s sure to make your designs stand out.
31. Fright Night
Fight Night is a bold, weighty vintage horror typeface. It’s inspired by vintage horror posters and comes in several styles that you can mix and match, plus over 300 glyphs.
How to Choose the Best Horror Font for Your Project
As you can see, there are dozens of great horror fonts out there—so how do you choose between them? Here are some tips to help you make the right choice.
Choose Your Level of Horror
All the fonts on this list share a common horror theme, but they’re not all equally scary. Some are more ‘spooky’ in a child-friendly kind of way, whereas others are truly horrific.
The right font choice for your project will depend on how scary you want your design to look. If you’re working on a poster for a kid’s Halloween event, you’ll probably want to choose a typeface that leans towards the ‘spooky’ end of the scale.
But if you’re working on a movie poster for a new horror blockbuster aimed at adults, you can go for something truly hair-raising.
Match the Font to the Horror Subgenre
There are many subgenres of horror, from psychological horror to slashers, sci-fi-horror, supernatural horror, and beyond. Try to match your font to the specific subgenre of horror you’re aiming to evoke in your designs.
For example, if you’re working on a poster for a new slasher movie, a font that looks like it’s scratched into the page with a knife is a good fit. If you’re working on a Sci-Fi horror project, an eerie futuristic typeface that looks alien might be a better choice.
Check the Font License
Before you decide on a font to use, make sure you check the license to make sure it’s suitable. Some fonts are only free for personal use, and you may have to purchase a license to use them for commercial projects. If in doubt, you can’t go wrong with an Envato Elements subscription. It includes personal and commercial use for all of the fonts available on the platform.
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