Our favorite television shows are chock-full of terrifyingly creepy villains that we love to hate (and maybe sometimes love to love). Did your preferred baddies make our list?

Every hero needs a villain to defeat, and the bigger and badder the villain, the more satisfying the hero’s triumph. While we all love the Buffy Summers and Oliver Queens of the world, sometimes we just enjoy watching the creepy antagonists strut their stuff, too.

They can be deliciously immoral or just downright evil, but one thing they have in common is that they’re some of our favorite bad guys to ever grace our television screens, and they send a chill down our spine every time we spot them. With Halloween just around the corner, we suggest reading through this list and making sure you know your stuff. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

And before you go sounding off in the comments about you missed this person or how could you forget that person, just know this is a tiny, tiny, tiny glimpse at a much longer list. These happen to be the ones that gave us nightmares after watching them do their thing, but we gladly open the floor to your favorite TV baddies, so be sure to let us know which ones made you leave the lights on at night.

‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ — The Gentlemen

If you’re looking for a creeptastic villain, The Gentlemen definitely fit the bill. We first see them in season 4, episode 10, “Hush,” and it’s not hard to figure out why they made us hide behind our fingers. With ghastly pale skin and an ever-present smile, what made them even scarier was the fact that they had their own theme song: “Can’t even shout. Can’t even cry. The Gentlemen are coming by. Looking in windows, knocking on doors… They need to take seven and they might take yours… Can’t call to mom. Can’t say a word. You’re gonna die screaming but you won’t be heard.” Yeah… Add to this the fact that they didn’t walk, but floated over the ground and applauded each other for a job well done carving human hearts out of chests, and we’re getting goosebumps just thinking about them.

Honorable mention: The honorable mention of course goes to Angelus. He had the disarmingly handsome features of Angel and, as an added benefit of being the same person just without a soul, knew all of Buffy’s weaknesses. What made him a great villain wasn’t how physically dangerous he was (though that was an added bonus), but how cunning and manipulative he could be.

‘Doctor Who’ — The Weeping Angels

Ah, the long-debated best villain of Doctor Who. We’re not even going to apologize for siding with The Weeping Angels. It’s not necessarily what they do once they get to you, but the way in which they hunt you down. How can you run from a monster that can move across a room in the time it takes you to blink? How can you fight a monster you can’t touch? The answer is: not easily. You’ll need a Doctor. Because they are fast. Faster than you can believe. So don’t turn your back. Don’t look away. And don’t blink. Good Luck.

Honorable mention: The other half of this best villain debate is usually The Silence, and we have to agree with this assessment. What’s nearly as bad as a villain you can’t stop looking at? One that, when you look away from it, you completely forget even existed.

‘Teen Wolf’ — The Nogitsune

Take a fan-favorite character and inject him with a spirit that’s pure evil and practically immortal and you’ve got a recipe for one of the most terrifying bad guys to make an appearance on Teen Wolf. The Nogitsune hid in plain sight for a good portion of the season, but when he was finally revealed, our heroes had to figure out how to defeat the spirit and not kill their best friend.

Honorable mention: Much like the Nogitsune, Gerard Argent hid in plain sight for much of the time he was on Teen Wolf. Sure, he was never the cuddly grandfather he wanted Allison to believe he was, but we didn’t realize how twisted he could be until he was willing to kill his own granddaughter to get what he wanted.

‘Gotham’ – Fish Mooney

Fish Mooney may not have the creep factor that our other villains do, but she’s scary in her own way. As a woman making her way in a world full of dons, she has to use every strength she can muster. She has to be smart and wily, and sometimes that means she needs to use her feminine charms to get a job done. She has the ability to go from caring and motherly in one second to downright deadly the next. She has henchmen who willingly do her dirty work, but she’s already proven she can handle her own, too. And now that she has a secret weapon, we wonder if there’s anything that can stop her from clawing her way to the top.

Honorable mention: The Penguin is an odd character. We know he’s going to become a formidable villain in the future, but right now we sort of feel bad for him. Putting that aside, however, he has an acute ability to make us incredibly uncomfortable, either as a result of his overwhelming enthusiasm or because of his extremely awkward relationship with his mother.

‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ – Agent Grant Ward

While we know there are some bigger bads in the S.H.I.E.L.D. universe, none of them can still compare to the revelation that Ward was Hydra. Sure, someone like Garrett held a lot more power and venom than Ward did, but Ward did us the dishonor of making us (and the rest of Coulson’s team) trust him. Besides, anyone who can lock FitzSimmons in a bunker and shove them into the ocean from a plane is just heartless. And while, okay, we admit it, we still have hopes that Ward can turn around and be a good guy again, for now we’re glad he’s still under close scrutiny. Er, well…he was.

Honorable mention: Speaking of Garrett, we have to give him a shout out here. He did pretty much the same thing Ward did, but the pain of his betrayal wasn’t quite as bad. Still, Coulson had known and trusted him for a long time, and when we found out he was working for the other guys, we were crushed. And then we were pissed.

‘Once Upon a Time’ — Peter Pan

There’s no shortage of villains to pick from on Once Upon a Time, but Peter Pan was one of the trickiest ones to defeat. He looked like a child, innocent and trustworthy, and was full of magical promises of independence and adventure. It’s hard to say no to something like that, especially coming from someone as cute as Pan. Besides his false promises and clever tricks, Peter Pan was also extremely hard to get rid of. It took a lot of power and crafty manipulation to finally kill him, and we hope never to see his face again.

Honorable mention: The only reason why Rumpelstiltskin didn’t make it as our main villain for Once is because he’s is (or was, at least) trying to make an effort to be a better man. (We still have hope for you, Rumpel, but just know that it’s fading fast.) The thing that makes Rumpel so scary is not his endless power — though that certainly doesn’t hurt — but his ability to know people’s strengths and weaknesses, and to pull strings in order to get everything to work in his favor.

‘Supernatural’ — Lucifer

You don’t really get much scarier than Lucifer. And what’s worse is when he’s wearing Sam’s face. With a snap of his fingers, Lucifer has the power to do just about anything he wants. And Satan is bad enough when he’s in Hell — out of sight, but never really out of mind — but when he’s walking the Earth, living inside Sam, causing more havoc than one Winchester brother can deal with? The world seems a lot darker than it already was (and we didn’t think that was possible). When you’re talking about the scariest villains of all time, it’s hard to beat the Devil himself.

Honorable mention: Oh, Yellow Eyes, you still give us nightmares. Azazel might not be the worst demon the Winchester brothers ever came up against, but he’s the one that started this whole mess (and happened to be working for Lucifer, of all people, the entire time). That image of Dean and Sam’s mother — and later, Sam’s girlfriend — stuck to the ceiling and engulfed in flames is seared into our brains. It was one hell of a pilot, and one hell of a demon hunt the brothers were sent on over the first two seasons.

‘Outlander’ — Black Jack Randall

Sometimes a person makes it on a ‘worst villains of all time’ list because they’re literally evil incarnate. And sometimes they make it on the list because they’re just a grade-A douchebag. Jack Randall is the latter, though we’re still not entirely sure the former isn’t a possibility. Randall is the type of person that makes our skin crawl. He has no moral compass, and he just likes to see people bleed. Sometimes human monsters are the worst because you can’t vanquish them and send them back to hell. And considering the amount of power he wields, even being able to send him back to his home country might not be an option.

Honorable mention: We admit that Dougal MacKenzie is nowhere nearly as bad as Randall is. In fact, he seems like a decent enough guy so far, but he still has that creep factor that makes him a solid antagonist for our heroine, Claire. The fact that he tried to get a little too intimate with her while he was drunk paired with his suggestion that she doesn’t have to remain loyal to Jaime since the marriage is just a ruse does not exactly put him high on our favorite characters list.

‘American Horror Story’ — Twisty the Killer Clown

There would be no horror in American Horror Story without a good old fashioned villain. In the show’s fourth installment, the creators promised to deliver “the most terrifying clown of all time” and they succeeded. The silent omnipresent figure lurks around in plain sight, eliminating the shock factor all together. Broad daylight highlights his horrific living conditions and the grotesque deformity of his lower jaw. But perhaps the reason for Twisty’s fear-inducing presence, besides actor John Carroll Lynch’s 6-foot-3 towering figure, is that audiences are forced to witness the clown’s drawn out torture sequences. Twisty’s actions are horrific enough as a silent solo artist, but AHS mixes in an eager protégée, Dandy, who vocalizes his joy in torture and cultivating fear. American Horror Story can rest assured it has met its horror quota for the season.

Honorable mention: Bloody Face (American Horror Story: Asylum) is a mere flash in the pan next to the drawn out sequences of torture and stalking that viewers are treated to every week with Twisty. But as far as the shock factor goes, Bloody Face is the villain that will still make you jump out of your seat and spill your drink every time. For his scenes, Asylum did an excellent job to cultivate a dreadful atmosphere and set up the proper amount of suspense to quickly zoom in on a murderer wearing a mask made from human skin. No, thank you!

(AHS section written by Brittany Lovely.)

‘The Following’ — Joe Carroll

Joe Carroll is not a mustache-twirling villain. He’s calculating, ruthless, and yet, somehow, still…likeable. The Following does something few other shows can — it actually gets you to sympathize with the bad guys. And not because they’re antiheroes. Not even close. Joe Carroll is a cult leader and a serial killer. Yet, in some twisted way, you can understand why he does what he does, and you can see that even though it’s completely warped, he is still capable of love and compassion. In the end, though, Joe is dangerous, and we certainly wouldn’t want him to be our college lit professor.

Honorable mention: Lily Gray is about as dangerous as Carroll, though she never seemed to achieve the same level of crazy as he did. She was hyper-focused on her family, which included her insane twin sons, and wanted Carroll to be a part of that. What really made her stand out among Carroll’s other devotees was her ability to blend in with high society and her, uh, proclivity for eating dinner with and talking to the corpses of her victims.