Portal
A granular effect plugin that cuts incoming audio into grains and rebuilds it, so any source can be turned into new textures.
Dark AtmospheresSupernaturalPsychological Horror
See developer for price Plugins
Horror style
Supernatural
Ghostly & otherworldly.
Ghosts, spirits and things that shouldn't be there. Horror is all about something you wouldn't expect being there, and supernatural music leans right into that.
The classic ghost sound is the theremin, and you can fake one with a pure sine wave, a slow attack, a bit of glide and some vibrato. Whispers and breaths work because a disembodied voice is the scariest thing there is. And the organ brings its own baggage: churches, funerals, graveyards. Hear one in the dark and you think of death.
Everything here does something otherworldly: voices, ethereal textures, eerie instruments, and sounds for ritual and the occult.
By Richard Pryn · Go deeper: How to make ghost sounds with a theremin-style sine wave and whistling
Pitch Monster
A polyphonic pitch-shifting plugin with granular, formant and vocoder engines, real-time MIDI control of pitch, unison and chord memories.
SupernaturalBody HorrorPsychological Horror
£79.99 Plugins
Efx FRAGMENTS
A granular effect plugin with Classic, Rhythmic and Texture modes, pitch quantisation to 15 scales, a spatialiser, two FX slots and a modulation section (envelope follower, three function generators, step sequencer).
Dark AtmospheresSupernaturalCosmic Horror
€79 Plugins
Untamed: Creature Vocals
A creature vocal library of 3,991 sounds in 676 stereo WAV files (13.41 GB).
Body HorrorSupernaturalJump Scares
US$179 Sound Packs
BEASTIARIUM: Monsters & Creatures
A library of 1,773 creature sounds in 24-bit/96 kHz WAV (3.81 GB) covering 24 types of fantasy monster, animal and insect.
SupernaturalJump ScaresBody Horror
US$129 Sound Packs
The Magic Whisper Collection
A whisper and spoken-voice library of about 980 sounds in 196 files (24-bit/96 kHz, 5.72 GB), split into raw, stylised and designed sets.
OccultSupernaturalPsychological Horror
US$69 Sound Packs
Haunting Ambiences
Nine horror ambience construction kits with split stems (46 files, 24-bit/96 kHz, 4.4 GB, about 136 minutes), themed as a haunted factory, forest, house, neighbourhood, sewers and swamp, plus nightmare, zombie apocalypse and torture chamber.
DreadSupernaturalDark Atmospheres
US$20 Sound Packs
ETHER
A pocket-sized, battery-powered wide-band receiver (SOMA calls it an 'anti-radio') that makes the electromagnetic fields around electrical devices audible.
SupernaturalDark AtmospheresPsychological Horror
See developer for price Instruments
Freesound
A free, collaborative online library of user-uploaded sounds (738,114 at the time of checking) run from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, searchable by tag, with downloads requiring a free account.
Dark AtmospheresSupernaturalBody Horror
Free Free Sounds
Sinister
In Rich's toolkitA string-based horror sound library performed on home-made "nightmare instruments": ghostly bowing, harmonics, scrapes and warped resonances, plus breaths, metallic textures, whooshes and impacts.
DreadPsychological HorrorGothic Horror
US$59.95 Sound Packs
Old Busted Granny Piano
A sampled old, untuned upright piano with sticky keys and broken strings, in tuned and untuned versions, with separate string and key release samples, pedal noise, sound effects and 20 ambient pads.
Gothic HorrorPsychological HorrorDread
US$29 Sample Libraries
Darkstar — Haunted House
A collection with the electronic duo Darkstar of processed analogue synth textures, sub-basses, icy processed vocals, London found sound and lo-fi drum loops.
Dark AtmospheresTensionPsychological Horror
£29 Sample Libraries
Haunted Spaces 2
An atmospheric instrument built on 178 field recordings by Chris Watson and 240 Soniccouture sample sets, with around 560 preset snapshots, a vector Cube controller, arpeggiator, insert effects and convolution spaces; you can also load your own samples.
SupernaturalDark AtmospheresDread
US$199 Sample Libraries
Waterphone
A sampled waterphone in two instruments: Waterphone Phrases (366 recorded performance gestures) and Waterphone Unwrapped (playable notes with up to five harmonic layers, six articulations and water modulation), each around 3 GB with stereo and contact-mic channels.
SupernaturalTensionDread
US$149 Sample Libraries
Mysteria
A choral performance instrument for Kontakt Player, drawn from over 800 sound sources recorded with a symphonic choir, a chamber choir and a new-music vocal quartet.
SupernaturalOccultTension
US$299 Sample Libraries
Hybrid Tools Eternal Darkness
A horror sound-design library for full Kontakt (1.31 GB) built from 15 dark compositions, with impacts, sub hits, risers, low and high drones, and tempo-synced rhythms, tick-tocks and phrases.
Jump ScaresDreadOccult
US$198 Sample Libraries
Stringscapes by Benjamin Wallfisch
Contemporary string textures and effects for SINE, recorded at Teldex with a 14/12/10/10/6 string orchestra: long aleatoric and extended-technique performances plus a second set of processed sound-design patches (79 patches in 11 groups).
DreadPsychological HorrorSupernatural
€249 Sample Libraries
Drones by Alexander Hacke
A SINE collection of playable drones designed with Alexander Hacke (Einstürzende Neubauten), made from guitars, celli, basses, trombones, a basso profundo choir, hurdy-gurdy, tanpura, didgeridoo and EBow piano.
DreadDark AtmospheresOccult
€189 Sample Libraries
Originals Crystal Keys
A low-cost Originals library of the titanium euphone, a glass-rod instrument played with wet fingertips, offered as the raw recording (close, room and ribbon mics) and as processed 'Warps' that range from shimmering to horror-like (20 presets, 3.5 GB).
SupernaturalDark AtmospheresPsychological Horror
£29 Sample Libraries
Lea Bertucci — Xtended Vox
Experimental vocal techniques from Lea Bertucci, Audrey Chen, Cansu Tanrikulu and Phil Minton (throat singing, whispers, shrieks, clicks, multiphonics), processed with tape, outboard and digital effects into 49 presets in Spitfire's own plugin (about 2.5 GB).
Psychological HorrorSupernaturalBody Horror
£29 Sample Libraries
Create Series: Twisted Psaltry - Cinematic FX
A small free instrument of bowed psaltery effects, played in Cinesamples' Musio plugin.
TensionDreadSupernatural
Free Sample Libraries
Ancient Bones
A free Musio instrument of three unusual traditional wind instruments: a femur trumpet, a trident shell and a death whistle.
Folk HorrorOccultJump Scares
Free Sample Libraries
Waterharp Xpressions
A Kontakt construction-kit library built from waterharp recordings, with over 1,000 chromatically mapped sample presets (3 GB, 44.1 kHz/24-bit).
SupernaturalDreadTension
US$129 Sample Libraries
Voxpat Pro
A standalone application that layers up to 12 effects (convolution, procedural and synthesis processes) over a microphone, up to three audio files or a virtual instrument to build creature and robot voices.
SupernaturalBody HorrorDread
US$149 Plugins
Séance: Monster & Ghost Voice Plugin
A voice effect with pitch, formant, Ghost, Snarl, Ring, Drag, Echo and Warble controls and a Ouija-board pad that blends four settings, plus a companion instrument that plays 100 spoken horror phrases from five characters.
SupernaturalOccultFolk Horror
US$39 Plugins
X-Orcism II: Voices from the Crypt
A free voice changer combining delay, pitch shift, reverb and a noise generator, with controls named Echoes, Crypt Size, Howl, Tombverb, Ghoul and Wail.
SupernaturalDark AtmospheresGothic Horror
Free Plugins
AbyssHaunt
A free sampler with a built-in reverb engine (70 presets from the developer's Abyss FX) and four macros: Space, Dark, Dirt and Haunt.
Dark AtmospheresSupernaturalDread
Free Plugins
Cinematic Atmosphere Toolkit
Six sample libraries made with Glitchedtones (788 samples, 300 presets), including Paranormal and Scare Tactics, that play inside FrozenPlain's free Floe plugin with three layers, granular, arpeggiators and an effects rack.
Jump ScaresDark AtmospheresSupernatural
£59 Plugins
Halloween Sounds
A free sample-player with over 100 horror sounds mapped one per key (screams, jump scares, creature growls, risers, horror strings and impacts), with built-in reverb, delay, chorus, distortion, high-pass filter and modulation.
Jump ScaresSupernaturalTension
Free Plugins
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