10 Creepiest Episodes Of Grimm That Still Hold Up 9 Years Later

The 2010s were a great time for fans of fairy tales and folklore, as fantasy TV shows were all the rage. Some of these fantasy shows were darker than others, though, and Grimm, which ran from 2011 to 2017, was the creepiest one of all. Part procedural and part folklore, the show saw Portland police officer Nick Burkhardt learning that he came from a long line of hunters known as "Grimms." In the process, he also learned that the world he knew wasn't the only one, as hidden amongst humanity were Wesen, or supernatural creatures from folk and fairy tales.

Between the horrors of the police cases Nick tackled with his partner Hank and some of the downright terrifying Wesen, it wasn't uncommon for the show to go to places that left viewers incredibly unsettled. Sometimes it wasn't even the Wesen themselves that were the most frightening parts of an episode, but rather the darker aspects of humanity these characters were metaphors for. Body horror was also a big part of Grimm, which left some more squeamish viewers shuddering and unable to rewatch certain episodes.

While the series veered towards darkness most of the time, it still had episodes that were humorous and occasionally just silly throughout the six seasons of Grimm. But the creepiest episodes still linger in viewers' minds to this day.

10 "Pilot"

Season 1, Episode 1 (2011)

Grimm's pilot is one of the better pilots of all time. It doesn't give too much away to begin with, but it does start introducing Wesen right off the bat. The first creature that Nick sees is a Hexenbiest, or a witch-like Wesen. It appears out of nowhere in the face of a woman he's seen before, and considering these creatures look like corpses, complete with decaying flesh, it's a jarring moment for both Nick and the audience.

However, while the surprise monster face is creepy, the case Nick and Hank are dealing with is worse. After a jogger is attacked (and eaten) by something, a little girl goes missing. While the Wesen that kidnapped the girl is unsettling (a Blutbad, or basically a wolf-like creature), what's more disturbing is the room he places the child in. When he opens the closet to hang up her red sweater, viewers can see a line of other red jackets and sweaters, indicating just how many times he's done this.

9 "Good To The Bone"

Season 5, Episode 18 (2016)

Honestly, there are a lot of chilling moments to go around in this episode. "Good to the Bone" sees Nick and Hank facing a case where people's bones have seemingly been liquefied and removed from their bodies. As if that wasn't bloodcurdling alone, the Wesen responsible for it is killing these people to take all those tasty bone remains home to feed to his elderly parents. Straight from his mouth, seeing how the family are vulture-like creatures, so there's an added gross-out factor on top of everything else.

Don't worry, though, because it gets worse. Nick and the police eventually find the murderer, who tries to run away once he realizes Nick is a Grimm, only to be hit by a van. The elderly parents are brought to the morgue to identify the body, only to ask for a moment alone with their son. One moment the couple is crying over their loss, and the next they decide to eat their child because he might as well not go to waste. It's a dark mirror to look at messed-up family dynamics through, but it's effective.

8 "Lost Boys"

Season 5, Episode 3 (2015)

This episode is one where Grimm does what it always did best: bring on the twisted, unsettling, and sad all at once. A group of orphaned and half-feral Wesen children has been kidnapping women to be their "mother." Unfortunately, this doesn't always end well. While creepy children always take things in a more horror-like direction, what's more disturbing than them abducting women is the ways the foster care system failed them. As if being orphaned wasn't bad enough, factor in being the monster in other kids' nightmares, and it's no wonder these kids decided to live on their own and find someone to care for them.

This group of children only wanted to love and be loved in return, but everything in their lives leading up to this moment made them too maladjusted to do so. As disquieting as it was watching kids alternate between creepy and cute, the more nightmarish (and depressing) aspect of this episode was what led them to this point.

7 "La Llorona"

Season 2, Episode 9 (2012)

"La Llorona" is one of those episodes that fans generally agree is among the most chilling. The villain of this episode is similar to the legend of The Woman in White or The Weeping Woman, a spirit who takes kids and drowns them in the river to try and bring back its own deceased children. While the episode isn't particularly gory, it does deal with child death and the grief that comes with it, which was unsettling for some fans.

Add in La Llorona's terrifying demonic face, and this episode is the stuff of nightmares. The ending is somewhat unresolved, as well. A battle near the end of the episode to save the kidnapped children succeeds, but sees the spirit disappear, leaving the audience to assume it will simply do this again elsewhere.

6 "Quill"

Season 2, Episode 4 (2012)

This Grimm episode might not be scary to everyone, but for those who hate media depicting fast-spreading diseases, "Quill" will absolutely freak you out. The yellow plague, a Wesen disease, is on the move and infecting Wesen around Portland. Not only does the disease cause skin lesions, but it causes the infected to attack others (not in a zombie way, though; that's an entirely different episode).

The body horror of the skin lesions in this episode is bad enough, but the race to find a cure for it while more people are infected, including a member of Nick's main crew, makes watching it incredibly tense. Plus, rewatching this after living through COVID-19 makes the whole thing hit differently and adds an extra layer of fright.

5 "The Hour Of Death"

Season 2, Episode 10 (2012)

"The Hour of Death" is another one of those Grimm episodes that is, by turns, disturbing, frightening, and incredibly sad. After a Wesen suspect gets away with a possible kidnapping, they turn up dead. Not just dead, though. They're found hanging from the ceiling by chains and have been branded with a symbol that Nick soon learns represents a particularly bloodthirsty branch of Grimms, known as the Endezeichen Grimms. It makes for one of the more disquieting images on the show.

Nick, unlike a lot of Grimms, has no issue with Wesen who aren't harming anyone, but the Endezeichen Grimms kill every Wesen they come across. Unfortunately, as Nick is the only known Grimm around, his Wesen friends fear it won't be long before the Wesen community believes he's behind the brutal murder. As more bodies start to pile up, Nick finally discovers the culprit, which is where this episode takes a turn from creepy to depressing.

A Grimm isn't behind these vigilante killings; a Wesen is. The Wesen in question hates what he is and has developed a sick admiration for Nick's work as a Grimm. In fact, he even joined the police department to get closer to Nick. The Wesen's horror at its own nature, and the reminder that some things about ourselves simply can't be changed, leave the audience with a distressing sense of unease.

4 "The Thing With Feathers"

Season 1, Episode 16 (2012)

This season 1 episode is one of the most difficult to sit through, as it involves not only domestic violence, but a woman being strapped down and forcefully fed a disgusting mixture (including earthworms) via a tube. When Nick and his partner, Juliette, decide to go on a weekend retreat, they end up staying in a cabin next to another couple. Juliette immediately sees signs of abuse, but the local police are of no help. Of course, it isn't long until Nick learns that the couple is Wesen, with the woman being an especially rare type who can grow a golden egg in her throat.

That golden egg leads to a whole different kind of horror, as later in the episode, Nick must cut the egg out of her throat while she chokes for breath. He has no idea what he's doing, and if he messes it up, she's dead. The tension is awful, and the slitting of her throat is gruesome. This is another one of those episodes that some fans can't rewatch, because the violence enacted against this woman, whether purposefully or accidentally, is hard to take.

3 "Mr. Sandman"

Season 2, Episode 15 (2013)

What's worse than grieving? Having a fly-like Wesen use its incredibly long tongue to suck up your tears while you do so, then leaving you blind and with parasitic worms in your eyes. "Mr. Sandman" is definitely not an episode for the faint of heart (or the squeamish).

Truly creepy on various levels, from the perturbing visage of the Wesen (seriously, the amount of work that went into the Wesen costumes was really cool) to the eyeball worms to the idea that this creature preys on vulnerable women, this episode might leave viewers with some anxiety. However, it does work as an excellent reminder to be careful in whom one places their trust.

2 "Organ Grinder"

Season 1, Episode 10 (2012)

Hansel and Gretel is a scary tale on its own, but Grimm takes that concept and somehow makes it even more terrifying in this episode. Instead of siblings running into a witch in the woods, this episode sees two homeless teenagers run afoul of a Wesen-run human organ-harvesting ring. They aren't the only members of the homeless population to do so, either, as Nick and Hank catch a case where a teenager washes up from the river with his eyes missing and blood drained.

All those organs are being used as ingredients in elixirs, throwing cannibalism into the horror mix. In addition, there's a creeptastic scene where Nick and Hank are called to a car crash and discover all kinds of human organs strewn about in the aftermath. As far as Grimm episodes go, the combination of targeting homeless kids, organ harvesting, and ingesting said organs makes this one of the most unsettling episodes of the show.

1 "Mommy Dearest"

Season 3, Episode 14 (2014)

The episode "Mommy Dearest" plays on a couple of common fears — pregnancy and mothers-in-law. While pregnancy can be amazing, it can also be a frightening time, as things sometimes go wrong. And some mothers-in-law can be rather scary. Here, the mother-in-law of a woman expecting her first child ends up being an Aswang-type of Wesen, one of the scariest Wesen in Grimm. That equates to a being with an extra-long, forked tongue that goes into the belly button and sucks out amniotic fluid, killing the baby.

As if that wasn't enough, one of Nick's human co-workers ends up seeing the monster and checks himself into a psychiatric hospital as a result. The last shot of the episode sees the guy hallucinating that an Aswang is attacking him and screaming bloody murder. Overall, this episode is one of the most terrifying ones in the entirety of Grimm, if only because it revolves around such common anxieties but somehow makes them more terrifying.