Some movies exist for the sole purpose of freaking people out. Or just grossing them out. To achieve this, some studios spend a lot of time on creating truly creepy props. On this list are just some of the movie props that have given viewers more than a few chills over the years.

Warning: Some of these images are rather disturbing and not suitable for sensitive viewers.

Also: potential spoilers ahead.

Top 10 Creepy Scenes In Movies

10 Bear suit – Midsommar

The movie Midsommar was truly nothing to write home about, but the scenes with the old folks jumping off a cliff and suffering horrific injuries (including a face smash) are fairly disturbing. However, arguably the most horrifying part comes towards the end of the film when one of the male characters, Christian, is dressed up in a bear suit and burned alive.

The bear suit has recently been put on auction alongside a mallet also used in the film, to raise funds for charities that are helping communities and front-line workers during the Covid-19 crisis.^[1]

9 Throwing star – Jeepers Creepers 2

While The Creeper is not going to go down as the scariest monster in movie history, he does some pretty disturbing things in the Jeepers Creepers films. Like chopping off a police officer’s head with a battle axe and making one of his throwing stars from the belly button of college student, Darry Jenner, after killing him. All the throwing stars he uses are made from the bones, flesh, teeth and fillings of his victims.^[2]

8 Life-sized Regan dummy – The Exorcist

This might be the very last thing anyone would want to see in the dark of night inside their home. Or anywhere for that matter. The Exorcist film still holds up after all these years and this life-sized dummy is about as creepy as the Regan character itself. The dummy’s head is not only freaky-looking but can spin 180 degrees (as seen in one of the most memorable scenes in the movie), which in and of itself is rather unnerving.

The dummy now lives in The Museum of Moving Images, NYC.^[3]

7 Mutant Twin – Total Recall (1990)

Total Recall is not a horror movie, or even scary, but the scenes with the mutant twin are pretty freaky. Considering that the first Total Recall movie was released in 1990, the special effects used for the mutant baby, Kuato, hold up pretty well. In the picture above the body suit with Kuato attached is ‘hung out to dry’ in between shooting.^[4]

6 Jar of hands – Wrong Turn (2003)

Wrong Turn is a gorefest from beginning to end, with a cannibalistic family violently taking out anyone who crosses their path. During the film, one of the characters finds a severed ear on the ground, another is hit by a speeding car and yet another has her face split in half by an axe. During a particularly gruesome scene it is revealed that the murderous family has a collection of body parts stored in jars. These include teeth, organs and appendages.^[5]

Top 10 Disturbing Child Characters In Horror Movies

5 Deformed baby – The Hills Have Eyes 2

While The Hills Have Eyes 2 wasn’t the best horror movie and scored a measly 12% on Rotten Tomatoes, the graphic scene in which a restrained woman gives birth and is then killed, is about as disturbing as they come. It gets worse when the baby is shown to resemble the movie’s cannibalistic mutant killers.^[6]

4 Stapled Wall Corpse – The Collection

The Collection is a psychological slasher movie responsible for one of the most unsettling scenes in any scary movie. The killer in the film is called The Collector and from just this one picture, it is clear why. The prop, named Stapled Wall Corpse, is up for sale and looks just as disturbing as it did in the movie.^[7]

3 Charlie’s head – Hereditary

Hereditary features one of the most shocking decapitation scenes in movie history. As the scene progresses it is unclear whether the young girl, Charlie, who loses her head, is actually dead or not. It becomes crystal clear however when her head is shown lying in the middle of the road, covered in ants and flies.

It took some extremely detailed work to create the animatronic puppet that was used for the decapitation scene and the result is mind blowing and extremely creepy.^[8]

2 Reverse bear trap – Saw

The reverse bear trap is one of the most horrifying instruments of torture used in Saw. A victim’s head is locked inside the trap and secured with a padlock. In the first Saw movie, the trap had to be unlocked within 60 seconds or the trap would burst open and rip the victim’s face apart.

The reverse bear trap shown in this photo is a replica of the original prop.^[9]

1 Human guitar – From Dusk till Dawn

The horror action flick, From Dusk till Dawn, stars Quentin Tarantino, George Clooney, Harvey Keitel, Juliette Lewis and Salma Hayek. The plot centres around a group of bank robber brothers who end up at a strip club in Mexico, where they realize that the bar employees are vampires. The movie is filled with weird and disturbing scenes, but one stands out above them all. At one point, a band member plays a guitar made from a human torso with the head still attached and one leg protruding from it.^[10]

Top 10 Must-See Recent Genre-Defying Horrors

It’s not called “show fun”; it’s called “show business.” Movies are made to make money. It doesn’t matter if you’re Michael Bay, churning out explosion porn year after year, or Charlie Kaufman, making convoluted meta-narratives about yourself making movies; every director has to eat.

Producers find ways to cut costs that help to increase the bottom line. A big part of that is recycling props, and if you look closely enough, you’ll see that almost every film and show in history borrows and lends its props over and over again. Some are placed in movies intentionally by directors as easter eggs or hints at shared universes, while some are put on screen out of sheer laziness. Either way, there are a lot of props that have made the rounds through cinema history, and here are ten of the most fun and interesting examples.

Related: 10 Famous Props And The Actors Who Stole Them

10 Robby the Robot

To truly understand the unique story of Robby the Robot, let’s compare his story to another famous big-screen bot: R2-D2. Like Artoo, Robby was introduced as a unique character in his own movie; instead of Star Wars, it was the ground-breaking 1956 sci-fi classic Forbidden Planet. Like Artoo, Robby was a real character with a name, dialogue, and personality. But unlike Artoo, Robby’s creators weren’t Lucas-level litigious, so Robby outlived his original franchise by decades.

After Forbidden Planet, the Robby the Robot suit was left in the props department at MGM Studios, and dozens of other shows and movies took advantage of the free droid. Robby, usually credited as some variation of “The Robot,” was in multiple Twilight Zones. He battled the family robot on Lost in Space. He befriended Mork from Ork on Mork and Mindy. He was in Wonder Woman, Gremlins, and even the Addams Family. Now try and imagine Artoo freely given to all those projects instead.

9 Mr. Fusion

The Mr. Fusion Home Energy Reactor first appeared in Back to the Future. It replaced plutonium as the DeLorean’s main power source, as it was better for the environment and attracted fewer Libyan terrorists. Using ordinary household garbage, the marvelous Mr. Fusion could generate cold fusion energy, a full 1.21 gigawatts worth. Its usefulness didn’t stop at flying cars, though; it also helped power the spaceship Nostromo from Alien.

In several scenes in Alien, the Mr. Fusion can be seen hanging on the wall in the crew’s mess hall right above the coffee maker. While Ripley and the company fuel themselves, Doc Brown’s garbage machine fuels their ship. That, or the prop team from Back to the Future just picked the first sci-fi-looking thing they could find from a Hollywood warehouse.

8 Those Glowy Sci-Fi Tubes

Chances are, if you’ve seen a single major sci-fi film, you’ve seen this prop. It goes by many names, such as “blinking tubes without function” and “dual generators with rotating neon lights inside an acrylic tube,” but you’ll know it best by its appearance: a pair of glowing red future tubes. It is absolutely everywhere. Its earliest known appearance is in Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan, and from there, it proceeded to…do whatever it does…on nearly every ship in the multiverse.

It’s been in The Last Starfighter, Star Crystal, nearly every incarnation of Star Trek, and even superhero works like The Flash, Lois & Clark, and The Incredible Hulk Returns. It’s no surprise, then, that the online community has taken to calling it “The Most Important Device in the Universe.”

7 Okay, Actually All the Sci-Fi Equipment

The Most Important Device may have competition. Have you ever noticed that the background of every spaceship, research lab, and secret government base is always filled with wall-to-wall giant computers with big, blinking lights? It’s hard to conjure up an image of any famous sci-fi facility without them. They’re actually all a real, or at least replicating a real, computer: the AN/FSQ-7 Combat Direction Central, nicknamed the Q7.

Developed by IBM for the military in the 1950s, the Q7 was at the time the largest standalone computer ever built, spanning entire rooms and weighing a whopping 250 tons. But mainly, it looked cool—specifically its maintenance console. The consoles, or reproductions, have become the default sci-fi and espionage computers in cinema for sixty years, in films and television as diverse as Independence Day, Lost, Gremlins II, Goldmember, Logan’s Run, and WarGames. Google “AN/FSQ-7 maintenance console,” and the search results page will look like the bridge of a Star Destroyer.

6 Let’s/Heisler/Morley

You probably ignore the generic brand labels on the food and drink that movie and TV characters eat. That’s good; producers don’t want you to. Instead of creating new props for every film, producers love reaching into the same standby bag of tricks and pulling out the same few brands movie after movie. That’s why Let’s Chips, Heisler Beer, and Morley Cigarettes each have filmographies that would make Sam Jackson blush.

There is a specific wiki for fictional businesses, and a visit to the page for any of these faux products will elicit a gasp. They’ve been everywhere. Heisler edges out the others in the sheer number of appearances; after all, you’ll find more scenes are built around characters having a beer than splitting a cig these days. Let’s, however, have to be the most famous. Community, in its typical meta style, made Let’s Chips a running gag on the show, often comparing them to “that other greasy brand,” Splingles.

5 Red Apple Cigarettes

Speaking of cigarettes, one of the most famously reused props in cinema history has to be Red Apple Cigarettes, the brand featured in almost every movie Tarantino has released. Unlike most of the entries on this list that were reused to save money, Red Apples are deliberately placed by Tarantino in his movies, denying Morley a handful of precious film credits.

There are a few theories as to why these cigarettes appear so frequently. Many cite Tarantino’s desire to place all of his movies in the same universe; it is true that many already are. Another theory is based on the director’s love for symbolism, positing that the logo of a hideous worm emerging from an otherwise pristine apple is meant to hint at the ugliness within even the most beautiful things. It is also possible that Tarantino’s just having fun.

4 The Starship Troopers

Starship Troopers produced a lot of iconic imagery, including the classic slate grey space-marine armor worn by the titular soldiers. Nearly every main character wears the armor in the film, and most do so for the majority of their screen time. It’s even featured prominently on the home media covers. That’s why it’s weird that dozens of the suits would show up, barely modified at all, in the completely unconnected show Firefly.

The main antagonist of the Firefly series (rest in peace) was the galactic government known as the Alliance. Throughout the show, we see Alliance soldiers more than most characters, and they’re always clad in Starship Trooper armor, just default-issue Mobile Infantry armor from head to toe. It’s unmistakable and a bit jarring for fans of both franchises.

3 That Same Dang Newspaper

There are few props more inconspicuous than a simple newspaper. Who would pay attention to filler text in the background of a routine breakfast scene? Yet one newspaper has appeared in such an insane amount of movies; it’s starting to draw focus.

This prop paper has been around since the ’60s, with a blank front that allows for custom headlines but always the same two middle pages; it’s always open to the middle pages. Photos of a dark-haired woman, a man in a top hat, and warehouse burning jump out at you, as seemingly every character in every show and movie in history is always reading about them. Once you first spot this paper, usually the woman’s headshot, you’ll notice it for the rest of your life; it doesn’t make much sense to engineer an entirely new paper, after all.

2 The P.K.E. Meter

This entry ranks higher than most because the P.K.E. meter from Ghostbusters is a pretty central piece of hardware to the movie. In both films, the ‘Busters use it to detect the presence of ghosts. For a Ghostbuster, that’s kind of a big deal. Its appearance also demands attention, with extendable wings and rows of blinking lights. It’s odd, then, that John Carpenter decided to reuse the meter as an alien-detector in They Live.

Such a specific and literally flashy prop is hard to miss, which is why it’s even odder that it makes another appearance in the tragic accident that was Suburban Commando. Imagine, for example, if the proton packs had appeared in Twins or the ghost trap showed up in The ’Burbs.

1 Gwyneth Paltrow’s Head

It’d be a safe bet to say that the most famous movie prop in history that we never actually see is the contents of the briefcase in Pulp Fiction. If there’s a clear runner-up, I’d argue that it’s the contents of the box from Seven. Spoiler: the box contains the severed head of Gwyneth Paltrow’s character, though we never get to see it. A prop head was made for the scene, however. An eerily lifelike reproduction of Paltrow’s head was made but cut from the ending of the movie. Then the bespoke severed head sat in a storage vault for 16 years until it finally found use.

In Contagion, Paltrow’s character again dies, this time from a deadly virus. When it came time to film the autopsy of her body, producers were able to save a few tens of thousands of dollars and give Paltrow the day off. Instead, they dusted off the old severed head from Seven and placed it atop a dummy. That makes the head somewhat unique in that it only makes one film appearance and yet is absolutely a major reused prop.

Movie props play a crucial role in the art of filmmaking. Some might even say the starring role. Once an actor touches these infamous objects, and the film itself is a smash hit, makeshift items of everyday materials can become prized possessions.

Nowadays, many movie props are barcoded and cataloged into a database at the beginning of production so that props don’t get lost throughout filming. But it wasn’t always that way. Many movie props would go home with cast and crew members, and then they were never seen again. Even now, very few props are released from film studios and become available to the public. But when they do, collectors, fans, and film fanatics alike compete for these coveted items.

Created by talented, passionate, and sometimes dark artists, here are 10 movie props that will give you chills.

Related: 10 Famous Props And The Actors Who Stole Them

10 Newspapers from Back to the Future II

Kicking off our list is a lesser-known prop from a wacky and wild trip from Universal Studios, Back to the Future. The second film in this timeless franchise follows the McFly family’s archnemesis, Biff, stealing the Delorean time machine and altering history, resulting in Marty McFly having to…well. You know the rest.

The film’s screenwriter, Bob Gale, kept some of the USA Today newspaper props from the film along with their gory headlines, all of which he wrote himself. The newspaper from the future includes an article that talks about thumb bandits cutting off and stealing thumbs! Gale explains that if you were using your thumb to pay for things, robbers would cut and steal the thumbs off of people in the future. Talk about a gruesome detail to include and a nightmare to keep us awake in our ever digital times.

9 The Slytherin Locket from Harry Potter

Looking for a spell-binding movie prop? Well, look no further than Warner Brothers Studios’ Harry Potter. As seen in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Parts 1 and 2, the Slytherin locket is a grave artifact that the main characters—Harry, Ron, and Hermoine—desperately try to destroy. Head of the prop-making department, Pierre Bohanna, revealed that sixty Slytherin lockets were made of all sorts of different materials. Since both the actors and special effects coordinators continually tried to destroy them, quite a few were actually destroyed. Unfortunately, it didn’t stop You-Know-Who.

Bohanna explains that a handful of repeat lockets were forged from pewter, a metal of mostly tin and some copper so that the Gryffindor sword could split the locket in half on screen. When a special effect could have easily been added to the locket through CGI, the props department went all-in with creating some on-screen magic.

8 Bella’s Rings from The Twilight Saga

Published in 2007, author Stephanie Meyer’s Eclipse from The Twilight Saga swept the romance world off its feet. Including Kristen Stewart, who played Bella Swan. In several interviews, the actress admits to keeping the engagement ring given to her by on- and off-screen partner Robert Pattinson, who played Edward Cullen. Stewart also revealed she kept two other rings: the wedding ring and the moon ring, gifted to Bella by her mother at the beginning of the series.

The prop department’s jeweler consulted with Meyer several times about the engagement ring, as it has a particular description in the novel. The jeweler knew fans would be furious if it wasn’t accurate. But jewelers were puzzled about the type, cut, and shape the ring was to take. The ring itself has 69 diamonds in an oval pave setting with an engraved “14k RF” inside the band, meaning it’s fourteen karat gold with a rhodium finish to prevent tarnishing. Fans have been dreaming, swooning, and throwing inadequate engagement rings away ever since.

7 The Meat Grinder from Sweeny Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Still don’t have chills yet? Okay, so maybe you’re more into the gory type of chills.

Remember the meat grinder hidden away under quiet Fleet Street? It’s still around. And Warner Brothers Studios keeps it fully stocked. Okay, so it’s not real! But the props department had no problem handing over the literal ton of foam, gel, and wax body parts made for the 2007 film.

Oh, and the worst pies in London? They’re paper mache, foam pool noodles, and wax that’s been through an actual meat grinder. The Warner Brothers archive was established in 1992, and each item that enters the warehouse is stored with a tag listing the title, the actor who used it, and the date of the film.

6 HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey

If you thought HAL’s circuits got disconnected, think again. The 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey follows astronauts traveling to Jupiter with the sentient computer, HAL, after discovering an alien monolith. However, things take a turn when the machine starts interfering and claiming to be more capable of completing the mission than the humans, including setting astronauts adrift by severing oxygen hoses and turning off life support systems.

Director and film fanatic Peter Jackson has the original wide-angle, Nikon, 8mm fisheye lens in his collection. Jackson acquired the prop about 15 years ago and noticed that the props department added a separate lens along the back to channel the red light that gives HAL that eerie, evil glow.

5 Orcs from The Hobbit

Speaking of Peter Jackson, The Hobbit franchise has so many props from over the years that every available space was valuable, including storing orc corpses in the kitchen. That’s right. Imagine sitting around at lunchtime with gruesome Orcs staring at you.

Between the production of each film, props were stored in huge warehouses only to be brought out for a few months of filming in 2012, 2013, and 2014. The hardest part? Finding what you needed when you needed it. Costumes, swords, sets, staffs, sculptures, boats, bows, and arrows all lived in off-site storage facilities in New Zealand. Over 2,000 props were made for one armory scene alone. Just, maybe don’t eat in the warehouse kitchens.

4 St. Paul’s Cathedral Globe from Mary Poppins

Dan Lanigan from Disney+’s Prop Culture hunts down artifacts from the 1964 film Mary Poppins and even visits the Walt Disney Studios lot in Burbank to find the original prop. Only three St. Paul Cathedral globes exist, and two are replicas. The original snow globe was found in a trash bin by a janitor and was tucked away in a closet on the Disney lot until the studio’s archive started up. Back in ’64, items weren’t kept from productions like they are today, and while the original globe may not have birds swirling around inside anymore, the glass and cathedral are still intact.

Walt Disney had a deep connection to the song “Feed the Birds,” and when the film’s songwriter Richard Sherman of the Sherman Brothers would enter his office, Walt would simply say, “Play it for me.” And Richard knew which song to sing. To this day, Richard Sherman is the only person allowed to play the piano in Walt’s office preserved as carefully as the St. Paul’s Cathedral prop.

3 Chewbacca Skin from Star Wars

Though Star Wars consultant Adam Savage, commonly known from the show Mythbusters, isn’t sure which Star Wars film this prop is from. However, it is most certainly from the originals. The foam latex mask was thin enough for actor Peter Mayhew to portray facial expressions without any help from armature such as puppeteering or animatronics, which are techniques commonly used today. It is all Peter Mayhew.

Even creator and director George Lucas didn’t realize how much Mayhew contributed to the role. In a scene where Lucas didn’t believe Mayhew needed to be called to set, the costume and mask were given to a stand-in for the role, and Lucas immediately had Mayhew called to set to be in the scene.

2 Skeletons from Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl

It makes sense to film Pirates of the Caribbean in the Caribbean, right? How about including real islanders? Filmed just off the coast of St. Vincent island, Pirates of the Caribbean props can still be found all around the island, from plaster cannons to the original sinking boat mast Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow docks and walks away from at the beginning of the film.

But the creepiest prop that no one knows what happened to is the infamous “Pirates ye be warned” sign hanging next to two prop skeletons. The production crew left the sign after filming was completed as an homage to the island, but soon after, the sign was no longer there when boats went past. Many speculate that a local took it down to have a piece of the movie with them.

1 Dorothy’s Slippers from The Wizard of Oz

And finally, the most highly sought-after movie prop, the infamous red ruby slippers from MGM’s 1939 The Wizard of Oz. These slippers are so famous that they earned a spot in the Smithsonian Institution. Though they are mismatched, with one shoe showing more wear than another, they were donated anonymously in 1979.

Dorothy’s slippers, worn by Judy Garland, are so famous that they were stolen. Well, not the ones from the Smithsonian. A pair of original slippers at the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids was stolen in 2005. Thirteen years later, the police found them through an attempted extortion plot. Since only four pairs of these shoes survived production nearly a century ago, recovering the props symbolized the belief and a persevering hope for that special somewhere over the rainbow.