splatter house used to scare me when i was little

oh ya and friday the 13th for commodore

Fatal Frame 2 IMO is one of the best atmospheres of horror ever in a video game, and for once it wasn't zombies.

One of the girls I live with, Charley, is really really really scared of Goldeneye on the N64, she loves every other game on our N64, but she thinks Goldeneye is scary for no reason I can see. She says it's because people come out of nowhere with guns... but I reckon it's because all the soldiers look like Tim Curry

A game has never scared me such that I won't continue, but I think games have shown that due to the interactive nature they can probably exceed films in certain ways in this genre - i.e. you have to chose to walk down the dark hallway rather than sit and watch someone else do it.

Certain games have, however, produced the two main aspects of horror material for me, which is tension and unease/dread, and they are:

For tension : Alien vs Predator 2 (playing as Marine), Thief 3 (Cradle levels) and Fear

For unease / dread : Any Silent Hill game and Condemned

RE and similar games just don't do it for me at all. They have jumps and are fun, but there is no tension/dread for me at all as I just don't buy the scenario I guess...

you should try fatal frames they are scary

I'd have to agree that the passive for isn't as scary at least for me. Movies can be startling and perhaps a little unnerving, but when I played Fatal Frame at 1 AM in complete darkness alone in my apartment with windows that face into a wooded area, I started to get pretty freaked out and couldn't play for extended periods of time. Then I went and laid in my bed and watched TV until people got back. Still need to finish the first one and play the other two some time. Alas my saved game is across the world from me. I should probably restart anyhow. I did fairly poorly at the start.

Resident Evil 4 wasn't much of scary. Played the DS remake of RE1 and it was perhaps mildly scary. . .probably more of startling in some areas, but sometimes can put you a bit on edge. I assume it works better for that on a TV. Eternal Darkness was fun and more often amusing than actually scary for me. I love when your head falls off and says "to be or not to be" or whatever it was. I'd kinda like to try Silent Hill sometime as well

a good new scary game :

Penumbra black plague for only 15$ in the US !!

demo here : http://www.penumbrablackplague.com/site/demo.php

I have tested it, it is quite good

Yeah, I plan to check those out at some point.  I've heard good things about them.

Silent Hill 3. The scariest game I ever played. Probably the scariest I've ever been in my life, and I've been in REAL life or death situations!

It's also, sadly, probably vaporware. :( The developer has supposedly been working on it since late 2006, and we don't even have a single in-engine screenshot.