As if watching two hours of men fighting over Kaitlyn Bristowe on The Bachelorette wasn’t terrifying enough, ABC is giving us another reason to be scared on Monday nights: The Whispers. The one-hour sci-fi drama is based on “Zero Hour,” a Ray Bradbury short story from The Illustrated Man. The gist of it all is that a seemingly paranormal force starts to haunt the Earth and its inhabitants by using an unlikely medium — the children. If there’s anything creepier than whispers and quiet children, I don’t know what it is. So how many episodes of The Whispers will there be? According to IMDB, 14 episodes are slated for the first season, which I’m sure will increase in scariness from “creeptastic” to “can’t sleep for days.”
The cast features stars from some of my other favorite shows: Lily Rabe, who plays Claire, appeared on American Horror Story (she’s also the daughter of the late, great Jill Clayburgh); Revenge gave Barry Sloane, who plays Wes, a home for years; Milo Ventimiglia, as John Doe, will always be Gilmore Girls’ Jess Mariano to me; and Autumn Reeser, who appears as Amanda, was Taylor Townsend, the type-A valedictorian from The O.C.
Given that The Whispers is a show focused on creepy children, I’ve rounded up a few of the scariest kids to ever appear on film. Will the little ones on The Whispers surpass them over the course of those 14 episodes? I sure hope not, or else I won’t be sleeping for weeks.
Damien, The Omen
Whether in the 1976 original with Gregory Peck or the 2006 remake with Julia Stiles, Damien is not somebody you’d want to be around in a dark alley, since he’s, you know, the son of Satan. He’s also responsible for the deaths of a nanny, a Catholic priest, a photographer friend, his mother, and his father. Need I say more?
Esther, The Orphan
This is actually a trick question because (spoiler alert) up until the end of the film, we don’t know that Esther is actually an adult. She suffers from hypopituitarism, a condition that stunted her growth. Esther is actually 33, which makes all the crazy stuff she does in the movie even worse.
Samara, The Ring
It’s not Samara’s fault she’s so damn scary: It’s her mother’s fault, because her mother threw her in a well to die. Nevertheless, the site of Samara crawling up from the well and through the television still gives me the heebie-jeebies.
Isaac, Children of the Corn
I don’t know what Stephen King has in that mind of his, but creating this character in Children of the Corn means there has to be something pretty effed up in there (don’t even get me started on Pennywise). In the film, Isaac (who is really an evil entity called He Who Walks Behind The Rows) convinces all the kids in town to kill all the adults.
Carole Anne, Poltergeist
Under no circumstances is anyone to announce their presence with “they’re here” around me. Because of this movie and that darling (and sublimely unsettling) little girl, I can’t handle it.
Regan, The Exorcist
Again not necessarily Regan’s fault that she was so damned scary, since she was possessed by the Devil and all, her crab walk down the stairs and projectile vomiting still terrify viewers today.
All of those creepy kids made me really glad I wrote this in the daytime. To see if the children on The Whispers are as scary as these, tune in to the premiere on June 1 at 10 p.m. — but make sure you keep the lights on, just in case.
Images: ABC/Bob D’Amico; Giphy (6)
