A single moving image was all it took for Reddit to decide the most “scary/unsettling” moment in Simpsons history:

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The combination of Bart’s new clown bed, along with the echoes of Grandma Flanders’ eerie refrain, “Hello, Joe!” caused nightmares not only for toddler Bart but for more than 400 upvoters on r/TheSimpsons. 

“Can’t sleep, clown’ll eat me,” remembers the permanently awake u/missalizr. “I’ve been quoting this (since) I was a child,” says u/BDKhXc. 

Next up on the scary and unsettling list? There was a surprising amount of support for “when Wiggum's tie got stuck in the hotdog roller,” suggested by u/Head_Nerd_In_Charge.

“Similarly, when Jasper gets his beard stuck in the pencil sharpener,” offered u/PumpernickelShoe.

u/RaptorSamaelZeroX got plenty of upvotes by suggesting “the animals on Tomacco,” a Homer-created super vegetable that drove addicted critters to violence.

“Move over, Cocaine Bear!” shouted u/WanderingMan719.

“TBH the whole tomacco concept in general and the idea of what if Homer had sold the crops to the cigarette company to be distributed worldwide is really unsettling to me,” said u/treegelbman.

u/Impossible_Scarcity9 suggested another Simpsons torment: “I remember seeing this as a kid with my friend. We were both terrified.”

“It’s lost much of its effect due to how many times I’ve seen the Episode but it’s absolutely wild how such a simple design is so unsettling to so many people,” says u/tcavanagh1993. “The scene in general is just really well done on all levels.”

That “Springfield Files” episode in which a spooky alien is revealed to be Mr. Burns really seems to have resonated with Redditors. “I loved the catharsis as a kid,” says u/Simicrop, “when a show would start off with something really scary but by the end of the episode it was explained away.”

“My favourite episode to this day because I loved the creepiness as a kid,” says u/Gold-Stomach-4657.  “For me it was mostly due to the X-files music,” confesses u/ckalmond. “that song freaked me the fuck out.”

u/Batmanfan1966 couldn’t believe one particularly jarring image wasn’t higher on the list. “How is no one talking about this?? It’s imo the creepiest scene in the whole show”

“This was the first scene I thought of,” says u/chrichri33333. “I'm surprised I scrolled down so far to find it.”

“I was just about to say this,” chimed in u/CrissBliss. “I don’t know who drew this, but congratulations on giving me nightmares for years.”

We’ll let u/KvotheLightningTree put the exclamation point on unsettling and scary Simpsons moments with a laundry list of horrors, including Homer trying to kill himself, Marge singing to Maggie about her falling out of a tree, the Treehouse of Horror episode where the students are being eaten, and last but not least, the Big Book of British Smiles: 

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