Anytime Halloween lurks around the corner, we love to cover all things horror and more with our Bloodstream content. We’re trying to help you cover all the graves—er, bases—necessary to find your new horror favorites. We’ve already shown you how to stream the best horror classics, find A24’s best horror films, and watch the best 20 Halloween movies on TV right now.
This time, we’re looking at the places you’re most likely to meet your maker—at least, if you’re in a highly-praised horror movie.
We took a stab at figuring out which states have racked up the highest horror movie body counts by scouring through 65 of the best horror films set in the US. We ended up with a killer list that includes a total of 1,063 deaths across 22 states.
Spoiler alert: We’ll avoid all the gory details, but you may encounter some specific surprises.
How did we figure out the deadliest state according to horror movies?
We started with Rotten Tomatoes’ 200 Best Horror Movies of All Time list, and if a movie didn’t take place in the States, we slashed it. For body counts, we hunted down numbers from Fandom’s List of Deaths Wiki and even dug up data from the now-defunct BodyCounters.com using the Wayback Machine. We also consulted DeadMeat’s YouTube channel and ran the numbers by our in-house horror guru, Randy Harward.
(Note: These tolls only count the death of humans—no zombies, monsters, or supernatural baddies. However, some films have tolls that include implied or off-screen deaths, so their totals may seem high—i.e., In House of Wax, would you include each wax figure? We did.)
So which state is the deadliest when it comes to horror movie death counts?

The deadliest states according to horror movies
Rank | State / Territory | Death Count | Movie Count |
---|---|---|---|
1 | New York | 337 | 10 |
2 | Pennsylvania | 213 | 7 |
3 | California | 181 | 11 |
4 | Ohio | 52 | 4 |
5 | Oregon | 46 | 3 |
6 | West Virginia | 29 | 1 |
7 | Florida | 24 | 2 |
8 | Maine | 22 | 3 |
9 | Nevada | 18 | 2 |
10 | Texas | 17 | 3 |
11 | Tennessee | 16 | 2 |
12 | North Carolina | 15 | 1 |
13 | Washington | 13 | 2 |
14 | Michigan | 12 | 3 |
14 | Virginia | 12 | 1 |
15 | Illinois | 11 | 2 |
15 | Colorado | 11 | 3 |
16 | Maryland | 10 | 1 |
17 | Massachusetts | 8 | 1 |
18 | Louisiana | 7 | 1 |
19 | New Jersey | 5 | 1 |
20 | Utah | 4 | 1 |
- New York dons the Deadliest State crown thanks to a terrifying tally from House of Wax along with a psychologically devastating death toll from 1408 and the killer classic King Kong. The Empire State has hosted 10 of the best horror movies in our list.
- Pennsylvania is the second deadliest state thanks to Dawn of the Dead and Night of the Living Dead—which hoarded a huge human death tally with their zombie hordes.
- California had the most horror movies on our list, and came in as the third deadliest state thanks to Jordan Peele’s Us and Nope including serious strings of strange and supernatural slaughters.
When it comes to horror movie body counts, it seems you’ve got a better shot at survival in the South and Midwest than in the the Northeast and West:
- Northeast: 411 deaths
- West: 267 deaths
- Midwest: 75 deaths
- South: 82 deaths
Want to find which horrors took place in your state? Here’s a list of the films that made the cut:
- California: Us, Nope, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Evil Dead Rise, Scream, The Blackening, The Invisible Man, Drag Me to Hell, The Birds, Psycho, Poltergeist
- Colorado: The Black Phone, Misery, The Shining
- Florida: Annihilation, Crawl
- Illinois: Candyman, Halloween
- Maine: The Dead Zone, It (1990), Carrie
- Maryland: The Silence of the Lambs
- Massachusetts: Re-Animator
- Michigan: Barbarian, Don’t Breathe, It Follows
- Nevada: Fright Night, Tremors
- New England: The Witch
- New Jersey: Smile
- Louisiana: 10 Cloverfield Lane
- New York: House of Wax, 1408, King Kong, A Quiet Place Part II, Scream VI, Get Out, Jaws, A Quiet Place, Rosemary’s Baby, Cat People
- North Carolina: The Descent
- Ohio: Fear Street Part Three: 1666, Fear Street Part One: 1994, Fear Street Part Two: 1978, A Nightmare on Elm Street
- Oregon: Fresh, Green Room, Come to Daddy
- Pennsylvania: Dawn of the Dead, Eraserhead, Night of the Living Dead, Martin, Split, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Gremlins
- Tennessee: Evil Dead 2, The Evil Dead
Hopefully, you can avoid the horrible happenings in your home town—at least long enough to stream your favorite screen screams this season. For more freaky, frightening, and fascinating fun, keep up with all of our horror and Halloween-related content on our Bloodstream page.