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The Fallout: New Vegas -Dead Money- dlc has one of my all-time favorite game enemies: the Ghost People.

Now I'm no coinsure of horror games, the closest thing I've played to a straight horror game all the way through is Dead Space, but I feel the Ghost People really hit the right cords from a design and a gameplay stand point. You can actually fight them, but they aren't the kind of enemies you can just steam roll over and getting in a straight fight with them can often end in disaster. They're well animated and provide a unique challenge in the game. But most importantly, you never know -too- much about them.
The key to a good monster can often be that element of mystery and the more you know about it, the less impact it can have. Even when you figure out what the Ghost People -used- to be, you still know virtually nothing about them in their current form and every tidbit of information only raises further questions. (They apparently taste like copper and plastic) Why is it they do what they do? What's really under those suits now? What do they do once they've caught you? These are things you -never- learn about them, and for me, that helps make them memorable.
Further more, they fit into my favorite kind of horror enemy. The "sad" enemy type. Much like the Bioshock Splicers or the soldiers from Spec Ops: The Line, once you learn what they really are or why they are the way they are they cease to be monsters. They're victims of circumstances beyond they're control, and even worse, those circumstances were forced upon them by others. In the Ghost People's case, they're the victims of a highly questionable experiment to test faulty equipment against an unknown poison.

This is just a personal ramble though, and I'm sure there are others out there who could express this much better.

Description
The Fallout: New Vegas -Dead Money- dlc has one of my all-time favorite game enemies: the Ghost People.

Now I'm no coinsure of horror games, the closest thing I've played to a straight horror game all the way through is Dead Space, but I feel the Ghost People really hit the right cords from a design and a gameplay stand point. You can actually fight them, but they aren't the kind of enemies you can just steam roll over and getting in a straight fight with them can often end in disaster. They're well animated and provide a unique challenge in the game. But most importantly, you never know -too- much about them.
The key to a good monster can often be that element of mystery and the more you know about it, the less impact it can have. Even when you figure out what the Ghost People -used- to be, you still know virtually nothing about them in their current form and every tidbit of information only raises further questions. (They apparently taste like copper and plastic) Why is it they do what they do? What's really under those suits now? What do they do once they've caught you? These are things you -never- learn about them, and for me, that helps make them memorable.
Further more, they fit into my favorite kind of horror enemy. The "sad" enemy type. Much like the Bioshock Splicers or the soldiers from Spec Ops: The Line, once you learn what they really are or why they are the way they are they cease to be monsters. They're victims of circumstances beyond they're control, and even worse, those circumstances were forced upon them by others. In the Ghost People's case, they're the victims of a highly questionable experiment to test faulty equipment against an unknown poison.

This is just a personal ramble though, and I'm sure there are others out there who could express this much better.