Shows Like
15 Shows Like Stranger Things — Supernatural Picks
Finished Stranger Things and need more? These TV shows capture the same magic — supernatural mysteries, '80s vibes, kids on bikes, and monsters in the dark.
15 FILMS·April 2026·By MoviesPack
Section 1
The Stranger Things Formula
What makes Stranger Things work isn't just the Demogorgon. It's the cocktail: **kids investigating something adults can't understand, '80s nostalgia, supernatural horror with heart, and friendships stronger than the monsters.** Finding shows that nail all four is hard. These come closest. [Use our tool: Shows Like Stranger Things](/shows/similar/stranger-things) — algorithmically matched
Section 2
The Closest Matches
01
Dark
2017–2020
★8.8IMDb
A child goes missing in a small German town, and four interconnected families start pulling at the threads — only to find the threads run across time. The show spans four timelines across multiple decades, with the same people appearing as children, adults, and elderly versions of themselves, all trapped in a loop they can't see. If Stranger Things is the fun version of "small town with a dark secret," Dark is the devastating version.
Why it matters
Same DNA — missing kids, supernatural forces, small town secrets — but executed with the complexity of a Christopher Nolan film. Watch in German with subtitles, not dubbed.
02
The OA
2016–2019
★7.8IMDb
A woman who disappeared seven years ago walks back into her family's life — her sight mysteriously restored — with a story about near-death experiences, captivity, and a set of physical movements she believes can open doors between dimensions. She assembles a group of five people in her neighborhood and starts teaching them the movements in secret. Brit Marling created something genuinely original. The school cafeteria scene in the finale is one of the most polarizing moments in TV.
Why it matters
The supernatural mystery, the group of misfits, the sense that something bigger is happening. Cancelled too soon.
03
Locke & Key
2020–2022
★7.4IMDb
After their father is murdered, three siblings move into the family's old New England estate and start finding keys hidden around the house — each one unlocks a different supernatural power or door to somewhere impossible. A ghost in a well keeps pushing them toward the keys. Something else wants them too. Based on Joe Hill's comics, it's essentially "what if the kids in Stranger Things found magical artifacts instead of a girl with powers."
04
Gravity Falls
2012–2016
★8.9IMDb
Twin siblings Dipper and Mabel spend the summer with their great-uncle in a small Oregon tourist town that turns out to be a hotbed for genuine supernatural weirdness — gnomes, shapeshifters, time anomalies, a dream demon named Bill Cipher who wants to end the world. Dipper finds a journal with everything documented. The town has kept secrets for decades. Don't let the "kids' show" label fool you — the mystery arc and cipher puzzles are genuinely excellent. It's Stranger Things meets The X-Files for all ages.
05
Yellowjackets
2021–present
★7.8IMDb
A high school girls' soccer team crashes in the Canadian wilderness in 1996 and spends nineteen months surviving before rescue. The show cuts between the 90s survival timeline and the present day, where the adult survivors are still keeping secrets about what happened out there. Something supernatural may have been in the forest with them. Lord of the Flies meets Lost with a 90s nostalgia coating and genuine dread underneath.
Section 3
The Supernatural Mystery Shows
06
The Haunting of Hill House
2018
★8.6IMDb
Five siblings grew up in a decaying mansion their parents were renovating. Something in the house drove the family apart — and some of them saw things they've never been able to explain. Twenty-six years later, a new death forces them back together. The show cuts between their childhood in the house and their damaged adult lives, with the horror of Hill House revealed piece by piece. Episode 5 — shot largely in long unbroken takes, with ghosts visible in the background of every frame — is one of the greatest hours of television ever produced.
07
Twin Peaks (1990–1991, 2017)
★8.8IMDb
A popular high school girl is found murdered on the shore of a small Washington logging town, and an eccentric FBI agent comes to investigate. The longer he stays, the stranger the town gets — something dark lives in the surrounding forest, and Laura Palmer's secrets go deeper than anyone thought. Without Twin Peaks, there is no Stranger Things. The original "weird small town" show, and still the strangest.
08
Fringe
2008–2013
★8.4IMDb
An FBI agent is pulled into a classified division that investigates cases the normal bureau can't explain — organic technology, spontaneous genetic mutation, things that shouldn't exist. She works alongside a formerly institutionalized scientist who turns out to have been responsible for many of the phenomena they're investigating. It starts as a monster-of-the-week procedural and slowly becomes an epic multiverse saga. Walter Bishop is one of TV's greatest characters.
09
Archive 81
2022
★7.4IMDb
A film archivist takes a job restoring a collection of damaged videotapes from 1994 — footage shot by a grad student who was investigating a cult in her apartment building right before the building burned down. The further he gets into the tapes, the closer the line between him and the woman on the recordings gets. Found footage meets cosmic horror, wrapped in a mystery that escalates in exactly the right direction. Cancelled after one season, still absolutely worth it.
Section 4
The Coming-of-Age Adventures
10
Outer Banks
2020–present
★7.5IMDb
A group of working-class teens on the Outer Banks of North Carolina stumbles onto a clue about a shipwrecked treasure worth $400 million — and every adult on the island seems willing to kill to keep it buried. The class war between the local Pogues and the wealthy Kooks runs underneath everything. Less supernatural than Stranger Things, but the same energy of kids trusting each other to survive something adults created.
11
The Society
2019
★6.9IMDb
A group of high school students returns from a cancelled camping trip to find their Connecticut town completely empty — every adult gone, no way out, a force field at the town limits. They have to figure out how to govern themselves, feed everyone, and solve the mystery of what happened. Some of them think it's an opportunity. Lord of the Flies meets a sci-fi mystery. Cancelled before it could answer its own questions, but the one season is genuinely compelling.
12
Paper Girls
2022
★7.5IMDb
Four twelve-year-old newspaper delivery girls in a Cleveland suburb on the morning after Halloween, 1988, get caught in the crossfire of a war between time travelers. They end up scattered across different decades, trying to find each other and get home. Based on Brian K. Vaughan's comic. 80s nostalgia, time travel, and four girls who are tougher than any of the adults around them. The most direct Stranger Things comparison on this list.
Section 5
The Sci-Fi Thrillers
13
Severance
2022–present
★8.7IMDb
Employees at a biotech company have voluntarily had a procedure that splits their memory completely between work and home — your work self has no memory of your personal life, and vice versa. One employee's "innie" starts asking questions about what happens on the severed floor and why nobody leaves. The mystery builds slowly and pays off spectacularly. Adam Scott is brilliant, and the season 1 finale delivers the best cliffhanger in recent TV.
14
Westworld
2016–2022
★8.5IMDb
A high-end theme park lets wealthy guests live out Wild West fantasies with android "hosts" who can be killed, violated, and reset without consequence. Except the hosts are starting to remember things they shouldn't. Season 1 builds its mystery across ten episodes — who is a host, what is the maze, what does Ford actually want — and the finale pays off every thread. Anthony Hopkins and Evan Rachel Wood. Season 1 alone is worth the watch.
15
Tales from the Loop
2020
★7.4IMDb
A small midwestern town sits above a giant underground machine called The Loop, built to make the impossible possible. People in the town experience the consequences: a boy switches bodies with his friend, a girl finds a robot in the woods who doesn't know where it came from, a couple gets trapped in a time anomaly. Each episode follows a different resident. Based on Simon Stalenhag's paintings — it's Stranger Things if it were a melancholy Swedish art film. Beautiful, slow, and haunting.
Section 6
Quick Match Guide
| Want... | Watch | |---------|-------| | Same vibe, more complex | Dark | | Kids + supernatural adventure | Locke & Key, Gravity Falls | | Small town mystery | Twin Peaks, Yellowjackets | | Haunted house horror | The Haunting of Hill House | | Teens on an adventure | Outer Banks, Paper Girls | | Sci-fi mystery | Severance, Fringe | | Nostalgic + emotional | The OA, Tales from the Loop |
Section 7
Want More?
- [Full list: Shows Like Stranger Things](/shows/similar/stranger-things) — 20+ algorithmic matches - [Scary TV shows](/shows/mood/scary) — supernatural horror series - [Mind-bending TV shows](/shows/mood/mind-bending) — series that twist your brain - [Mysterious shows](/shows/mood/mysterious) — shows built on secrets - [What show should I watch?](/shows/discover) — random recommendation
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