How do you make a spooky player character without making them undead?
Make them a fully dead ghost.
Let's turn this up a notch.
How do you make a spooky, non-edgy PC, in a way that most DMs (not most GOOD DMs, most DMs) will allow?
Be "cursed" but never give the details. Never sleep with the party.
Wear a mask with a very happy face on it at all times.
Take a tuft of hair, a tooth, or an eye from everything you kill. Don't tell anyone what you're saving them for.
Wander off into the woods and return hours later with some unidentifiable meat. Don't offer any to the other PCs.
Use thieves cant to speak nonsense to random people and have them respond to you in kind without ever explaining what was said.
Carry a book with you. Whenever you kill a humanoid flip through the book and cross something out before quickly closing it.
In the middle of social conversations focus intensely on something else like a cat sitting in the corner, the floor boards beneath your feet, or the ticking of a clock. Never respond the first time you're addressed.
Spend every long rest whispering to and pondering the contents of a puzzle box (DC 22 Int Check to open) with a look of wonder on your face. Whatever is inside gives off an eerie glow. Quickly close it and hide it if anyone notices.
I'd probably give them some sort of ability to commune with various vermin and creepy-crawlies.
After all, next on the creepy list after "undead" is "spiders and bugs"
Act like a pedophile, but without the kiddy diddling.
>>44188238
Name them Goodbane Evilskull.
Make 'em a paladin.
I once had a GOOlock that seemed to speak normally, if only in whispers, but the party later found out he had his tongue cut out and had always been talking with telepathy.
To quote /biz/:
Step 1: Be a Jew.
>>44188305
Gomez or Morticia Adams.
Never has a mean word to say about anyone, always happy to help, wierd as fuck personal hobbies.
>>44188305
>>44188238
>this entire thread
>>44188445
Hmm, good one, anon, I didn't really mean meme-spooky but regardless it meets all criteria and I kinda wanna play that now.
>>44188238
He can raise the dead, wooooooooo spooky
>>44188493
The best part of the Addams family is how much they love each other. Each would do anything to guarantee the happiness of the others. The fact that they're all masochists, not sadists, masochists, kinda works with that.
So Morticia may want to spend a lazy morning gardening in the bramble patch, next to the stinging nettles and the deadly nightshade with a beautiful carnivorous thistle, and then make the children a thoroughly toxic lunch (it builds up their immunities, and has good roughage), before taking some "me" time in the iron maiden. Everything is "wierd" but nothing is actually hurting anyone else.
Inability to speak sometimes translates into dark, imposing and menacing character.
