Apple TV‘s new hit horror comedy Widow’s Bay is here to haunt you and its cast!

The premiere of Katie Dippold’s new razor-sharp series about a cursed costal town introduced Mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) to “the fog that stole souls,” which transformed fisherman Shep Clark (Tom Kemp) into a white-eyed zombie man. In Episode 2, “Lodging,” the mayor dared spend the night at Widow’s Bay’s haunted inn, where he encountered a killer clown. And Episode 3, “The Inaugural Swim,” introduced Tom to a Sea Hag who targets lonely sailors, scratches them until their bodies weaken, and kills them by sitting on their faces. (Yes, really!)

Though these haunts may sound hilariously farfetched, Widow’s Bay achieves a masterful blend of deliciously dark humor and nail-biting terror. So each episode will genuinely send chills up your spine. Heck, even Rhys got spooked while filming the episodes.

When Decider chatted with the Widow’s Bay star ahead of the show’s April 29 premiere, we asked which of those three scary scenarios he’d least like to encounter in real life. Though his gut instinct was to say, “Oh my god, all of them,” he ultimately narrowed it down to the two most traumatizing terrors.

“The clown and being in the sea for me. The clown kind of scared me. I was like, ‘Yeah, it’s gonna be fine. But Tim [Baltz], who played the clown, the speed at which he crawled towards me actually made me yelp for real,” Rhys told Decider, confirming that crawl space scene was just as creepy as it looked.

While The Righteous Gemstones star was ultimately responsible for Rhys’ Episode 2 fright, he blamed his vivid imagination for the majority of his Episode 3 jitters.

“Then, in the scene with the Sea Hag, I started freaking myself out thinking I could see her,” Rhys explained. “I was like, ‘I can still see her! She doesn’t like that! There’s nothing in the water! Oh my god!’ But I had fun launching her off a La-Z-Boy.”

Speaking as a Certified Scaredy Cat, the killer clown crawl was a genuine jump scare for me, but it was over in a flash! The horror of the Sea Hag was so drawn out that I found the paranoia and multiple run-ins far more agonizing. Plus, you get scratched! You lose out on a romance with Marissa (Elizabeth Alderfer). Not to mention, when Wyck (Stephen Root) swoops in at the last second to save Tom by shooting the Sea Hag, she explodes and showers the mayor with disgusting hag fluid, which Rhys said “tasted like oysters.” BLECH!

In reflecting on shooting some of the horror comedy’s early cursed scenes, the Widow’s Bay star said, “It’s all so much of our imagination. That’s the most powerful element of it all.”

So there you have it, Widow’s Bay fans. Next time you escape to the cursed island and watch its residents encounter fresh new horrors, just know that a lot of imagination went into nailing the execution — but that doesn’t mean the stars didn’t get scared every now and then.

New episodes of Widow’s Bay premiere Wednesdays on Apple TV.