While I'd agree that there's a lot of clunky puzzles in Scratches, I think if you're in the mood for a solid horror game it's pretty easy to overlook the annoying parts for the few great scares the game has. The part where you wake up in the middle of the night and have to go explore the basement is one of the more tense moments in recent adventure game memory.
And while this might sound a bit odd to mention, Police Quest 4: Open Season is still an incredibly bleak and disturbing game that gets progressively weirder as it goes along. The end game sequence
Spoiler:which involves a cross dressing serial killer and a decapitated head in a fridge
is still one of the weirdest and scariest moments I've played in an adventure game.