Things that would have made Amnesia scarier

[MyRedNeptune]

How about a new Gatherer called a 'Searcher' that carries a lantern. With the Lantern, very good eyesight and has great hearing, but low attack strength. Once it sees you, it summons (spawns) a Grunt or Brute to chase you!

That's an interesting idea, but I was thinking more in terms of what is already present in Amnesia (the grunts and brutes). My concern was that the monsters in Amnesia were too much like conventional enemies and that adding some interesting and unusual variations could take away from that image, at least a little.

The monsters are explained once in the beginning of Amnesia, but for the rest of the game they just act like normal enemies that you have to avoid and get scared by. Boring! No wonder people tend to complain about becoming desensitized by the time they're at chapter 3. Frictional played it smart though (it really surprises me sometimes how goddamn smart they are about the things they do) and made the chapter very story-focused so players still had something to think about.

Now place a lantern-carrying monster event somewhere in there and it could bring back some of that atmosphere.

Of course, this is all subjective, yadda yadda, etc.

Those ideas sound interesting indeed, but sometimes I wonder if some people have become a bit desensitized from playing too much Amnesia and especially from playing around with the level editor and custom stories.

Definitely. For example, right now I can see how the grunt can be considered funny/cute looking, but when I first saw it I was so scared by its face that I would avoid looking at it. Maybe that's because I played Amnesia being a horror virgin, I don't know.

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Contrary to popular (and annoying) belief, difficulty only adds to scariness (in my humble opinion of course).

You're absolutely right, the more difficult the player perceives the situation to be, the more terrified and helpless they feel. The key word here is "perception". I think that, instead of increasing actual difficulty to increase fear, FG will work towards making the perceived difficulty as high as possible (or appropriate). After all, nobody ever doubts that they will physically be able to finish a level in a game, right? Unless they're playing an old-school platformer, of course.