Those claustrophobic corners really help make it creepy.

Most games, especially modern games, give you space to breathe and see what's up ahead. Sometimes corridors are unreasonably wide, like a residential hallway being 12 feet wide.

Every one of those blind corners is a roll of the dice if any kind of enemy is waiting. And you get the sense that there should be someone around, so you constantly expect to run into a face 2 feet from yours.