Small Screen Scares: 6 Classic TV Shows With Incredible Halloween Episodes

This classic sitcom was part of a spate of supernatural comedies that took over the tube in the mid-1960s.

It follows a witch named Samantha (Elizabeth Montgomery) who can work magic with just a wiggle of her nose, but tries to renounce her powers so she can live happily ever after with an American mortal.

Over its eight seasons, Bewitched treated audiences to five Halloween episodes, beginning with “The Witches Are Out” on October 29, 1964.

In this episode, Samantha seeks to overcome negative stereotypes about spellcasters, while at the same time safeguarding her husband’s job.

The jokes may be a little dated, but the vibes are there, especially if you’re into that whole mid-century modern aesthetic.

Incredibly, despite its huge cultural footprint, the first TV adaptation of Charles Addams’ cartoon about a family of morbidly-minded misfits only ran for two seasons.

True to the Addams spirit, both seasons feature a special Halloween episode, beginning with “Halloween with The Addams Family,” which aired on October 29, 1964.

In spite of their ghoulish proclivities, the Addamses are a pretty guileless bunch, and here they unintentionally invite robbers on the run from the law to join in their Halloween hijinks. It’s fun to see these early takes on characters that are still going strong today in Netflix’s Wednesday.

Plus, who wouldn’t want to carve a pumpkin with John Astin’s dashing Gomez?

During the show’s original nine-season run, this sitcom handily established the titular matriarch as a perhaps unlikely Queen of Halloween.

The show featured eight special Halloween episodes that gained a cult following so powerful it spawned its own dedicated Roseanne Halloween merch, ranging from T-shirts to DVD collections.

“Boo!”—originally broadcast October 31, 1989—is notable for the impressive home haunt the Conners create in their modest suburban abode, while “Trick Me Up, Trick Me Down,” from October 29, 1991, showcases Roseanne’s signature obsession with over-the-top Halloween pranks.

For a staggering 36 seasons and counting, this animated sitcom has been a television fixture, thanks in no small part to some of the best Halloween episodes in the history of the medium.

Known as the “Treehouse of Horror,” every year the Simpson family lampoons pop culture both brand new and evergreen with their trademark sardonic wit, skewering everything from politics to classic horror tropes, usually in an anthology format featuring three stories per “Treehouse.”

Make sure you watch the entire episode: The cold opens, credits, and even the show’s iconic theme song are all tweaked for Halloween.

In a complete pivot from the mind-boggling longevity of The Simpsons, here’s a show that only lasted one brief season, but still managed to leave its mark.

The tone of this sensitive, poignant series is encapsulated in the episode “Halloween,” which aired on October 27, 1994.

Teen Angela (Claire Danes) sneaks into the school after hours with her friends, where she has a heartrending encounter with a rebel-without-a-pulse ghost who reminds her a little too much of her still-living bad boy crush.

Meanwhile, her parents have their own Halloween encounter, albeit of a more carnal nature, with the help of two possibly enchanted costumes.

This irreverent sitcom about a group of unlikely friends and the community college they all attend featured four clever Halloween episodes during its original six-season run.

The best of the bunch has to be season 2’s “Epidemiology,” which first aired on October 28, 2010.

The gang attends a spooky campus bash only to find themselves on the frontlines of an apparent zombie apocalypse brought on by tainted taco meat. Zombie stories are a surprisingly natural fit for comedy (see Shaun of the Dead for one of the most celebrated takes on the zom-com), so this works exceedingly well with Community’s rollicking vibe.

The jokes come fast and furious, and the humor is super meta and self-aware. Rarely are outbreaks quite this fun.