The bread and butter of the adult Halloween lover is without a doubt the party. Children enjoy a good Halloween party too: when I was a kid, we had all sorts of festive shindigs. But the cornerstone of the adult Halloween party is quite different than the kiddie party: alcohol.

And since it is a Halloween party, you’ll want to serve them some creepy drinks. As for my party, these are the concoctions I brewed up for my unsuspecting guests.

DEATH PUNCH

• 2 liter ginger ale
• orange and grape Kool-Aid (1 or 2 packets of each)
• 1 bottle cheap vodka

Mix it all up in a cauldron and toss in some cheesecloth-wrapped dry ice so that the black potion bubbles forth some fog. The mixture of the orange and grape Kool-Aid will turn the punch a murky black color.

PUMPKIN PUNCH

• 1 gallon apple cider
• 1 cup ginger ale
• 1/2 bottle Hiram Walker Pumpkin Spice Liqueur
• 1/2 bottle spiced rum

Mix all the ingredients in a hollowed out pumpkin, which will serve as the punch bowl, and enjoy the taste of autumn! This was a huge hit at my party and disappeared almost as quickly as the Oreo eyeballs.

BLOOD

• 1 bottle red wine
• 1 cup sparkling apple juice
• 2 TBSP sugar
• brandy to taste
• orange and lemon juice to taste

This strong and tasty version of sangria works perfectly for your bucket of blood. Sangria is not only red in color, but is also quite similar to the Spanish word sangre, which means “blood.” Or if you’re lazy like me, you can just pick up a bottle of Madria Sangria at your local liquor store.

HALLOWEEN SHOOTERS

• 1 shot Eristoff Black Wild Berry vodka
• 1 shot orange juice

Pour the orange juice into the bottom of the tall shooter glass, and then carefully pour the black vodka on top of the orange juice over a spoon. This will create a nice layered look of black and orange.

To make the party a hit, take my advice from the rest of the Halloween Countdown: make sure you have a good playlist for your guests to rock out to; have the house decorated with black lights, fog machines, spiderwebs, and jack-o-lanterns; make sure everyone’s got a good costume to wear; serve your drinks and delightfully spooky snacks, and have a terrifyingly good time!

Since we’ve run out of time in this year’s Halloween season, if you didn’t manage to do all of these things to make your Halloween worthwhile, don’t sweat it! There’s always next year, and now you have a full 365 days to plan ahead to make Halloween 2012 awesome.

Nothing says Halloween like a platter of deviled mice or some delicious maggot soup. During the witching season, our food should satisfy our macabre appetites, so why not cook up some simple spooky treats for you and your friends?

PUMPKIN SEEDS

This is an easy recipe that you have no excuse not to make if you’re carving a pumpkin this year.

1. Separate the seeds from the orange goop and rinse. Pat dry.
2. Gently toss with olive oil and spread onto a baking sheet. Salt to taste.
3. Bake at 350° for 20-30 minutes or until golden brown.

BOOGERS ON A STICK

I think this one speaks for itself.

1. Mix bottled cheese product with green food coloring.
2. Dip pretzel sticks into green cheese.

OREO EYEBALLS

A creepy twist on a delicious Oreo truffle. Ingredients:

• 1 1lb package regular Oreos
• 1 8oz brick cream cheese
• 3/4 package white chocolate bark
• blue or green food coloring
• chocolate chips
• red food coloring
• powdered sugar

1. Process Oreos in food processor until they are fine crumbs; add cream cheese bit by bit. Process for a while and soon the mixture will start to ball up.
2. Roll small balls and put on cookie sheet lined with waxed paper. Place sheet in freezer for 1/2 hour until frozen or firm.
3. Melt white bark. Dip Oreo balls in white chocolate with spoon and place on sheet.
4. Once the balls have hardened, mix blue or green food coloring with some white chocolate and paint circles onto the balls for the iris. Press a chocolate chip into the center for the pupil.
5. Mix powdered sugar with a little water and plenty red dye. Use a toothpick to draw veins.
6. Keep in a chilled environment.

WITCHES’ FINGERS

Mmmm, fingers! Ingredients:

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup confectioners’ sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon almond extract
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup almonds
• strawberry jelly

1. Combine the butter, sugar, egg, almond extract, and vanilla extract in a mixing bowl and beat together; gradually add the flour, baking powder, and salt, continually beating; refrigerate 20 to 30 minutes.
2. Preheat oven to 325°. Lightly grease baking sheets.
3. Remove dough from refrigerator in small amounts. Scoop 1 teaspoon at a time onto waxed paper. Use the waxed paper to roll the dough into a thin finger-shaped cookie. Press one almond into the end of each cookie to give the appearance of a long fingernail. Use fork tines to create lines in the middle for the knuckles.
4. Bake until the cookies are slightly golden, 20 to 25 minutes.
5. Smear some strawberry jelly on the end without the almond to show the blood where the fingers were severed.

Body parts! Delicious body parts! Good food, good meat, good god, let’s eat!

Sure, you can go to your local Halloween store and pick up a cheaply-made $50 costume of a slutty nurse or Charlie Sheen, but where’s the fun in that when you can make your own costume for much cheaper? In the past few years I’ve thrown together witch and zombie costumes with clothing that I already had plus a few dollars for a witch hat or fake blood, but this year I’m back home and have an excellent seamstress at my disposal (AKA my mom).

When I was a kid, my mom made me a homemade costume every year. From the hand-sewn gypsy ensemble I wore in 2nd grade to the epic werewolf transformation I made in 4th grade, complete with brown fur sprouting from my flannel attire, my costumes were always the best around. She even once sewed me a spider costume with three stuffed arms attached by string, so whenever I moved my arms, they moved with me.

For this year’s Halloween shenanigans, my boyfriend and I decided to go as the Joker and Harley Quinn. While Joker costumes are fairly ubiquitous these days, Harley Quinn is not, so it was time to get a little creative.

I bought two cheap dresses in the same style: one black and one red. The other things I bought out of convenience were black and red thigh highs to mix and match. Then my lovely seamstress took apart the dresses down the middle and sewed them back together Frankenstein-style. She also created black and red arm warmers and a hat based on a jester pattern she had.

All we need to do is attach some black diamonds to the dress and paint my face, and then my costume is complete. I know not everyone has a tailor at their disposal, but you can still get creative with your costume making. Here are some easy make-at-home ideas in case you need a last-minute creation:

• Instead of throwing a sheet over your head for a ghost, jazz it up a little: wear all white or gray and paint your face to match.
• Or take those white clothes and shred them up a bit, wrap some fabric around your head, and call yourself a mummy.
• Destroy your old prom dress with some fake blood to go as Carrie White (but please don’t use your telekinesis to set the party on fire).
• Get a black hooded cloak and a plastic scythe, and you’re the grim reaper (if you can’t get a scythe, then you can just be a dementor).
• Use a black sharpie to draw triangles and a mouth on an orange t-shirt, and find a green hat for a jack-o-lantern costume.

These are just some basic costumes, but there are tons and tons of options if you’re willing to spend some time on it. And since this is my first year doing a couples costume here are some ideas for you and your significant other:

• Devil / angel (can be a fallen angel)
• Vlad the Impaler / Elizabeth Bathory
• Jack Skellington / Sally
• Beetlejuice / Lydia Deetz
• Wolf / Little Red Riding Hood

If you still don’t have a costume yet, luckily you can make a simple one very quickly, but if you want a good one, then you better get on it! Halloween is less than a week away!

And don’t forget to dress up your pets!

So, what are you dressing up as for Halloween?

Comment on this post (or any other post) to be entered into the Coffin Hop drawing. Check out the rest of the Coffin Hoppers here.

It’s Halloween and you want to be scared, but the bourgeois suburban life you lead has a scare factor somewhere between finding a spider on your wall and doing your taxes. The real world rarely inhabits that strange, creepy atmosphere you crave when the moon rises and All Hallows’ Eve is just around the corner, so you must go find it for yourself.

Haunted houses are the perfect way to do this. It is a ready-made world of terror and dread waiting for you, complete with special effects, winding corridors, and monsters that jump out when you least expect it. The best haunted houses fully encapsulate that dark, surreal atmosphere where reality has shattered into a world of horrors, and the only escape is to continue through the fog-laden cemetery, the catacombs of skulls, the torture chamber, and the phantasmagoria of an acid trip gone awry.

Last weekend I visited Hanna Haunted Acres in Indianapolis, a festival of the macabre with six attractions in the middle of an empty field surrounded by cornstalks and trees. I went on a dreary night, drove down the dirt road, walked through the mud, and was fairly pleased by the experience.

The six attractions are as follows: Scare Crow Revenge, Medical Malpractice, Hanna Haunted Hayride, Phantazmagoria, Blackout, and Carnevil.

Scare Crow Revenge promised to be a haunted corn maze, but the corn stalks were low enough that you could always see which direction the lights of the park came from, and by “haunted,” they meant a few bored workers occasionally jumping out of the corn.

Medical Malpractice was a pretty good horrorshow of science and surgery gone horribly wrong, all set to almost constant strobe lights and a soundtrack that includes Evanescence.

The Haunted Hayride was definitely a highlight. You wind through the woods with costumed folk jumping onto the ride every so often while giant spiders hang overhead and Satan himself hovers among the trees. It ends with a bang, as a demon truck starts to tailgate the tractor, and you speed through the woods to escape the approaching lights.

Phantazmagoria and Blackout were both pretty standard haunted house fare, with some attempt at that whole “wander through pure darkness” bit. Carnevil was the other standout, as a 3-D clown-themed walk-through with trippy fluorescent paintings popping out at you.

A few days ago, I hit up another haunted house right here in Chicagoland called Screams in the Park, just next to Muvico Theater in Rosemont. This one promised a cohesive theme: the home and torture chamber of Chicago’s first serial killer, H. H. Holmes, made famous by Erik Larson’s Devil in the White City.

For those who don’t know, Dr. Henry Howard Holmes, whose real name was Herman Webster Mudgett (1861-1896), terrorized Chicago at the 1893 World’s Fair. He built a hotel of horrors for the visitors and there killed somewhere between 4 and 200 people (he confessed to 27). This hotel was known as the Murder Castle and contained a maze of windowless rooms, doors opening to brick walls, strange angles, and other such labyrinthine architecture that belongs in the Winchester Mystery Mansion.

The haunted house did a nice job portraying some of the more gruesome and eerie aspects of this theme. The facade is a foreboding castle-like entrance leading into the skull-lined hallways of the hotel, where you encounter victims desperately trying to escape Holmes’ wrath, mutilated corpses, and dark passageways. You also find a spooky graveyard with a huge monster, among other things that don’t seem to fit with the theme, but the effects were all so well done that I hardly noticed the deviation.

If you’re willing to shell out the cash to visit a decent haunted house (will run you in the range of $15-25; go on a week night and it’ll be cheaper with a shorter line), then I suggest you research some good local haunts, scour their website, Facebook page, and Groupon for discounts, and get scared!

So you’ve gone to a pumpkin farm, enjoyed your fill of apple cider doughnuts and roasted corn, picked out your pumpkin, and sat it down on your front porch. Excellent. Now for one of the most important parts of Halloween: the creation of the jack-o-lantern.

Set your pumpkins down on a surface covered with newspaper (or a dilapidated picnic table, pictured left). What you’ll need: a marker, a big metal spoon, a bowl for the guts, and some sharp knives.

Everyone knows how to carve a pumpkin: cut around the stem, pull off the lid, scrape out the guts, and start slicing. But some people get creative, pulling the guts out through the mouth so it looks like the pumpkin is vomiting, doing artistic designs that involve layered cuts, etc. You can print out designs from the internet if you’re having trouble creating one of your own, but where’s the originality in that?

Anyway, if you need step-by-step instructions, here’s a cute little poem I wrote in high school:

JACK-O-LANTERN

by Joanna Parypinski

Attain a pumpkin, orange and round,
From the nearest patch.
The perfect pumpkin can be found;
Keep searching for a match.

Place it on a surface flat
And get a sharp utensil.
If tracing helps, make sure that
You also have a pencil.

Now take the knife and cut a hole
Around the long brown stem.
Once this is done, grab a bowl
For the seeds: that’s where you’ll put them.

With the hole now open wide,
It’s time to dump the guts;
Because they stick to the inside,
You may have to make cuts.

Once the pumpkin’s hollowed out,
It’s time to draw the face.
Use the pencil to guide the route
That the knife will trace.

Two triangles to make the eyes,
And one more for the nose;
A mouth that either smiles nice
Or scowls (to scare your foes).

When all is carved to your delight,
Hide a candle in the sphere;
The face will flicker in the night
And add to festive fear.

Make sure you put the jack-o-lantern
Somewhere it can be seen.
Its lit face will continue to burn
And wish all a happy Halloween.

This weekend’s pumpkin carving turned out one happy pumpkin (my boyfriend’s) and one scary pumpkin (mine).

Once it got dark out, we lit up some heavy-duty glow sticks and put them inside for a nice eerie effect. Unfortunately, the psycho squirrels around Butler’s campus decided they were hungry for some pumpkin and started munching on my jack-o-lantern’s left eye. Ouch! Looks like it’ll just have to be a zombie-lantern.

Tip: try coating the carved pumpkin in bleach: not only will it keep away the critters, but the bleach will help preserve the pumpkin for longer so you don’t have decayed mush come Halloween.

Don’t forget to separate the seeds from all the guts, spread them on a baking sheet with some olive oil and sea salt, and roast yourselves some delicious pumpkin seeds to much on while you enjoy your creation.

When I was a kid going trick or treating, I passed dozens of plain or half-assed houses that had nothing more than a pumpkin out front, if that. And then there was always that one house that outdid itself every year; that every child was afraid to approach; that was teeming with decorations that screamed, “Come to the door at your own risk!”

Those were the best houses. I remember one that had a fog machine, eerie music, green lighting, and a dark figure on the porch eating what appeared to be a severed leg. I was the bravest of the group, so naturally I approached first, and the thrill of fear mixed with the excitement of the Halloween spirit as I made my way around the grave-infested lawn.

So, this Halloween, don’t be a party pooper: turn your house into a haunted house! It’s easy, and if you do it right, it’s not all that expensive.

The first and most obvious thing you need is a cheap pack of fake spiderwebs, which might run you around $3 (you big spender, you). Stretch these to the max around bushes, fences, trees—get creative. If you don’t have any, stretch it around furniture, lamps, or pretty much anything outdoors or indoors that you can hook it onto. For a nice effect, throw some plastic spiders on the web.

If you’ve got a lawn of any kind, you’re going to need headstones. You can pick up the styrofoam kind for as little as $4 at a Walgreens or a Halloween store. Or, if you’re really crafty and want some high-quality graves, you can make your own. To go with the tombstones, you can also find “zombie emerging from the ground” kits at your local Halloween store.

Skeletons! Skeletons galore!

After these basics, there’s a ton of possible props you can add. Stuff some old clothes (preferrably flannel) with newspaper or straw to create your own scarecrow. Get one of those giant inflatable decorations. Craft some chicken wire into some awesome life-sized poseable ghosts. Or you can do what these people did just down the street from me, and go totally overboard with skeletons, bloody machetes, and more skeletons. Complete the look with  some spooky signs that warn of the dangers that lay ahead.

If you’re really into special effects, set up speakers to play creepy music or sound effects, and have a fog machine puffing mist out over your scene of nightmares. Some people get super serious with their Halloween props. To these, I suggest hitting up a Spirit Halloween store; their merchandise is unbelievable. They’ve got life-sized vampires sitting up in their coffins, lurching zombies, animatronic Frankensteins, and more.

When dusk strikes, it would be nice if people could still see these lovely decorations you’ve put up, so you’ll want to add some lights. These can be anything from jack-o-lanterns on the porch and solar-powered skull stakes that line the walkway to pumpkin- or ghost-shaped string lights.

If you don’t have a house with a lawn, never fear! Apartment-dwellers can hang window decorations complete with macabre scenes, and those in dorms can festoon their walls with Halloween garland and cardboard cutouts. There are tons of indoor decorations to satiate your desire for a festive living-space (I even have my pumpkin string lights wound around the curtain rod in my bedroom), so you have no excuse not to engage in the holiday and create an autumn wonderland.

Now: go forth and decorate the town with the most gruesome and gothic props your eyes have ever beheld.

When I was a kid, my family would go to a pumpkin farm every fall to walk through corn mazes, eat elephant ears, go on camel rides, and of course, to pick out the perfect pumpkin.

Yes, that's me in the oversized jean jacket on the left.

It was one of my favorite fall activities to run around a pumpkin farm with straw in my hair, a handful of animal feed, and a ticket for the haunted house. One that we frequented was Goebbert’s in Barrington, IL, which had always quenched our thirst for fall. So today my mom and I decided to recapture a bit of that old magic and go back to that same pumpkin farm.

It was hot as a fat man’s armpit and smelled about the same near the petting zoo, but that didn’t stop us. Things were a little different this time around: we didn’t do camel rides or wander through the kiddie haunted house, but we did get to enjoy some very autumn-filled festivities on what felt like a summer day.

My secret is out: I was once a goofy-looking blonde kid.

There were piles and piles of pumpkins everywhere, just as I remembered it, but we saved our pumpkin search for later. First we walked around and indulged ourselves in some cold apple cider and roasted sweet corn, which we could tell was fresh when we saw the corn fields surrounding us. There’s nothing like loading up roasted corn with butter, salt, and pepper on a beautiful fall day and devouring it like an animal.

Finally, we scoured the patches for the pefect pumpkins, waiting to find the ones that called out to us. At last we found them, round and orange with long stems and not too much dirt on their skin. Loaded up with a medium sized pumpkin in one arm and a bag of goodies in the other, we made the long, hot, dusty trek back through the dirt parking lot to the edge of the corn field where we left the car.

Even if you don’t have young children, pumpkin farms are a great place to go and enjoy the atmosphere, get some delicious treats, and find the pumpkin that will be grinning on your porch come Halloween.

As we head into October, my recommendations to you are all going to revolve around Halloween; thus, “Pandora’s Pick of the Week” is going to disappear for a little while in favor of the Halloween Countdown. As for today, I have a couple of good Halloween reads to share with you in…

Halloween Countdown #3: Read a Book

The origins and history of Halloween are as intriguing as they are spooky, and what better way to learn about them than in Ray Bradbury’s The Halloween Tree?

It may be geared towards children, but adults with nostalgia for childhood Halloweens gone by will cherish every moment of the boys’ adventure through history as they learn what the holiday is all about.

And since it’s a Bradbury book, it’s beautifully written from the descriptions of the jack-o-lantern-strung tree to the boys’ desperation to save their friend.

Speaking of Bradbury, you’ll also want to grab a copy of his book, Something Wicked This Way Comes.

In it, he explores the death of childhood as Halloween brings a creepy carnival to town, and with it, a merry-go-round that can turn forward or backward the age clock. The boys have to stop the crazy carnie before they are turned into old and long-dead skeletons.

Autumn plays a big role in the theme of the book. You can almost feel the dead leaves whisking across the ground as you turn the pages.

If you want a shorter but no less autumn-y read, find a free copy of Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, which I just recommended last week.

Or how about a book of short stories that you can pick up whenever you please?

October Dreams: A Celebration of Halloween is the quintessential Halloween anthology, clocking in at over 600 pages of autumn awesome from the likes of Dean Koontz, Jack Ketchum, Douglas Clegg, Ramsey Campbell, Ray Bradbury, Peter Straub, and more.

There are dozens of stories here to entertain you throughout the entire month of October, and interspersed in these stories are favorite Halloween memories from the authors.

If verse is more your thing (and even if it’s not), I urge you to read the poem “All Souls” by Edith Wharton (click the link to read it for free online).

The poem is about the longing of deceased lovers for their past lives as the dead come back for one hour on Halloween night. She truly captures the spirit of All Hallow’s Eve in her seven stanzas of eerie beauty. The very first lines are,

“A THIN moon faints in the sky o’erhead,
And dumb in the churchyard lie the dead.”

These are my Halloween reads. I know there are others; I just started reading Black & Orange by Benjamin Kane Ethridge, which explores the legend of a gate between worlds that threatens to open on Halloween. If you have any more good Halloween reads to suggest, please comment below!

October is just around the corner, autumn creeping closer on the crisp breeze that blows the dying leaves from their branches, so what better time to pop in a scary movie? Any scary movie will do to set the mood, but most horror movies have little to do with the holiday itself. So here are some suggestions for specifically Halloween-themed movies to get you into the spirit.

#2: Watch a Movie

Perhaps the most obvious choice is John Carpenter’s Halloween series.

The movies follow serial killer Michael Meyers on his quest to murder everyone in his path on Halloween night, including his sister, Laurie Strode. All while being utterly invincible, I might add.

First watch Halloween I and II, which flow right into each other, as the second movie starts right where the first one left off, with teenage Laurie’s story. The nex pairing would be IV and V, where Michael Meyers decides to go after his young niece, Jamie, who quite understandably goes a little nuts while trying to hide from a madman in laundry chutes and the like. Halloween H20 is a nice way to wrap up Laurie’s story; we see her as an adult with a son, and she seems to finally best her brother (until the next movie, that is). Just ignore VI and Resurrection unless you want your head to hurt. III is hilarious fun, though it has nothing to do with Michael Meyers and everything to do with exploding Halloween masks.

Next on the list to watch is Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas.

The title suggests an affiliation with a much jollier holiday, but the main characters of the movie are inhabitants of Halloween Town, a place where they spend the whole year creating the perfect Halloween. These characters include Jack Skellington, his ghost-dog Zero, Sally the Frankenstein-esque ragdoll, a werewolf, vampires, witches, a clown, and various other horrible creatures.

Jack decides one Halloween that he’s fed up with the holiday and embarks on a new adventure: Christmas. Turns out he’s the worst Santa Claus ever, but hey, he can sing a wonderfully creepy tune, so who cares?

Looking for something to watch with the kids? For some family-oriented Halloween fun that never gets old, how about Disney’s Hocus Pocus?

Three witches are accidentally raised from the dead one Halloween night in Salem, MA and use their powers to drink the life-force from the town’s youth so that they can stay young forever. An immortal black cat named Binks, who is actually a boy from the 1600s who got turned into a cat by the sisters, helps some teens to send the witches back to hell before it’s too late, as does a zombie. Also, Bette Midler sings, “I Put a Spell On You” with a skeleton band, and the goofy sister flies on a vacuum when their brooms are stolen.

Last, but perhaps my favorite, on this list is Michael Dougherty’s Trick ‘r Treat.

Four stories are woven together in this alternately chilling and hilarious account of one Halloween night. A principle is secretly a serial killer; a group of sexy werewolves are on the prowl; some teenagers run into the ghosts from a town legend while playing a prank; and a grumpy old man gets an unexpected visit from the creepiest trick-or-treater of them all: Sam, the little spirit of Halloween.

While it may not be the scariest movie ever (and it’s not trying to be; technically it’s a horror-comedy), it’s got a lot of fun tricks up its sleeve, and is pretty much a love letter to Halloween. Any fan of the holiday needs to watch it.

There’s only 47 days until Halloween, as you can see by the nifty countdown clock I’ve added. There are a lot of things you can do to get in the spirit as we enter the spooky season of autumn, so while we count down the days, I’ll be posting tips for getting the most out of your Halloween experience.

As your resident Halloween Queen, I hereby present to you Countdown 2011.

#1: Make a Playlist

There are few things that have as great an impact on your mood as music; it does something that words alone strive hard to achieve. So let’s set the mood with a playlist of songs to get you amped up for the coming holiday.

In every Halloween playlist, it’s necessary to have the obvious classics:

“The Monster Mash” by Bobby Pickett
“Thriller” by Michael Jackson
“This Is Halloween” from The Nightmare Before Christmas
“The Time Warp” from Rocky Horror Picture Show
“I Put a Spell on You” by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins
The Ghostbusters theme

Then there are some classic rock songs that add a bit of festive fun. Any song with references to hell, the Devil, death, creatures (witches, black dogs, reapers, werewolves, etc), or anything similar will do:

“Hell’s Bells” by AC/DC
“Don’t Fear the Reaper” by Blue Öyster Cult
“Bad Moon Rising” by Creedence Clearwater Revival”
“Season of the Witch” by Donovan
“Witchy Woman” by The Eagles
“Frankenstein” by Edgar Winters Group
“Twilight Zone” by Golden Earring
“Black Dog” by Led Zeppelin
“For Whom the Bell Tolls” by Metallica
“Shout at the Devil” by Mötley Crüe
“Bark at the Moon” by Ozzy Osbourne
“Sympathy for the Devil” by The Rolling Stones
“Runnin’ with the Devil” by Van Halen
“Werewolves of London” by Warren Zevon

In case you didn’t read my post about the Top Ten Pieces of Classical Music to Listen to on a Dark and Stormy Night, there’s a good amount of classical music to set an eerie mood:

Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony (first movement: the 4 repeated notes symbolize death knocking on the door)
Toccata and Fugue in D Minor by Bach
Danse Macabre by Camille Saint-Saëns
Carmina Burana by Carl Orff
March Funebre Des Marionettes by Charles Gounod (Alfred Hitchcock theme)
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice by Paul Dukas
In the Hall of the Mountain King by Edvard Grieg
March of the Gallows and Dreams of a Witches’ Sabbath by Hector Berlioz
Night on Bald Mountain by Modest Mussorgsky
Marche Slave by Tchaikovsky

Personally, I’m a big fan of the more hardcore side of rock, which works quite well with a horror theme, since many of the songs have that vibe. Some of these songs that fit either the mood or the theme are:

“A Little Piece of Heaven” by Avenged Sevenfold
“Nightmare” by Avenged Sevenfold
“Bodies” by Drowning Pool
“Haunted” by Evanescence
“Voodoo” by Godsmack
“The Death Song” by Marilyn Manson
“Sweet Dreams” by Marilyn Manson
“Living Dead Girl” by Rob Zombie
“Dragula” by Rob Zombie
“Scared” by Three Days Grace

There you go; you’re well on your way to a serious Halloween playlist, which you can now enjoy for the next month and a half.