In the grand TV canon, only a few things are certain: cancellation, crossovers, and themed episodes. Despite not being as integral to the TV machine as they once were, the tradition of the holiday episode—and the Halloween episode, in particular—has continued to withstand the test of time, even surviving into the streaming age. The perfect Halloween episode will include the actual holiday itself, some classic tricks and treats, and a spooky storyline, too. And while the sitcom has undeniably cornered the market with its timeless Halloween episodes, shows across all genres have participated in the spooky season fun, much to our delight.
Below, we’ve rounded up 20 essential Halloween episodes to stream right now, pulled from a wide range of genres and spanning over 60 years of television. However, if you’re looking for just spooky sitcom episodes, we’ve got you covered, including the best of Bob’s Burgers and The Simpsons’ Treehouse of Horror specials. 
It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
Original Airdate: 1966
It’s no secret that “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” is the textbook definition of an October TV special, largely because it codified this trend in the first place. However, more than just being the ur-Halloween episode, this Peanuts classic remains an annual tradition in many households due to its timeless humor. Despite being over half a century old, these gags continue to land: “I got a rock,” Linus crying over the death of a pumpkin, Snoopy’s dramatic flight, Charlie Brown woefully whiffing a punt like he’s a member of the Chicago Bears, and more are all accompanied by pitch-perfect delivery and comedic timing. Vince Guaraldi’s breezy score whisks us into vignettes that conjure the broadest strokes of Americana alongside a surprising amount of specificity, which is probably a factor in this one’s long tail.
At one point, Snoopy, ever the showman in his fighter jet costume, creeps through vaguely haunting tableaus of World War I France, a reminder of how the series will suddenly slip in small, pointed moments. And it’s all buoyed by Linus’ undying belief that despite his continued absence, this year, the “Great Pumpkin” will come, provided that he offers enough “sincerity” in his pumpkin patch. Thanks to its lasting qualities, “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” continues to live up to yearly viewing and likely will for the foreseeable future. – Elijah Gonzalez
Home Improvement, “The Haunting of Taylor House” (Season 2, Episode 6)
Original Airdate: 1992
The Halloween episode really began to feel like a sitcom staple in the 1990s, and Home Improvement was one of the shows that made it so, even if the series doesn’t tend to be recalled with quite so much fondness these days. “The Haunting of Taylor House” was the first of many Home Improvement Halloween episodes to come, which would venture from Tim (Tim Allen) having a deranged stalker to goth Mark (Taran Noah Smith) filming a horror movie in the house. This one sees the kids as still impressionable little youths having a Halloween party at the Taylor house, as Tim uses his impressive basement haunted dungeon to exact a little payback on one particularly rude party guest. If nothing else, the Halloween episodes of Home Improvement were always an excuse for some silly prop comic gadgetry. —Jim Vorel
The Simpsons, “Treehouse of Horror IV” (Season 5, Episode 5)
Original Airdate: 1993
Choosing a single Simpsons episode for a Halloween list is genuinely painful, as there is no other animated series, even including the likes of Bob’s Burgers, that has made Halloween a bigger part of its identity. In the end, it likely comes down to “Treehouse of Horror IV” or “V,” both of which could lay claim to being the pinnacle of this storytelling style, but we’ll give the bump to “IV” for the brilliant wraparound segments featuring Bart in a parody of Rod Serling’s creepy hosting style on 1970s horror anthology series Night Gallery. As for the individual segments, we have Homer’s ill-gotten donut that almost costs him his soul, the inspired parody of Twilight Zone’s “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” and the especially well-drawn “Bart Simpson’s Dracula,” which nails its parody of Coppola’s sumptuous but ridiculous film. Put them together, and you have one of the best half-hours of Halloween comedy of all time. —Jim Vorel
Sabrina the Teenage Witch, “A River of Candy Corn Runs Through It” (Season 2, Episode 6)
Original Airdate: 1997
Despite being a show about a literal witch, Sabrina the Teenage Witch often strays away from the campiness of Halloween itself. In this episode, Sabrina (Melissa Joan Hart) must host her non-magical friends for a Halloween party, while still maintaining the guise that she herself is ordinary. From her wacky aunts to bewitched talking furniture, the house and its inhabitants clearly have other ideas.
When carolers come over from the other realm, donning masks that are too realistic, the fiasco gets kicked up to a ten. Watching Sabrina run around in an attempt to cull this disaster party is hilarious albeit stressful. Eventually everything is solved, and the episode ends with a performance by 10,000 Maniacs, a fitting and nostalgic end when watching this ‘90s television classic. — Kaiya Shunyata
Boy Meets World, “And Then There Was Sean” (Season 5, Episode 17)
Original Airdate: 1998
Frequently cited as not just a great “Halloween episode” but one of the best episodes of Boy Meets World in general, “And Then There Was Shawn” takes a bold swing by daring to faithfully transplant the spirit of late ‘90s meta slashers into what is otherwise a family friendly sitcom. You can see how it happened, with the likes of Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer still fresh in the American zeitgeist when this aired in 1998, but it’s still surprising to revisit it all these years later and see Mr. Feeny stabbed to death in the halls of the high school! The episode gets the most out of the school location as a claustrophobic minefield, and given that it all turns out to be a dream–of course–it allows our beloved cast members to be bumped off gruesomely. In fact, this might be the best attempt at slasher parody we’ve seen in a TV episode, capped off by a wonderfully gratuitous guest starring turn from Jennifer Love Hewitt. —Jim Vorel
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, “Fear Itself” (Season 4, Episode 4)
Original Airdate: 1999
Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a whole is, arguably, an incredibly Halloween-friendly series. Pressing play on Season 1 on October 1st would be an incredible way to kick off the spooky season, but even beyond its Halloween-y nature, Buffy’s dedicated holiday episodes are not ones to miss. While Season 2’s “Halloween” may be the obvious choice for Buffy’s best Halloween outing, the real gem is Season 4’s “Fear, Itself.” Unbeknownst to them, a group of frat boys accidentally turns their frat into a house of horrors during their annual Halloween party. Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and the Scoobies get locked inside the house, where they’re all forced to confront their greatest fears. Featuring everything from the Scoobies’ fears to Anya’s iconic bunny costume, this episode is truly haunting at its most serious, but still deeply funny and kooky, as all Buffy episodes are wont to be. When the Scoobies discover exactly what demon they’re dealing with, they all neglect to see the funniest asterisk the series would ever use: “actual size.” —Anna Govert
How I Met Your Mother, “The Slutty Pumpkin” (Season 1, Episode 6)
Original Airdate: 2005
At its best, the early seasons of How I Met Your Mother had a beautiful way of depicting yearning and missed opportunities, those moments that we convince ourselves later on could have been significant if only they had gone slightly differently, whether or not this is actually true. This is crystalized in Season 1 Halloween episode “The Slutty Pumpkin,” which features Ted (Josh Radnor) obsessing each Halloween over a woman he briefly met at a party three years ago, but was never able to find again. Each year, he returns to the same party, wearing the same increasingly dated costume–the classic romantic, waiting for her to reappear. Of course, she never does–not here, anyway. Years later, the show actually did pay off the Slutty Pumpkin’s identity, and in classic HIMYM fashion, she turned out to not be particularly interesting to Ted or anyone else. In the end, it was the yearning and the quest to find her that was significant, not the payoff. —Jim Vorel
The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, “The Ghost in Suite 613” (Season 1, Episode 19)
Original Airdate: 2005
Airing in the first season of The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, “The Ghost in Suite 613” is probably the scariest thing to ever air on Disney Channel. After they learn of a supposed ghost haunting a suite in the hotel they live in, Zack (Dylan Sprouse) and Cody (Cole Sprouse) enlist London (Brenda Song), Maddie (Ashley Tisdale), and Esteban to help them channel the ghost’s spirit.
Once they make it into the suite, the episode pulls no punches with the scares, from ghost detectors to characters being pulled off-screen one by one into a dark abyss. The most memorable part of the episode is undoubtedly the séance that takes place in the second half, where Esteban gets possessed by the titular ghost. Though it all turns out to be a prank the gang are pulling on Zack, that doesn’t stop the uneasiness we all felt watching this as kids. — Kaiya Shunyata
Psych, “Scary Sherry: Bianca’s Toast” (Season 1, Episode 15)
Original Airdate: 2007
USA’s Psych is synonymous with Halloween—so much so that USA even put a DVD together of the best “Psych-o-ween” episodes to watch for the spooky season. Out of all of those episodes (which contain but are not limited to werewolf transformations, The Shining references, a Friday the 13th-esque slasher camp, and so much more), the pinnacle of Psych‘s spooky episodes is the only one to actually take place on or around Halloween, Season 1’s “Scary Sherry (Bianca’s Toast).” Acting as the first season finale, this episode follows Shawn (James Roday) and Gus (Dulé Hill) as they are roped into Juliet’s (Maggie Lawson) undercover mission at an allegedly-haunted sorority house after the girls begin to believe they’re being haunted by the ghost of a recently-deceased pledge who fell to her death on Halloween night. Featuring everything from a spooky urban legend to a classically-Psych mystery-solving method, “Scary Sherry (Bianca’s Toast)” is a fun season-ender and an even more fun Halloween-season watch. —Anna Govert
Castle, “Vampire Weekend” (Season 2, Episode 6)
Original Airdate: 2009
While the Halloween episode may be a most-known staple of the sitcom, broadcast procedurals have been known to get in on the Halloween fun as well. ABC’s Castle, in its second season, delivered a spooky and fun episode that truly had everything. I mean, where else could you possibly see Nathan Fillion’s Castle donning his Malcolm Reynolds Firefly gear, then solve a vampiric murder, all while planning a banger Halloween party and being an incredible father to his teenage daughter along the way? From its touching yet spooky mystery to that classic will-they-won’t-they tension bubbling between Castle and Beckett (Stana Katic), there is so much to love about Castle’s rendezvous with a vampire. —Anna Govert
Glee, “The Rocky Horror Glee Show” (Season 2, Episode 5)
Original Airdate: 2010
Despite airing for six seasons, Season 2 entry “The Rocky Horror Glee Show” remains one of Glee’s most celebrated episodes in its history. The episode follows the glee club as they attempt to put on their own version of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. While the school won’t approve the play, glee club leader Mr. Schuester (Matthew Morrison) allows the gang to perform the show for him to show off their hard work.
The episode is filled with highlights, but nothing comes close to Mercedes’ (Amber Riley) turn as Frank-N-Furter. Often relegated to the background, Mercedes is finally able to steal the show with her powerful rendition of an iconic pop culture figure. Her stellar vocals are a perfect match for the dramatics it takes to play such an over the top character, and there’s no one who could have done it better. — Kaiya Shunyata
