28 Classic Halloween TV Episodes

Halloween: a time for candy, costumes and binge-watching spooky special editions of your favorite TV shows. For decades, Hollywood producers have found inspiration in the ghoulish occasion, regularly creating Halloween episodes as part of their annual October programming.

The yearly holiday also falls right in the middle of the traditional fall-sweeps ratings period, giving TV networks further incentive to create fun and distinctive Halloween-themed episodes to lure in viewers.

From a creative standpoint, All Hallows’ Eve offers writers the chance to have their characters do things that would never make sense at any other time of the year. ALF walking around in public? Starsky and Hutch battling a vampire? Spock and Captain Kirk evading a giant black cat? Halloween truly creates an “anything goes” attitude, giving creative types carte blanche to come up with ideas.

Below, we’ve rounded up some of our favorite Halloween TV episodes from decades of classic television. Some are twisted and depraved, others are funny; all are entertaining and worthy of a place on your spooktacular binge list.

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Note that we’ve focused exclusively on Halloween episodes of TV series and eliminated one-off specials. So, favorites like It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown – arguably the best family-friendly Halloween special ever made – are not featured in our gallery.

We also kept our list to classic programs, meaning modern shows that may have had memorable Halloween episodes – such as Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Bob’s Burgers and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia – are also excluded. Got the rules? Good. Here are 28 Classic Halloween TV Show Episodes.