If you’re hoping to be spooked this Halloween, look no further. This frightening list filled with scary classics will have you jumping from your seat. From “Halloween” to “Hocus Pocus,” there are plenty of terrifying options guaranteed to give you the creeps.  

What better way to start off the list than with the movie “Halloween?” Directed by John Carpenter, the horror classic is set in 1978 when infamous killer Michael Myers escapes from prison the night before Halloween. He was in prison for murdering his sister 15 years prior, and is on the run. Now, at age 21, Michael is back in his hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois, looking for his next victims. 

Next up on the list is possibly the scariest movie of all time, “The Shining.” Jack Torrence, played by Jack Nicholson, becomes the caretaker of a hotel with his family in hopes that he will be able to cure his writer’s block. Upon arriving, Jack explores the hotel and discovers its disturbing secrets, which turn him into a homicidal maniac. It was said that during filming, Shelley Duval, the actress playing Jack’s wife, cried so much that the crew had to have water everywhere on set to keep her from getting dehydrated! If you want a spine-chilling movie to watch, this is the way to go.

“Us,” directed by Jordan Peele, was released in 2019. When Adelaide Wilson travels to her childhood town of Santa Cruz, California, she gets apprehensive that something very bad might happen. She was right. One night, four masked strangers approach their house, with sharp scissors in hand. After they take off their masks it’s revealed that they are doppelgangers to the family. But who are they? And what do they want from the Wilsons? 

It’s not a horror movie, but one of my personal all time favorite Halloween movies is “Hocus Pocus.” The 1993 classic starring Sarah Jessica Parker, Bette Midler, and Kathy Najimy is about three witches who travel back to their home of Salem after being dead for centuries. When teenagers Max Dennison, his sister Dani and their friend Allison, explore an abandoned house, they uncover a group of witches that used to live there. Now it’s up to them to steal the book of spells from the witches, and stop them from becoming immortal.

The last movie on my list, “Scream,” is one of the best Halloween movies ever made. There are five Scream movies, and if you haven’t seen them already, here is your invitation. In Woodsboro, California, life is going well for the highschool students until a mysterious masked psychopath, Ghostface, goes around the town attacking kids with knives. It began with strange phone calls, where the mysterious killer would ask obscure questions about horror movies. Each kill is based on innocent lives taken in different horror movies. This film manages to incorporate dark comedy in its much praised screenplay, while keeping everyone on the edge of their seats, wondering who’s next.