The 7 Best Halloween TV Specials To Celebrate Spooky Season

Halloween specials are a staple of mainstream television. Offering up an autumnal take on the holiday season, most network TV series fully embrace Halloween as the subject of their seasonal specials. Tapping into the ghoulish horror atmosphere, these episodes usher in a multitude of lighter scares alongside its series’ signature comedic delivery, ensuring specials that are both consistently hilarious and mildly terrifying.

From classic animated TV shows to award-winning ‘90s-era sitcoms, here are some of our favorite Halloween specials to watch this spooky season.

“Halloween” (The Office)

What’s scarier than witches and ghouls and other folkloric Halloween creatures? How about unemployment? Such is the haunting premise behind The Office’s early holiday episode, “Halloween.” Decked out with a paper-mache head and struggling to determine which Dunder Mifflin employee to fire, Michael’s anxiety-riddled dilemma in “Halloween” never fails to garner a laugh. Just a helpful side-note to all prospective employers: Don’t wait until Halloween to fire someone because it’s “very scary stuff.” 

“Epidemiology” (Community)

As most dedicated fans of Community know by now, Dan Harmon’s meta-aware sitcom regularly lampooned pre-existing genres, from beloved space opera films like Star Wars to spine-chilling psychological thrillers like Seven. With “Epidemiology,” Harmon and company set their sights on a traditional George Romero-esque zombie film, pitting the costumed students of Greendale against their infected former classmates. Expertly mocking numerous cliches within the horror genre, “Epidemiology” is yet another supremely entertaining entry in Community’s output of homage-laden episodes.

“Greg Pikitis” (Parks and Recreation)

With Parks and Recreation’s “Greg Pikitis,” audiences witness Leslie Knope come face-to-face with her greatest arch-enemy: the industrious teenage prankster the episode’s named after. While it’s always a joy seeing Leslie’s usual upbeat optimism melt away in favor of bitter, deep-seated antagonism, the joy of “Greg Pikitis” revolves around its overlapping pranks, with Leslie and Andy hilariously devolving into immature, giggling teens toilet-papering their nemesis’s house.

“The One with the Halloween Party” (Friends)

Have you ever seen a giant pink bunny and a potato satellite arm wrestle? Well, in Friends’ holiday-themed “The One with the Halloween Party,” viewers watch that extraordinary event unfold in real-time. A humorous holiday special that hops back and forth between Chandler and Ross’s competitive test of strength with Rachel’s increasingly bizarre experience handing out candy to trick-or-treaters, everything about “The One with the Halloween Party” is pure Friends-themed hilarity at its finest.

“The Hauntening” (Bob’s Burger)

Like their iconic predecessor The Simpsons, Bob’s Burger has made a habit of satirizing the holiday season with their various Halloween episodes. While each of these specials remain worth watching, our hearts immediately go to the well-loved Bob’s Burgers episode, “The Hauntening.” Incorporating a fair number of genuinely hair-raising sequences, “The Hauntening” finds a satisfying blend between Bob’s Burgers’ intrinsic humor and some well-earned scares throughout.

“Halloween” (Modern Family)

As with the aforementioned Bob’s Burger, Modern Family has released a tide of terrific Halloween specials over the years. Yet even then, it’s hard to beat the series’ original Halloween episode with season 2’s “Halloween.” Introducing so many in-series characteristics that became recurring jokes in each Modern Family Halloween special that followed, “Halloween” has a little something for everyone to enjoy, from Mitchell’s unfortunate workplace debacle to Phil’s existential dread over his marriage to Claire.

“Treehouse of Horror V” (The Simpsons)

Over the past three decades, The Simpsons has delivered literally dozens of episodes underneath their Halloween-themed Treehouse of Horror banner. As many great Halloween specials as there are within The Simpsons, “Treehouse of Horror V” takes the cake for the series’ best holiday special we’ve seen yet. With all three of its segments acclaimed for their originality, humor, and prevalent light-hearted horror, if you only had to watch a single Simpsons Treehouse of Horror special, that episode had better be “Treehouse of Horror V.”