It's hard to make a genuinely scary television show on a week to week basis, but there have been some great exceptions to that over the years. Luckily, all five of these choices are streaming on Netflix, so you can watch them anytime this month. They all have episodes that are just as perfect for Halloween as any horror movie you could find.
THE TWILIGHT ZONE (1959-1964) This is the perfect episodic show to just watch at any random time, and you can find at least one iconic episode (usually two or three) from every season. I'd recommend "The Hitch-Hiker" (Season 1, Episode 16) for Halloween though. It's a genuinely creepy and still disturbing little story you're bound to recognize as having been influential on dozens of movies in the years since it aired. Other ones to see are "Living Doll" (5x06), "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" (3x16), "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" (5x22), and the classic "The Eye of the Beholder" (2x06).
THE X-FILES (1993-2002) This show used to creep me out on a week to week basis as a kid, watching Special Agents Mulder and Scully tackle Monster-of-the-Week episodes that actually formed the majority of the series, even if people tend to remember the mythology stuff more now. It's hard to know if cult audiences today would even accept a show that was mostly case of the week and only occasionally mythology focused, especially the way that they did it here. I think now people would demand that it either be one or the other, as cult audiences really like to obsess and pour over every detail of their favorite shows online. Good eps for Halloween include "Irresistable" (2x13), "The Squeeze" (1x03), "Folie a Deux" (5x19), and "The Host" (2x02), otherwise known in my memory as the "toilet monster" episode, which freaked me out for days.
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER (1997-2003) Ok, so this show isn't so scary, but it's definitely monster focused and with some of the great supernatural and creepy episodes of anything ever put on television. And it's one of my favorites shows of all time, so it has to be included. Unlike X-Files, Buffy was famous for season long story arcs and mythology that built upon itself year after year, but it did have its handful of great one offs too. The best for Halloween are "Hush" (4x10), a really famous episode that was done as a tribute to silent movie horror, "Halloween" (2x06), "Restless" (4x22), a David Lynch-ian dreamscape one, "Nightmares" (1x10), the first great episode of the series, and "Fear, Itself" (4x04), another Halloween centered haunted house episode.
TWIN PEAKS (1990-1991) Speaking of David Lynch, this serialized drama from the surrealist master and co-creator Mark Frost became a cultural phenomenon at the time and turned the mystery of who killed Laura Palmer into a national obsession. But even though that question was the engine driving the show, each episode was really about the interaction between the bizarre townspeople. Since Twin Peaks was at its peak both in popularity and in terms of creative control by Frost and Lynch during the first season (which was lessened in season 2), the best way to watch it is to just sit back and watch all 8 episodes of Season 1- it's not long and you can see what compelled so many and went on to become one of the classic shows of all time.
AMERICAN HORROR STORY: ASYLUM (2012) Ryan Murphy's nutty anthology series has only had two seasons and yet has plenty of fans for embracing an insanely unapologetic and over the top manner of storytelling that's at once terrifying and unique. Certainly not for everyone, but with plenty to entertain and maybe repel you, along with great performances from Jessica Lange, Sarah Paulsen, James Cromwell and Zachary Quinto. The second season was in most viewer's eyes, better than the first, if no less crazy, and the way AHS works is that each season reinvents itself in a different setting, cleverly bringing along lots of the same actors to fill different roles. Season 2 took place in a mental institution in the 1960's, and don't be surprised to see appearances from such disparate entities as serial killers and aliens along for the ride.
