In this column, we deliver hot (and cold) takes on pop culture, judging whether a subject is overrated or underrated.

Flicking through channels, you can feel it. Oh look, there’s the Paw Patrol dogs on TV but with witch hats on their dog heads. Walking past the dollar store at the shopping centre, you can see it. Oh look, there’s an animatronic evil clown holding a lolly bowl, I wonder what happens if I put my hand in… aargh!

It is spooky season, and – with all due respect to the incredibly wrong Andy Williams (surprisingly, not Bing Crosby) – it’s the most wonderful time of the year. Many Australians bemoan the Americanisation of this calendar period – the horror of all those purebred Aussie kids “trick-or-treating” for “candy” like they’re pagan kids from, I don’t know, Wisconsin or something – but those people are, to use the language of my kind, estupidos.

The movies are better, the TV’s better, and the coffee’s better: spooky season is the best.Credit:Marija Ercegovac

Spooky season is the best. I’ve witnessed the birth of two children and the greatest time of my life is still the year I spent Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts, watching nutcases cosplaying The Crucible (“You are pulling down Heaven and raising up a whore!”, is a fun thing to yell, at no one in particular, all spooky season).

Salem at Halloween is spooky season utopia. There are amusement rides on the sites of actual witch burnings; ghost tours on the sites of actual witch burnings; and you feel you might be murdered by any one of thousands of people dressed up as Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees, it being America and all. “Great costume!” you’ll yell at some lumbering dude wearing a hockey mask and clutching a rifle. And then you’ll suddenly think, “Wait, was that a costume…”, and you’ll slowly turn around and then run, leaving your partner to fend for herself.

Spooky season is also the peak of cinema and TV for the year. There are the seasonal favourites that are required viewing – It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, or any one of countless Roseanne Halloween episodes, or modern classics like Over the Garden Wall or SNL’s David S. Pumpkins skit – but there’s also new stuff that’s actually worth watching, if just for the seasonal mood enhancement.

I just took a look at the upcoming new release schedule, and this spooky season brings Hocus Pocus 2, a sequel to the 1993 Kathy Najimy classic; the great new Gen-Z slasher flick, Bodies Bodies Bodies; Rob Zombie’s playful The Munsters reboot; some Netflix family thing starring Marlon Wayans called The Curse of Bridge Hollow that I will definitely watch even though I’m 30 years too old for it; and You Won’t Be Alone, an arthouse witch horror set in 19th century Macedonia (aka, box office gold). Streaming choice paralysis was clearly born during spooky season.

Spooky season has cast a spell over me!

In fact, all media is best during spooky season. Growing up, I had a Goosebumps PC game called Escape From Horrorland, a real-life video thing starring the kid from Picket Fences and Jeff Goldblum as Dracula. There was a section where you came across a plot of pumpkins, weirdly possessed by the spirits of celebrities few ’90s kids would understand. There was a Vincent Price pumpkin, and a Jimmy Stewart pumpkin, and a Vinnie Barbarino pumpkin (that’s all I remember), and they’d recite the phrase “The scarecrow walks at midnight!” in their character’s unique inflection. To this day, every spooky season, you’ll hear me going, “The scarecrow walks at midnight, Mr Kotter! It’s totally scary, it’s unbelievable”, like a teenage John Travolta, and I’m certain no one on Earth knows what the hell I’m doing. What other obscure seasonal gag has that kind of legs?

Importantly, spooky season is also the peak time for frappuccinos. Usually I take my coffee like my soul, black and chilled, but who can resist the fragrant wash of pumpkin spice? I got a glob of pumpkin spice cream in my cold brew the other day and it felt like being tongue-kissed by an angel. Cinnamon, cloves and a gentle burst of nutmeg, that’s what angels taste like; I’m sure it’s in the Bible. “And the Angel Gabriel came down upon the shepherd and tongue-kissed him, and the shepherd tasted cinnamon and cloves and a gentle burst of nutmeg, and the shepherd was filled with light. Then the shepherd slaughtered his nephew.”

Also underrated? Calling it “spooky season”. Last October, Slate ran a viral article looking into the “elusive history of a cursed phrase”. Apparently some people don’t like that everyone’s calling it “spooky season” all of a sudden and not, I guess, “Halloween time”.

“I’m fine with Halloween – it’s spooky season that’s the problem. How did Halloween, which has been celebrated for hundreds of years, suddenly morph into spooky season? Why is everyone but me, up to and including Jennifer Garner, now going around talking about spooky season with a straight face?”, asked writer Heather Schwedel, bemoaning the capitalist forces that have promulgated the term.

But really, the phrase is perfect for us in Australia. It’s already a travesty that Halloween, with all its autumn-y iconography – the auburn leaves, the corn mazes, the pumpkins – lands in our spring. It’s worse still that it lands during daylight savings time, where it doesn’t get spooky till, like, 7.45pm, yet all the lollies get trick-or-treated by 5pm. All those mini-vampires challenging mythical logic by having to trick-or-treat in the blazing afternoon sun. Let the children be creatures of the night!

Spooky season runs from, say, right now to about November 3 or 4, which allows some US time difference for Dia De Los Muertos festivities. That’s usually when you can get half-price frozen margaritas from clueless white people in full calavera make-up at Mexican bars, which is also now a spooky season tradition in Australia’s cultural centres.

Half-price frozen margaritas, pumpkin spice frappuccinos, and Hocus Pocus 2, all at the same time? What a world. Dress me up like John Proctor and just throw me in a spooky season time-loop forever.

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