It’s that time of year when witches wax their broomsticks, monsters slither out from under beds, and goblins gather at midnight for a séance. Television is doing its best to shiver viewers into a cold sweat.

Pluto TV has kicked off its double-feature fearful flicks every Friday in October. On Oct. 30 the streamer airs “Sleepwalker,” Hayden Panetierre’s last movie, and the fifth version of the “Scream” franchise, starring the original cast.

Peacock will be ruffling its feathers with scores of scary movies including five “Paranormal Activity” films, three “Friday the 13th” entries, and also “The Boogeyman” and “The Haunting.”

An original series on Peacock stars Linda Cardellini as a grieving mother in this prequel to “Friday the 13th,” titled “Crystal Lake,” and streaming now.

Audiences can tune into chilling classics like “The Sixth Sense,” “Dawn of the Dead,” “Werewolf of London” and a whole passel of “Mystery Science Theater 3000” episodes on Peacock.

All the talk about the dangers of AI is proof positive in “Soulm8te” streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+. A grieving engineer tests an android who turns terrible when he tries to program her for benign purposes.

You don’t have to go farther than your TV screen to find “Buddy,” the tale of the beloved orange unicorn (think “Barney” with an attitude) who turns up nasty when one child refuses to play the game. The show has landed on a variety of digital sites.

Part of its Huluween celebration, Hulu features the documentary “Clown Panic,” pondering what happens when America, social media and panic contribute to a frightening outcome.

Viewers will find the Crypt Keeper on AMC all month. He’s the official host of AMC’s "FearFest 2026," which runs through Halloween.

Two episodes of the series “Yaga” premiere Friday, Oct. 23, on AMC+. This thriller is the story of a private eye who tries to unscramble the disappearance of a young man in an adversarial and unsavory environment.

Of course, “The Simpsons” will be suffering the season as only they can when “Treehouse of Horror XXXVII” airs on Fox Sunday, Oct. 25.

Bart and Santa’s Little Helper embark on a bone-shattering adventure and Homer takes a driving lesson – a scary prospect in itself.

Even the Food Network gets into the act with its “Halloween Baking Championship” where contestants are challenged with creating “scary sarcophagus desserts and ossuary cakes” for a $250,000 prize, culminating next Monday, Oct. 26.

And not everything proves too scary for the little ones. PBS is lending a special Halloween-themed episode of its “Super Why’s Comic Book Adventures” on Thursday, Oct. 22, in which Alpha Pig and Power Paige discover a ghost who needs help finding her Halloween voice.

And the kiddies get a break with “Minions & Monsters” streaming on Peacock Oct. 28. This popular series boasts the voices of Allison Janney, Christoph Waltz, Jesse Eisenberg and Jeff Bridges.

Shudder’s annual “Season of Screams” is underway with new premieres every week including “Infirmary,” the anthology, “V/H/S/Mixtape,” and horror thriller “The Cycle,” starring our favorite Jeffrey Donovan from “Burn Notice.”

The original “Hallowarrior,” also on Shudder, tells the tale of the last surviving girl on Earth who is threatened by a gang of raiders when she tries to forage supplies on Halloween eve.

A real twist for poor author Emily Brontë is “Wuthering Heights” airing on demand and on digital now. In this quirky version, Catherine is a ghost and Heathcliff feeds her human sacrifice in hopes it will resurrect her soul into a new body. Nice work if she can get it.

If spectators are seeking nightmares, they need to shuffle off to Elm Street and HBO Max where six different versions of “Nightmare on Elm Street” reside along with creepers like “The Mystery of the Wax Museum” and “The Return of Doctor X.”

As part of MeTV’s Halloween BOO-Nanza, Svengoolie is presenting “Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man” on Saturday, Oct. 24. And the horror-host continues to probe the spooky-genre all through the month of October.

The Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood YouTube Channel is launching a special “Halloween Comfort” playlist including “Playing Pretend with Margaret Hamilton.” Of course, Hamilton portrayed the Wicked Witch of the West in “The Wizard of Oz,” a treasure to all children.

And in a special edition, “Mister Robers Gets his Tonsils Taken Out,” he attempts to take the fear out of a visit to the hospital. What’s interesting about this is that the segment was directed by the great director of classic horror, George A. Romero, who later called it the “scariest film I ever made.”

Don’t know about that, cinema-philes can bounce over to Pluto TV or Tubi and watch Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” free with ads, or his 1982 “Creepshow” on Apple TV and Prime Video. And not to be left out is TCM’s revisit to the original “Frankenstein” on Oct. 27 followed by “The Invisible Man.”

Documentary due on Matthew Perry

Not that we don’t know enough about Matthew Perry, the former castmate on “Friends,” who died of an overdose. Now there’s a documentary on Netflix Oct. 27, “The One About Matthew Perry,” which claims to reveal the real man –“generous, funny, vulnerable and larger than life.”

When I interviewed Perry, I had no idea he was a victim of substance abuse. He told me his mom had been Pierre Trudeau’s press secretary, and his dad was an actor. “I was a cutup in school,” he told me, “always thought it fun to make people laugh to the point where the teachers did not think it was funny. And they kicked me out of class a lot. They wrote notes to my mom: ‘He's disrupting the class, and I’m not able to get any teaching done because Matthew's making everyone laugh.’”

Graham plays serial killer on series

Versatile British actor Stephen Graham dons the role of a serial killer in Apple TV’s new series, “Nocturne,” premiering Oct. 30. The show stars Liev Schreiber as a homicide detective who quits work in the big city for a more quiet time in a small town. Well, best laid plans, and he’s challenged with capturing the killer.

Graham, though British, has been unrecognizable in his American roles like Al Capone, Baby Face Nelson and Det. Patrick Mulligan.

Graham tells me, “ Where I come from, Liverpool, both my parents were professional people. My dad was a head pediatric nurse my mum was a social worker. And I did a play when I was young and I just got this passion for acting and this desire to do it. My mum, from a young age, took me to a drama club. When I was 14, I went to Liverpool’s Everyman’s Youth Theater. And I just really loved it.

“A lot of my friends — from the area I’m from — wanted to be footballers. And I never wanted to be a footballer I always wanted to be an actor. I played a lot of football when I was a kid in the park with my friends. And that was kind of what we did in our spare time, going to the youth center as well.

“I used to do plays. And I just liked it because you got to be with an eclectic bunch of people, people from different backgrounds, from different classes, different minorities. Just an eclectic bunch of people who would all work with one purpose — to create something. I loved it. I had a couple of teachers at school who encouraged me and really helped me to follow the passion I had for it.”

The Sheens co-star in comedy

Father and son Martin Sheen and Charlie Sheen are working together again for the first time since 2014. A six-part comedy, “Happy Jack,” is filming now in which the younger Sheen plays a bit of a loser who is father to two daughters. Martin Sheen plays their grandfather. One of the daughters brings home a new beau — who is not very acceptable.

Charlie, who was so good in “Two and a Half Men,” tells me he stuttered when he was a kid.

“That finds its way back into my adult life at times. I mask it perfectly. It comes up. The universe gave me this plate of goodies and says, ‘Here take it all, but that grape right there, that's rotten.’ It got to point where I couldn't start certain lines of dialogue on film with certain sounds so I would always say to the director. ‘I think the guy would say THIS.’

“Finally, one day I said, ‘Say, man, I had a stutter as kid, would you mind if I substituted something else?’ And he said, ‘No kidding? So did I.’ And it was so much easier.”

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