The Creepiest Albums To Listen To This Spooky Season

Happy Halloween, Dallas! While we generally have festive Christmas tunes to celebrate the beginning of the winter season, choosing a soundtrack for the spookiest time of the year can be a bit of a challenge. It’s not like “Halloween music” is a label you’ll find on Spotify, unless you’re thinking about the soundtrack to John Carpenter’s Halloween.

Come to think of it, listening to Michael Myers’ theme song might be a better option than paying money to see the disastrous new sequel Halloween Ends. Something tells us that the title in itself is a lie.

You can always look to creepy soundtracks to provide a good scare; movies like Psycho, A Nightmare On Elm Street, Coraline and The Conjuring all have pretty spooky scores. That said, we can’t be sure that there’s anything more terrifying than the music from Cats. Try getting the image of Judi Dench in CGI feline fur out of your head.

But if you’re really looking to liven up your Halloween party, you might want to find some music that has its own haunted history. We looked at some of the creepiest stories about real albums, some of which might actually be possessed.

The Black Album (1994), Prince
After the success of Sign o’ the Times, Prince began working on an experimental follow-up record that he dubbed The Funk Bible. He was stung by criticism that his music had gone “too mainstream” in the wake of his popularity. However, Prince had a change of heart shortly before the record’s release, and demanded that the commercial discs be recalled because they were “evil.” If you want to figure out whether they’re actually possessed, you’ll have to pay a pretty penny; one copy of The Black Album recently sold for $27,500.

Hard Promises (1981), Tom Petty
During the recording of Tom Petty’s Hard Promises, the rock legend invited several acclaimed musicians to join him in the studio to offer their insights. Among the invited guests were Stevie Nicks, Duck Dunn and John Lennon. However, Lennon never made it to the session, as he was assassinated shortly after he received his invite. One wonders what Hard Promises would have sounded like had Lennon made it. Petty had the message "WE LOVE YOU J.L." inscribed on the initial vinyl release.

Yesterday and Today (1966), The Beatles
Yesterday and Today was only a reissue of songs that The Beatles had performed; it included tracks from Help! and Rubber Soul, as well as a few preview songs from Revolver. The story isn’t the songs themselves, but the original album cover. The Beatles originally designed a record cover that featured them surrounded by dismembered baby dolls and cuts of raw meat. The band insisted that this was their way of protesting against the Vietnam War. The records were recalled almost immediately, and The Beatles’ “butcher cover” has topped many lists of the rarest records of all-time.

The Bedlam in Goliath (2008), The Mars Volta
Prior to recording their seminal 2008 album, Omar Rodríguez-López and Cedric Bixler-Zavala took a trip to Jerusalem to participate in an ancient ritual. After buying a Ouija board from a local shop, the band received mysterious messages from three individuals who claimed to be “Goliath.” They based the album’s music on the messages that they heard from some sort of “Soothsayer.” Cool prog-rock origin story, or cult indoctrination?

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (1973), Elton John
So, recording anything that’s even remotely related to The Wizard of Oz is probably a bad idea, because that movie has its own haunted history. The “Wizard of Oz curse” seemed to linger with Elton John when he was recording Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. John and his band had decided to record the album in Jamaica due to The Rolling Stones’ positive experiences there. However, the entire band had to be quickly evacuated after riots over the political situation in the country escalated into violence.

Philosophy of the World (1969), The Shaggs
The Shaggs are not musicians, by most definitions. They recorded only one album, and Philosophy of the World is often described as one of the worst records of all-time. Between its nonsense lyrics about animals and families, badly tuned guitars, distracting drumbeats, and inconsistent time signatures, Philosophy of the World is such a cacophony that even hipsters would struggle to describe it as “outsider art.” However, we may have a ghostly entity to blame for it. According to Dot, Betty and Helen Wiggin, they recorded the record at the behest of their father, who claimed to have visions of the future from palm readings.

Dark Side Of Oz (1995), Fan-made
Pink Floyd’s iconic album The Dark Side of the Moon is pretty creepy in its own right. Some music theorists have interpreted it as a study of someone’s deteriorating mental state and journey into insanity. So what happens when you pair it with one of the most haunted movies of all-time? In 1995, Fort Wayne Journal Gazette journalist Charles Savage posited a theory that The Dark Side of the Moon would serve as the perfect soundtrack for The Wizard Of Oz. If you watch any mashup videos, the connection is pretty eerie, particularly when the haunting screams underscore Dorothy’s house being swept up by a tornado. Despite the theory’s popularity, members of Pink Floyd have denied that any of this was intentional.

Projekt Misanthropia (2007), Stalaggh
At what point can something no longer be considered music? This barrage of ear-piercing screams includes real sounds from mental patients in an institution in Holland. According to the band, they gained access from an employee to record the sounds of a mother who had murdered her son and of several patients who suffered from schizophrenia. Anyone who claims that they’ve listened to this album for pleasure is either lying or a sociopath.

“Learn Not To Love” (1968), The Beach Boys
The Beach Boys don’t write songs only about surfing and summer fun. This 1968 single was an altered version of a song originally performed by Charles Manson. The song’s creepiness was exemplified a year later in the wake of Sharon Tate’s murder.

Low (1977), David Bowie
Bowie recorded his 11th studio album in the midst of serious struggles with drug addiction. Low was intended to be purposefully off-putting and offered some of the darkest and most hopeless lyrics of Bowie’s career. It’s no coincidence that these strange sounds are somewhat alien. The original album cover is an image of Bowie’s extraterrestrial character from the 1976 film The Man Who Fell To Earth.