For the past few years, I’ve had the privilege of digging into my personal music crypt and unearthing some of my favorite Halloween tunes just for you! Tonight at 8pm, I’ll return for the 2016 XPN Halloween Spooktacular! Listen for some rare and retro tracks from the days when releasing a Halloween-themed novelty song was a rite of passage, as well as a few brand new songs that keep the spirit of the season undead and well. And yeah, there will be a healthy amount of puns throughout the night. That’s just tradition. Preview some spooky stuff below, if you dare:


Claudine Clark hit it big in ’62 with “Party Lights.” Her follow-up was this frightfully fun tune which, oddly, nearly spelled the end of her career when it flopped.


One of the many projects of The Magnetic Fields’ Stephin Merritt, The Gothic Archies provided musical accompaniment (as well as original songs) to the audiobook versions of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. This one comes from Book the Seventh: The Vile Village.


New York singer Shilpa Ray paid tribute to Prince earlier this year by covering “When Doves Cry” for a one-off single. The flip side is this eerie tune originally performed by the Stepford-like country group The Poppy Family in the early ’70s.

Follow along with me on Twitter throughout the program with the hashtag #XPNSpooktacular!

See you tonight at 8pm on WXPN!