The witching hour is upon us! The pumpkins are glowing, the shadows are growing longer, the autumn leaves are falling, and somewhere in the distance, something is undoubtedly going bump in the night. Whether that something is a ghost, a ghoul, or one of our dogs knocking something over remains to be seen. Either way, HALLOWEEN 2026 HAS ARRIVED!!
And we potatoes could not be happier to welcome it!
There is something about Halloween that feels like coming home. The crisp autumn air, the flickering candles, the wonderfully ridiculous decorations, the eerie stories, the costumes, the monsters, the magic of it all. We potatoes love this holiday! We love the creativity, the mischief, the mystery, and the way the ordinary world seems to become just a little more extraordinary for one glorious night.
And after the year we've had, we could certainly use a little extraordinary. Because… holy shit, 2026 has been a DOOZY! These last two years have been… well, shit. Actually, since 2020… You know what? Suffice it to say, it's been A LOT for all of us. We potatoes have spent much of that time feeling like we've wandered into a horror movie without a script, a flashlight, or even the decency of a halfway competent protagonist. The kind of horror movie where everyone keeps making terrible decisions, the monsters are running the show, and the audience is trapped, unable to leave, and screaming at the screen.
Unfortunately, we cannot simply turn this particular movie off, and many of us… cannot leave.
But tonight? Tonight, we're making room for a different kind of horror. The kind with snacks, blankets, ridiculous plot twists, and monsters that are considerably more entertaining than the ones making headlines.
Tonight belongs to Halloween.
The Magic of Samhain and Halloween
Long before Halloween became synonymous with plastic skeletons, mountains of candy, and an entire retail aisle dedicated to pumpkin-shaped everything, people were marking the changing seasons and honoring the mysteries of life and death.
Samhain, an ancient Gaelic seasonal festival, marked the transition from the harvest season into the darker half of the year. It was a time associated with gathering, feasting, and traditions surrounding the dead and the supernatural. As centuries passed, customs changed, traditions mingled, and Halloween developed into the wonderfully strange celebration we recognize today.
And of course, we cannot talk about Samhain without wandering a little deeper into the wonderfully eerie world of Celtic folklore! In Irish tradition, Samhain was a time when the boundaries between our world and the Otherworld were believed to become less certain, allowing for encounters with spirits and the mysterious Aos Sí, the fairy folk. And these were not the sweet, sparkly little fairies we tend to imagine today!
The fae of older folklore could be beautiful, mischievous, unpredictable, and downright terrifying. People treated them with caution and respect, sometimes leaving offerings of food or milk in hopes of remaining on their good side. Tales of fairy abductions, strange encounters, and supernatural mischief added another layer of mystery to the darkening season.
And while the origins of modern Halloween costumes are more complicated than simply disguising ourselves from wandering spirits or fae, the traditions of guising and dressing up certainly fit the wonderfully strange atmosphere of the holiday. So, if you happen to find yourself wandering through the woods this Halloween and hear mysterious music coming from an ancient fairy mound, perhaps resist the temptation to investigate. Some invitations are better left unanswered!
Beyond the ghosts, the fae, and all the wonderfully unsettling folklore, we potatoes have always been drawn to the older seasonal meaning beneath the modern holiday.
Autumn is a season of transformation. The trees shed their leaves. The gardens settle. The days shorten, and the natural world begins preparing for winter. There is beauty in that change, even when it reminds us of life's impermanence.
This is part of what makes Halloween so special!
It is one of the few celebrations that allows us to acknowledge the darker parts of existence without demanding that we immediately turn them into something cheerful or inspirational. We can remember those we have lost. We can contemplate the unknown. We can acknowledge that life is sometimes frightening, unpredictable, and downright unfair.
And then we can put a ridiculous hat on a skeleton and carve pumpkins! Humanity is wonderfully weird, isn't it?
A Little Darkness, A Little Magic
We have been thinking about fear a lot this year.
Fear can be useful. It warns us of danger, encourages caution, and reminds us when something deserves our attention. But living with constant uncertainty is another matter entirely. When everything feels urgent, when every headline seems worse than the last, and when simply keeping up with everyday life takes so much energy, fear can begin to swallow the very things that make life meaningful.
And that is something we potatoes refuse to surrender willingly.
One of the things we love about horror is that it gives fear a shape. A monster in the woods. A haunted house. A mysterious figure lurking at the end of a hallway. Something we can point to, scream at, laugh about, and occasionally watch get spectacularly defeated.
Real life rarely offers such tidy resolutions.
But great horror does something else, something we potatoes think is incredibly important. It holds a mirror up to the world around us, sometimes revealing things we have been taught to ignore, dismiss, or accept as normal. Beneath the monsters, the blood, the supernatural, and the nightmares are often very real human horrors. Prejudice. Exploitation. Cruelty. Inequality. Abuse. The corruption of power. The ways ordinary people can become complicit in terrible things, sometimes without ever recognizing what they are participating in.
Horror can expose the ugliness hiding beneath the familiar and the respectable. It can challenge our assumptions about who deserves empathy, who we perceive as dangerous, what we consider monstrous, and why. Sometimes the most frightening thing in a story is not the creature lurking in the darkness, but the people standing comfortably in the light. And sometimes the monster is simply a reflection of something we would rather not acknowledge about ourselves.
One of our favorite lines from V for Vendetta is, "Artists use lies to tell the truth, while politicians use them to cover the truth up." We potatoes think great horror embraces that very idea. It uses the impossible, the grotesque, and the terrifying to expose realities that are often easier to ignore. Through fiction, horror can reveal uncomfortable truths about ourselves and the world around us. It asks us to look more closely, question what we have been told, challenge our own biases, and recognize that the things we fear are not always the things we should fear.
Of course, not every horror movie needs to be a profound examination of society! Sometimes a murderous doll is just a murderous doll, and sometimes we simply want to watch something wonderfully ridiculous! But when horror has something meaningful to say, it can be one of the most powerful forms of storytelling precisely because it refuses to make everything comfortable.
Stories give us room to explore our fears without being entirely consumed by them. They let us imagine possibilities, confront uncomfortable truths, and sometimes discover courage in the most unlikely places. They can make us question the world, question ourselves, and perhaps leave the experience seeing something differently than we did before.
They also give us the unparalleled satisfaction of yelling, "DON’T GO IN THERE!!!" at a fictional person who absolutely cannot hear us.
Which, frankly, we think is therapeutic!
Halloween gives us permission to be frightened and delighted at the same time. To acknowledge darkness without allowing it to become our entire world. To be serious about the things that matter while still finding room for nonsense.
And we potatoes love a little nonsense!
Halloween Doesn't Have to Cost a Fortune
Of course, there is another monster lurking around Halloween, and this one has become increasingly difficult to ignore.
Consumerism.
Every year, we're encouraged to buy more decorations, more costumes, more candy, more elaborate experiences, and more things we supposedly need to make the holiday special. And with groceries, housing, and everyday necessities putting so much pressure on people's budgets, that expectation feels particularly absurd.
We potatoes love Halloween decorations! We love festive food! We love creating a cozy, spooky atmosphere! But we do not believe any of those things should come at the expense of someone's financial well-being.
A celebration is not a competition.
This year, we are continuing to keep things simple. We are enjoying the decorations we already own, revisiting the traditions we love, and making the most of what we have. There will be movies, cozy blankets, some good food, our beloved fur babies, and undoubtedly a fair amount of inappropriate laughter.
We also will not be sharing photographs of our Halloween food this year. With food insecurity continuing to affect so many households, turning our table into content simply does not feel right to us. Our own celebration is going to be smaller this year. We are grateful for what we have, and we intend to enjoy it, but we don't have much to spare, and what we do have doesn't need to be put on display.
Whether you have an elaborately decorated house or a single pumpkin, a homemade costume or your favorite pajamas, a table full of treats or a simple comforting meal, Halloween belongs to you too.
The magic was never something you had to purchase.
Our Halloween 2026 Movie Marathon!
Now, onto one of our favorite parts of the holiday!
There is nothing quite like settling in for a Halloween movie marathon. We potatoes love a good mixture of creepy, funny, cute, unsettling, atmospheric, and downright ridiculous. Give us haunted houses, sinister forests, witches, monsters, psychological nightmares, claymation, and the occasional horror comedy!
Our Halloween Weekend 2026 lineup:
Hocus Pocus
Practical Magic
Coraline
Tucker and Dale vs Evil
M3GAN 2
The Menu
Glorious
Trick 'r Treat
Nope
X
Pearl
MaXXXine
Tentacles
Oculus
Insidious Movies
Smile 2
The Nun
No One Gets Out Alive
Television Shows & Limited Series
BELOW
The East Palace
Dracula
Castlevania
Hannibal
The Fall of the House of Usher
It’s ambitious! We know! We will get through what we can! As always, we encourage you to watch whatever suits your mood! Not everyone enjoys being scared, and that is perfectly fine! Triggers are a very real thing, and we potatoes know that intimately. Halloween can be whimsical, adorable, animated, cozy, creepy, campy, grotesque, or absolutely terrifying. Whatever suits you! There is plenty of room for all of it.
🍻 The Halloween Drinking Game 2026!
Naturally, it would not be a proper Smashed Potatoes Halloween without our beloved drinking game!
Grab your favorite beverage, whether that is cider, tea, soda, water, or something a little more spirited, and prepare to play along with some of horror's most beloved and ridiculous traditions. Any and all drinks are welcome and count!
Take a sip anytime:
1. Someone screams or gasps
2. There's sexy time on screen
3. You hear jarring or unusually loud music
4. The music suddenly goes silent
5. There's a jump scare
6. Blood appears on screen
7. Gratuitous gore or dismemberment occurs
8. Something on screen grosses you out
9. Someone dies
10. A dead body appears on screen
11. Something supernatural happens
12. A character makes a blatantly stupid decision
13. Someone opens a creepy, creaky door
14. You spot a jack-o'-lantern
15. Fog rolls across the ground
16. Someone becomes possessed (bonus sip if their eyes turn black!)
SMASHED MODE: Someone watching with you jumps, screams, or yelps!
Remember, drinking games do not require alcohol! We are here for the laughs, the stories, and the fun. Please drink responsibly, know your limits, and take care of yourselves.
The Beauty of a Spooky Little Life
Perhaps what we love most about Halloween is that it makes room for so many different parts of being human. The joyful and the sorrowful. The beautiful and the grotesque. The familiar and the mysterious. The silly and the profound.
We can honor those who are no longer with us while celebrating the people who are. We can appreciate the changing seasons while remembering that nothing stays the same forever. We can laugh at our fears, create something beautiful, tell stories, and gather together, even if that gathering consists of two potatoes and a couple of very spoiled dogs.
There is something deeply human about all of it.
We know that many of you are carrying a great deal right now. We are too. We know many of you are struggling financially, grieving, frightened about the future, or simply exhausted by everything this year has demanded. We are not going to pretend that a movie marathon or a jack-o'-lantern can fix any of that.
But neither do we believe that difficult times should rob us of every opportunity to experience wonder and to have a little fun.
We deserve art. We deserve stories. We deserve laughter, connection, creativity, fun, and rest. We deserve to experience the seasons rather than simply survive them. And we deserve moments that exist for no other purpose than making life a little more enjoyable.
So this Halloween, we hope you find a little magic somewhere.
Maybe it is in the glow of a candle. The crunch of autumn leaves beneath your feet. The sound of rain against the windows. A favorite horror movie. A beloved pet curled up beside you. A fire in your hearth. A memory of someone you miss. A shared laugh. A ridiculous costume. Or simply the relief of closing the door on the outside world for a few hours.
Whatever Halloween looks like for you this year, we hope it brings you something good.
And if you have the means, please consider sharing a little of that goodness with your community. Local food banks, community fridges, and mutual aid organizations continue to need support. A small act of generosity can mean an enormous amount to someone else. And most importantly, VOTE. 💙
The world has enough real monsters. Vote them out. 💙 We could all use a little more kindness, and we could all use a better present… and a better future.
Cheers to Halloween 2026!
So tonight, we potatoes are lighting our candles, embracing the shadows, pulling out our favorite spooky stories, and celebrating the holiday we love so dearly!
Not because everything is wonderful. Not because we have forgotten what is happening outside our doors.
But because Halloween is wonderful, and we refuse to forget that either!
Cheers to witches, ghosts, goblins, and things that go bump in the night! Cheers to autumn leaves, glowing pumpkins, haunted houses, and stories that send delicious shivers down our spines! Cheers to creativity, community, kindness, and keeping a little magic alive in an increasingly complicated world! Cheers to VOTING! 💙💙💙
And most importantly, cheers to you!
May your evening be filled with just the right amount of mischief, may your scares remain safely on the screen, and may your heart find a little warmth in the darkness.
Happy Halloween 2026!!
Now, tell us! What are you watching this Halloween? Are you a fan of genuinely terrifying horror, cozy spooky classics, or wonderfully ridiculous horror comedies? Have you discovered any new favorites this year? And what are your favorite Halloween traditions, whether big, small, or delightfully strange?
We would love to hear from you! Share your thoughts, movie recommendations, and drinking game suggestions in the comments. Please remember drinks can be water, soda, anything nonalcoholic, etc. Be safe, drink responsibly, have fun, take care of yourselves, and have a wonderfully spooky Halloween!