Five Anime To Watch This Halloween

By Elijah Gonzalez | October 29, 2025 | 11:30am

Anime Lists horror anime

As October winds down, it’s the perfect time to enjoy some seasonally appropriate scares. However, if you’re looking for an anime that scratches that itch, there’s one big problem: the medium doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to horror. As a variety of bungled Junji Ito adaptations can attest, it can be hard to animate the type of detailed art that defines many of the best horror manga.

Thankfully, though, outright horror isn’t a prerequisite for matching this season’s vibe, and there are a variety of anime focused on classic undead creatures of the night, yokai, and more that fit the mood. With that in mind, we’ve rounded up five shows that are a perfect fit for Halloween.

Undead Murder Farce

best horror anime

Watch on Crunchyroll

Undead Murder Farce is simultaneously very clever and very silly, a work of Gothic lit fan-fiction delivered with style. The series follows Aya Rindo, an immortal disembodied head, and Tsugaru, her assistant who gained super-strength after becoming a test subject for an evil British guy. As the pair look for the villain who swiped Aya’s body and turned Tsugaru into an Oni-Human hybrid, they take on a series of one-off mysteries where they encounter a grab bag of legendary literary figures: Sherlock Holmes, Lupin, etc.

As for why it’s the perfect fit for October, our central characters regularly encounter supernatural creatures like vampires and werewolves as they scour Europe for a lead on their target. Visually, it builds on its Gothic horror roots with intentionally framed compositions courtesy of director Mamoru Hatakeyama (Kaguya-Sama Love Is War, Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu), which excel at both heightening the mysteries and the action scenes. Meanwhile, the script is similarly sharp, delivering well-constructed whodunits as Aya uses her profound abilities of deduction, and Tsugaru uses his similarly profound ability to punch guys. In total, it deftly balances between schlocky and serious, as its central characters are imbued with weighty backstories that they attempt to shrug off via witty repartees. While its final arc is a step below the rest, and it suffers from not fully adapting its source material, it still makes for a fun ride.

Call of the Night

Watch on HIDIVE

Watch on Hulu

Nothing screams Halloween like vampires, and Call Of The Night has plenty of those guys. However, this isn’t your standard story about bloodsuckers, and instead of leading with brutal struggles against the undead, events begin with a fairly mundane meet-cute as the vampire Nazuna meets the insomniac teenager Kou. From here, the latter tries to fall in love with the former so he can become a vampire himself.

The first thing that stands out about Call Of The Night is its gorgeous background art; in the first episode, Nazuna leaps into the sky while princess carrying Kou, giving us a mesmerizing view of this nighttime city lit by a neon purple glow. This is more than just a pretty shot, though, because this memorable sight represents how our protagonist feels about these empty streets, as he pursues a life free of bustling salarymen and the daytime grind. From here, the series only improves over its run, and while there are seemingly some vampire story-mandated age-gap headaches early on, the story eventually plays down these elements somewhat. Eventually, we dig further into the extended cast, leading to traumatic backstories and deepening declarations. Overall, this isn’t your standard take on this classic mythological monster, and that works in the show’s favor.

Mononoke

Watch on Netflix

Watch on Crunchyroll

Pivoting away from Gothic horror, there’s Mononoke, an experimental mystery story that’s a well-deserved cult classic. It follows an unnamed character, the Medicine Seller, who exorcises dangerous spirits bound to negative human emotions called mononoke. To do so, he has to find the spirit’s “form” (what specific kind of evil spirit it is), its “truth” (what tragic event happened to the person who ostensibly summoned this spirit), and its “reason” (the specific reason why the spirit is haunting a person or place).

One element that elevates the series is its unique presentation, which leverages an anachronistic, ukiyo-e inspired art style (and plentiful sliding doors) alongside paranoia-inducing camera angles to heighten its paranormal happenings. This gripping aesthetic elevates each grim discovery, as the Medicine Seller very directly reckons with the ghosts of the past—abusive brothels, cursed oceans, and oppressive homes are just some of the locales that need to be cleansed of past wrongs. After watching the 12-episode TV show, there’s also an excellent ongoing trilogy of films (two out of three have been released) that continues the series.

Shiki

Not Available on Streaming

While Shiki is very difficult to find these days after leaving several streaming services, it’s worth seeking out because it’s a rare case of a horror anime that’s actually good—you’ll notice that while each of the previous series contains supernatural elements, they’re more mystery-thrillers than outright fright fests. The story is set in a small Japanese village in the ‘90s, where a strange set of disappearances begins after a hollow-eyed family moves into town. From here, we follow a disaffected teen named Natsuno who hates living in the sticks, as he and a band of other primary characters discover the truth of what’s happening here—there’s a lot of Salem’s Lot in here if that helps.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the series is that while it’s unsettling in a traditional sense, with blood-drinking monsters and the like, perhaps its scariest element is how convincingly it portrays the stifling realities of living in an isolating rural area; gossiping neighbors are presented as omnipresent ghostly silhouettes who know every little secret. Altogether, it works both as a tense horror thriller and a striking condemnation of small town conservatism.

The Summer Hikaru Died

Watch on Netflix

Speaking of compelling shows about small towns, The Summer Hikaru Died is a simmering, queer horror story that’s one of the best anime of the year so far. The story follows Yoshiki and Hikaru, two childhood friends living in the boonies. As a closeted queer kid, Yoshiki wants to move to the city as soon as possible, but things become even more complicated when he learns the truth about his friend: the real Hikaru died and has been replaced by an eldritch blob monster that’s puppeteering his corpse (don’t worry, this is revealed in the first five minutes). Strangely enough, though, instead of being an evil monster, this new Hikaru is a morally ambiguous figure that’s admittedly dangerous but also quite eager to live among humans.

What follows is a thorny narrative about grief, sexual repression, and sins of the past that excels thanks to a wonderful adaptation from CygamesPictures. Here, the studio maximizes the tension in every scene, baking us in the summer sun as these characters and their relationships come under threat. Because while the show’s primary genre is undoubtedly horror, it also nails the smaller slice-of-life moments between its central teens, making us hope that Yoshiki and Hikaru’s fragile arrangement remains intact despite a hostile outside world. And while the series isn’t complete yet, it’s been confirmed that it will receive a second season, one which will likely adapt the rest of the manga.

Elijah Gonzalez is an associate editor for Endless Mode. In addition to playing the latest, he also loves anime, movies, and dreaming of the day he finally gets through all the Like a Dragon games. You can follow him on Bluesky @elijahgonzalez.bsky.social.