YouTube Brings the Horror this Halloween!

If you like your horror in bite size quantities, then look no further than YouTube. The internet's most popular free streaming channel has a candy bag full of Halloween short films that will satisfy all the ghouls and goblins out there. I took the time to sit down this weekend and watch some of these delightful fright flicks and made a little list of the ones that should be on your watch list this upcoming spooky season!

At the top of your list should be Trick or Treat! parts 1 & 2. The first installment which runs about 14 minutes long, features a young couple who get unexpected visit from an overage trick or treater wearing a full head skull mask and dressed as a magician, complete with cape. When the reveal they have no treats to give, his murderous magic offers them the ultimate tricks.

This was a fun little short that offered up some nice jump scares and a solid creepy performance from Andrew Glessner as "the Magician."

Released in October of 2021, Trick or Treat! was written and directed by Wesley Mellott and featured Shelby Hightower and Eric Francis Melaragni as the doomed couple who made the mistake of running out of candy!

If you scare 'em once, why not try it again. Thats what Wesley Mellott did in 2022 when he unleashed "The Magician" on another Halloween night in search of treats. This time the silent but deadly illusionist stopped by a house where a group of twenty-somethings were having a little Halloween bash.

There the skull faced menace unleashes a bloodbath of violence on the very drunk and not to bright party guests. The second film turned the heat up on the violence and added an additional nine minutes to the original film's runtime bringing it up to over 23 minutes. While I really enjoyed the first film, the second was even better, and this series should definitely get its own feature length film with Mellott at the helm and Glessner behind the mask. Joining the cast for this film were Danica Lee Clauser and Gary Paul Bowman.

Who is familiar with the Smiling Woman series? There have been several short installments, all around three minutes long and feature a creepy smiling woman in a yellow dress. Well, it was bound to lead to A Smiling Woman Halloween which was released in 2023 and starred Eteri Shergeliia as "the smiling woman." The film is very short and features a woman (Haylee D'Alessandro) leaving a Halloween party but is stopped by the specter of a woman in a yellow dress with creepy grin on her face. This one is sure to put chills up your spine.

Another 3-minute short, but sweet flick was The Uninvited (2024) which featured a witch who knew how to treat unwanted guests. Not as creepy as the other films so far, but visually well shot and who doesn't love witches?

Then there was Pumpkin Tales which brought together four short films and a wraparound to give all the ghouls something to shriek about. Video podcaster, El offers up four tales of terror as she carves her pumpkin for her viewers. There were naughty trick or treaters, a wolf boy who had a taste for more than sweets, and a little more witchcraft. I really enjoy this collection, and Leah Cashill was very entertaining as carved out her Jack O' Lantern.

My favorite short that I watched this weekend was by far Trick. This was a creepy ass film about a group of "teens" holding a seance to call on the spirits of children who were murdered by an ugly witch. Every stereotype is represented with this group. The loud-mouth annoying jock, the glutton, the valley girl, the nerdy dude who really wants to lose his virginity to the hot gothic girl who has called them all together. Of course, things go wrong, and all hell breaks loose, literally. This was a wild 14 minutes of terror that is a MUST for everyone's Halloween playlist. Featured in this one were Emily Joy Lemus who was amazing as Angela, the gothic medium and Lexi Simonsen as Carrie.

Those were but a few of the awesome short films I discovered on YouTube. Here are some more titles to keep an eye out for:

Trick & Treat, Halloween Hour, House on Oak Street, The Last Halloween, Fool Me Once, Yummy Meat, Halloween Party, and the best of the Michael Myer's fan films I found, He Came Home.

I am sure there are a bunch more that I have missed and I will be sure to keep an eye out and mention any cool ones I find. If you have any suggestions on a good Halloween short featured on YouTube, drop a comment and let us know. Stay Ghoul my friends!