Less than a week before Halloween! This is the best week of the year to binge watch some of the scariest television I know of (or perhaps dared watch?) Three series make an appearance year after year: The X-Files, Fringe, and Supernatural. This week’s regularly scheduled posts will be joined by three extra, special Halloween posts, each rounding up the scariest episodes of these three shows.

The X-Files remains the best show ever to get a great creep out session. The show had two sets of episodes: mythology episodes involving aliens, men in black, and so many details, twists, and turns that makes watching a random episode in the middle of the series potentially very confusing, and monster-of-the-week episodes. It’s only from these stand-alones that I chose the following twenty episodes; nothing breaks the scare-fest mood after all that complete confusion!

My top twenty Halloween worthy The X-Files episodes are:

Squeeze (1 x 02): The second episode of the X-files is the one that cinched it for me. The story of a liver-eating mutant who can crawl through small spaces and get even into high security areas makes you want to cover your air vents with block of concrete to make sure you’re safe.

Shadows (1 x 05): I have a bit of a penchant for ghost stories. The ghost of a man who died with a stain on his reputation comes back to make sure his name is cleared, freaking the you-know-what out of his protégé.

Darkness Falls (1 x 19): If you don’t like bugs already, then definitely don’t watch this one—or maybe you should? Killer bugs threaten the lives of our favorite FBI agents who are isolated in the middle of a big, big forest.

Tooms (1 x 20): Remember the liver-eating mutant who can crawl through small spaces into—or out of—high security areas, like, maybe, prisons? Well… He’s baaaaaaaaaaaaack! And for once, the sequel is just as good as the original.

Born Again (1 x 21): If you don’t like kids, you might learn to give them the benefit of the doubt after seeing this episode, in which a child is possessed by a cop determined to clear his name (sounds familiar?).

Excelsis Dei (2 x 11): More ghosts! An old age home is haunted by the ghosts of tenants past who were mistreated by underpaid and overworked staff. But one staff member cares—perhaps too much. Wanting to help, said staff member ends up unleashing an invisible force that rapes a nurse and kills another staff member. And you thought the old age home your grandparents stay in was creepy.

The Calusari (2 x 21): Yet another child, this time possessed by a demon, freaks the you-know-what out of his family and friends—at least the surviving ones.

Oubliette (3 x 8): A young girl is kidnapped from her home, and somehow, a thirty-year-old woman who lives miles away collapses, experiencing what the victim is feeling. The connection is simple, albeit slightly freaky: the woman was herself kidnapped as a child and held hostage for years. Of course, Mulder is the only person who sees the connection, and figures out that the woman is the key to finding the girls before she is killed.

Unruhe (4 x 2): A deranged man who hears voices in his head is convinced that the women he crosses paths with who look a certain way are also plagued by these voices. He seeks to help these women by performing an at-home lobotomy. Ouch. The only clues left behind are photographs, as the killer seems to have the ability to imprint his thoughts on any nearby unprocessed film.

Sanguinarium (4 x 06): Creepy, possessed doctors who kill the patients they are supposed to help – will definitely freak you out if you think about it the next time you have a doctor’s appointment!

Leonard Betts (4 x 14): Those of you who watched ER will love Paul McCrane’s portrayal of a tumor-eating mutant. This episode is meant to fulfill your Halloween dose of gruesome.

Chinga (5 x 10): Another creepy child, this time held captivated (not quite captive, but almost) by an evil doll. Chucky’s cousin, perhaps?

Terms of Endearment (6 x 06): Halloween being the night when demons and goblins come out, it’s only normal that this episode about demon babies made the cut.

How the Ghosts Stole Christmas (6 x 08): A witty ghost story that will drive you nuts! Mulder and Scully investigate a house haunted only on Christmas Eve. And these are not your typical ghosts: they do not intend to scare the living daylights out of Mulder and Scully; they merely want to mess with their heads to the point that they will kill each other, thus reclaiming their house’s critically-acclaimed “haunted” reputation.

Tithos (6 x 09): Imagine if you could see which person could die, in the moments preceding their deaths. What would you do? This creepy guy chose to… photograph them. It’s an… interesting choice, to put it nicely, isn’t it?

Trevor (6 x 17): Try hiding from a man bent on revenge who just got out of prison. Oh, yeah, did I mention that he can walk through walls?

Theef (7 x 14): Revenge & voodoo: the perfect combination to ensure you never are able to sleep with a doll ever again.

Invocation (8 x 05): Not quite a ghost story, but just about: the agents investigate the case of a little boy who, ten years after having been kidnapped, returns… looking exactly like he did when he disappeared. Yup, instead of being 16, he’s still 6.

Badlaa (8 x 10): Definitely one of the creepiest episodes, in which a mystic smuggles himself out of India to go on a murderous spree in the United States.

Scary Monsters (9 x 14): Remember thinking their might be monster under your bed, and your parents would tell you it’s just your imagination? Unfortunately, these monsters cannot be contained in this little boy’s imagination.