There’s just something fun about being scared. Walt Disney understood that intrinsically, and from the very beginning—with The Skeleton Dance chapter of Silly Symphony in 1929, or the creepy forest scene in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937—Disney has created a wealth of thrilling, delightful fear that keeps us coming back for more.
Halloween is the time of year we actively seek out scares—and even though the pandemic has made it more difficult to do that out and about, there are plenty of ways to make your home a haunted mansion of its own… with the right musical atmosphere.
The Haunted Mansion, with its doom buggy tour of creaky attics and possessed dining rooms and cemeteries, has been an early gateway to gleeful fear since it swung open its cobwebbed doors at Disneyland in 1969. Two vinyl records, the effects album Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House and the musical Haunted Mansion Picture Disc, bring the grinning ghosts and the Black Widow Bride directly into your living room.
There are plenty of ghosts that haunt Pirates of the Caribbean as well, and the picture disc vinyl of the classic soundtrack will bring back the delicious childhood terror of plummeting down a pitch-black waterfall for the first time and sailing past skeletons lying in their bed or steering phantom ships in a thunderstorm.
In fact, nothing brings back the goosebumps and excitement of dark rides, dark rollercoasters—and all of the other wonderfully scary experiences of the Disney Parks—more than dimming the lights and spinning their soundtracks. The Legacy Collection: Disneyland album will whisk you on a journey back in time and through the entire park, dredging up your earliest memories of being happy to be scared.
At the movies, Disney has snuck scary moments into nearly every animated feature—from the sinister witchcraft in Snow White, to the donkey transformation scene in Pinocchio, to the menacing Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty, all the way through to the neon-colored afterlife in Coco. You can relive each of those hair-raising moments with the picture disc vinyls or Legacy Collection CD soundtracks.
One Halloween (and Christmas) staple is, of course, The Nightmare Before Christmas. Danny Elfman’s infectious songs for the 1993 stop-motion masterpiece tell the story of Jack Skellington and the morbid residents of Halloween Town, of kidnapping the Sandy Claws, and of the bug-filled Oogie Boogie. The film and its soundtrack mix holiday whimsy with ghoulish delight, and you can experience it on Black Vinyl or with vivid animated scenes on the picture disc edition.
John Williams knew how to strike fear into the heart of the Rebel Alliance with Darth Vader’s theme, the Imperial March, and his nine Star Wars soundtracks contain terrifying music for a galaxy full of villains and monsters—whether it’s Jabba the Hutt’s slinking tuba theme, the Emperor’s ominous dark hymn for male choir, whispered chants for Darth Maul, or the crackling, sinister climate of the planet Exegol.
With the proper atmosphere, any room can be transformed into a thrilling, chilling place—filled with the ghosts of happy hauntings and electrifying, delightful scares. Haunt the the Disney Music Emporium today to find an abundance of atmospheres for every spooky occasion.