Happy Halloween! A day for eating candy, dressing up in costumes, and watching your favorite spooky movies.

Walt Disney loved both a good laugh and a good scare, and Disney movies and rides have been shaping America’s Halloween celebrations and entertainment for many years, from his early cartoon shorts to his company’s more recent movie blockbusters. From dancing skeletons to lonesome ghosts to the terrifying Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow, there’s plenty of options for scary and silly entertainment this Oct. 31. And if you didn’t have these animated classics already in your Halloween viewing lineup, as the Haunted Mansion ghost host would say, there’s always room for one more.

Happy Halloween! pic.twitter.com/GJX4Ab8v7E

— Catherine Salgado (@CatSalgado32) October 31, 2024

Halloween or All Hallows’ Eve is the vigil before the Catholic feast of All Saints’ Day, which is followed by All Souls’ Day (no, it wasn’t originally a pagan festival co-opted by Catholics). Over the years, because of the timeframe of the harvest season and the holidays’ association with death, different countries began to add secular or even old pre-Christian stories and practices to their celebrations, eventually resulting in the spooky Halloween holiday we have today.

Most Americans today probably think first of the Haunted Mansion, the classic Disneyland attraction that spawned multiple movies, rides, and merchandise lines, and the Nightmare Before Christmas when talking about Disney Halloween. But while I absolutely love the Haunted Mansion, and Nightmare Before Christmas is now a cultural phenomenon, I’m going to focus on three older Disney Halloween animations. Decades before Disneyland, the Disney Channel, Disney+, and Tim Burton, there was Walt Disney, Carl Stalling, and Ub Iwerks’ “Skeleton Dance.”

Its animation is more simplistic than later Walt Disney masterpieces, but it still shows the attention to comedic detail and an original approach to animation that would always characterize Disney animation. You can see hints of future Disney work too — such as the howling dog with a head like Pluto and the idea of silly spooks jumping out of graves (Haunted Mansion-style). The short was released in 1929, only the year after Mickey Mouse was invented, as one of Disney’s “Silly Symphonies,” closely harmonizing characters’ movements with music.

Facebook fan page It All Started With Walt Disney posted some fun facts about my favorite eerie short, “Lonesome Ghosts,” released on Christmas Eve of 1937 soon before Disney’s first full-length animated film (Snow White). Four bored ghosts, looking for fun, call up the Ajax Ghost Exterminators — Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy — and, after the bumbling ghost hunters arrive, play every sort of prank on them. The ghosts’ creative hijinks and the Exterminators’ accidental success in driving them away in a surprise ending make this a fun watch for the whole family.

The eight-minute Technicolor short was produced by Walt Disney, directed by Burt Gillett, and animated by Izzy Klein, Ed Love, Milt Kahl, Marvin Woodward, Bob Wickersham, Clyde Geronimi, Dick Huemer, Dick Williams, Art Babbitt and Rex Cox. The vocal cast included [legendary voice talents] Walt Disney, Clarence Nash, Pinto Colvig and Billy Bletcher… Many children of the 1960s and ’70s became fans of this cartoon  after it was sold in an edited and silent version as a cartridge for the Fisher-Price Movie Viewer, a small crank-operated toy.

Related: Washington Irving, the American Revolution, and the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow

Finally, last but most certainly not least, is Disney’s most iconic spook: the Headless Horseman. This eerie equestrian was originally a character in Washington Irving’s classic ghost story, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” Irving mixed history and fantasy in his tale, claiming the horseman was the Hessian soldier beheaded by an American cannonball at the 1776 Battle of White Plains. The “galloping Hessian of the Hollow,” who haunted the very churchyard you can visit today (I have), was re-popularized by Walt Disney’s “The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad.”

“Three of the world’s great storytellers – Walt Disney, Bing Crosby, Basil Rathbone – bring you two of the most fabulous characters ever screened!” The 1949 theatrical trailer told moviegoers. And 75 years later, the film’s second half, the story of Ichabod Crane as narrated and sung by megastar Bing Crosby, is an iconic Halloween favorite. 

Ichabod Crane is a vain, ambitious, hungry, and superstitious schoolteacher who arrives in the old Dutch village of Tarrytown, where he charms the women and falls in love with the affluent and beautiful Katrina van Tassel. Coquettish Katrina’s flirtation with Ichabod infuriates her suitor Brom Bones, who terrifies Ichabod with a song about the Headless Horseman at a Halloween party. Ichabod subsequently runs into and is pursued by the horrifying Horseman. The schoolteacher disappears. Did he run away — or was he spirited away by the Headless Horseman?

There are numerous other spooky Disney toons and live-action films to enjoy this year, from Mickey’s 1920s “Haunted House” onwards. But make some time this year to celebrate Halloween with the dancing skeletons, lonesome ghosts, and fearsome Headless Horseman who have been scaring and entertaining Americans for almost a century! Happy Halloween!