66 Spooky Music Videos
Music videos were, for a brief and beautiful period, the most consumed form of media in my life. Pre-college, I was learning about new music almost exclusively in video form via “Beavis and Butthead,” “120 Minutes,” “Yo! MTV Raps,” and yes, sometimes “TRL.” In college, “120 Minutes” became “Subterranean, “and I could also buy VHS or DVD compilations of rarer videos from Chicago record stores.
After this came a great and all-consuming dark ages. Cable TV programming fell off, videos were lost to time or obscurity, and technology was still years away from allowing us to easily convert and upload content for everyone. Our beloved videos slowly began to reemerge one-by-one on Vimeo and YouTube, to a point now where you can watch, at any time, any place, most anything that has ever been created. This is good and bad: the sheer abundance of choices creates a resource curse, and I sometimes am so nostalgic for lack of control that I watch the free music video channels on PlutoTV–with commercials.
One way to avoid this burden of plentifulness is to accept this gift of a curated list: 66 music videos that are spooky. These are not ranked – they’re all equally spooky for different reasons. I limited to one video per artist. Here’s the YouTube playlist if you want to put them on shuffle for your Halloween party – just a suggestion, no pressure: 66 Spooky Videos – YouTube
Somewhat late-period Aesop Rock cut (though he did release TWO albums last year) off the underrated 2007 album None Shall Pass, the video for Coffee is chock full of blood, graves, and heads. T-A-K-I-N-G-N-O-P-R-I-S-O-N-E-R-S. I saw this on a forementioned episode of Subterranean, recorded off cable, and surely near the end of its life as regular MTV programming.
2. Alice in Chains “I Stay Away”
What happens when a claymation circus is burned to the ground and/or its inhabitants are in hell (your interpretation may vary)? I learned from YouTube comments that the characters in this video are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; whereas Alice in Chains, famously, are not.
The choice to make this list alphabetical instead of ranked means that we’re getting the “Come to Daddy” video in an inverted location. It holds up unbelievably well and will continue to live inside you long after you watch it. The visual of Richard D. James’s face pasted onto the heads of a swarm of children is as effective and unsettling today as it was in the late 1990s. And as hours of studying while listening to Select Ambient Works later taught me, the aggressiveness of the song is very much an anomaly in the Aphex Twin catalog.
4. Backstreet Boys “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)”
The first silly entry in our list – spooky does not mean we should take ourselves too seriously folks, and we have some legitimately good monster costumes, masks, and makeup here. Makes for a good double feature with “Batdance” – see below. Also, probably genuinely the best Backstreet Boys song?
5. Bat for Lashes “What’s a Girl To Do?”
Animal masks and eerie suburbia will always get the job done, see e.g. DONNIE DARKO.
6. Beastie Boys “Triple Trouble”
Sasquatch playing basketball in slow motion is spooky, and so is Kanye West being pulled into a man-on-the-street interview in what appears to be an earnestly confused response.
7. Billie Eilish “All Good Girls Go to Hell”
Setting aside the fallen-angel theme, this video was released with messages raising awareness for climate change, and in case anyone hasn’t experienced crippling heat and humidity, a hurricane, a tornado, or floods lately, this is indeed the spookiest thing of all.
8. Boards of Canada “Everything You Do is a Balloon”
Found footage, apparently none of which can be or has been identified. I thought of this video when watching “Backrooms” this year. Creepy!
9. Bone Thugs-n-Harmony “Tha Crossroads”
Among many images from 90’s music videos that endure in my head: people’s eyes turning black when the grim reaper touches them.
10. The Chemical Brothers “Hey Boy Hey Girl”
I didn’t make this rule, but skeletons are automatically spooky. They seem kind of harmless when they’re just dancin’ and goofin’, but a skeleton will generally always give us the spooks.
11. Childish Gambino “Bonfire”
“This is America” could easily be on the list, but we went with “Bonfire” instead because of the fantastic horror idea of rapping next to your own dead body.
This is on “The Crow” soundtrack, in case you couldn’t tell from the movie clips interspersed throughout the video (videos with movie tie-ins are something I’ve long lamented as a lost art form). We’ve discussed this previously! “Burn”: The Cure vs. Nine Inch Nails – Recommend If You Like
13. The Damned “Shadow of Love”
The Damned in their post-Strawberries goth mileu, with Dave Vanian in full vampire getup that he wears to this very day. (For my money, Phantasmagoria is their best album.) Extra spooky points for the black cat.
14. David Bowie “I’m Afraid of Americans”
Ohioan Trent Reznor stalks British David Bowie through the streets of New York in a video that asks (in 1997): what is more scary than an American?
15. Deadmau5 – Ghosts n’ Stuff
Classic, E.T.-style sheet-ghosts. I like that the ghost isn’t really haunting anyone – it’s just (presumably Deadmat5 himself) being a stinker.
This is a borderline short film and a spiritual sequel, on this list, to the Alice in Chains video. It uses eerie, handmade shadow puppet visuals that tell an Irish folk legend.
17. Deftones – Change (In the House of Flies)
Lives with Bat For Lashes in the animal mask subgenre. Why are the guests masked, what are they celebrating? Maybe Deftones evolving beyond nu-metal?
The TENET/Pharcyde award for a video that is spooky because it was filmed and edited in reverse. This is like a nightmare where you’re Wrong (wrong!!!!) and you don’t ever figure out why. Side note: this album is aging incredibly well.
Good Austin punk energy (imagine a female-led …And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead with more power chords) and slasher imagery that feels inspired by Texas Chainsaw Massacre, filmed at a school I used to live near!
A spooky meditation on mental health that reworks and, yes, vastly improves upon that Gotye song. It’s the most recent video on this list, and it gives me hope for the future.
21. Dr. Octagon – Blue Flowers
This video was on a VHS tape that we played nearly every weekend in 2002. DJ Qbert’s backwards scream scratching is up there with the Richard D. James scream from “Come to Daddy” on the list of single most important sounds of my life.
22. Echo & The Bunnymen – The Killing Moon
Ian McCulloch and his hair sing in front of a spooky reflection of a full moon, it simply does not get any better.
23. The Fall – There’s a Ghost in My House
Mark E. Smith in a haunted house! Need I say more!
Gritty, voyeuristic aesthetic in a scary hotel. Fiona was and continues to be the queen of this aesthetic, and we need more videos from her.
Sub-genre within this list: songs receiving the spooky / horror video treatment when the lyrics do not, at all, warrant it. This song is about falling in love and the video is about a giant, sentient hand.
Another empty, dare I say liminal? space. Post-apocalyptic landscapes and abandoned cars.
27. Geto Boys – My Mind Playing Tricks on Me
Paranoia, hallucinations, empty churches. Me and Geto Boys are trick-or-treatin.
28. GraveDiggaz – Diary of a Madman
My favorite horrorcore side projet by RZA and Prince Paul from the 90s. All of their videos could be on this list, but I picked this one partly to avoid certain valid trigger warnings, and also because I love a scary courtroom.
29. The Horrors – She is the New Thing
With a name like The Horrors, how can you not be spooky? Distorted visuals and manic energy straight out of the nightmare of “what if we are never more than a garage band?”
The singing, animatronic puppet in the emergency room is the stuff of mid-2000s nightmares.
31. Johnny Cash – Delia’s Gone
The closest video I can find to Mark Borchardt’s COVEN.
Black-and-white hooded figures walking in slow motion, in a haunting tribute to Ian Curtis. Very sad and beautiful in addition to spooky. Parts of it used to great effect in 24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE.
Gothic, interpretive dance theater inspired by British Hammer Films (like DRACULA starring Christopher Lee).
A bit of a silly one – what if zombies played a lounge act?
35. Massive Attack, Young Fathers – Voodoo In My Blood
Rosamund Pike gets possessed in a subway station by a floating orb partially inspired by John Carpenter’s DARK STAR.
Another video I first saw on Beavis & Butthead and that also served as my introduction to The Melvins, and another point in the skeleton category.
Metallica long resisted narrative music videos for reasons that I’m sure are totally normal, but broke this rule for “One,” which includes a bunch of clips from JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN, a movie I have never seen.
38. Michael Jackson – Thriller
Spooky on many levels.
39. Ministry – Every Day is Halloween (Squirrely Version)
I originally had the video for “The Land of R*pe and Honey” in this spot before realizing that Ministry released a new video last year for “Halloween” (remixed to be slightly more industrial, as with the other tracks on “Squirrely.”) It’s obligatory. Go see our lord and savior Al Jorgensen in a modern, hi-definition video before it’s too late.
40. My Chemical Romance – Helena
Spookiness for theater kids. (Just kidding, I love My Chemical Romance, and I love wire work.)
41. Nick Cave and the Bad Seed – The Mercy Seat
Nick Cave is an inherently ominous dude, and a spooky, ethereal presence on this earth (for which I am thankful), so I struggled to decide which video to include here. Mostly this is the best song.
42. Nine Inch Nails – The Perfect Drug
Speaking of best songs, this remains the NIN titleholder (see: Nine Inch Nails Ranked – Recommend If You Like ). Edward Gorey-inspired Victorian aesthetics match Trent Reznor’s short-lived soul patch + long hair look and the chaotic drumming energy perfectly.
43. Nirvana – Heart Shaped Box
The only music video in my memory with this color palette – very unsettling.
They could have made the music video about literal vampires, but Rodrigo bleeding under the spotlight works better as a metaphor for emotional exploitation.
45. Ozzy Osborne – Bark at the Moon
The song is not actually about werewolves, but the creators of this music video decided to go that direction anyway, and went nuts with truly incredible makeup. Arguably the song that cemented Ozzy as a viable solo artist.
School shootings are a terrifying reality in both 1992 and 2026, FYI.
Early 90s morphing technology used to build scary, LAWNMOWER-MAN style images that AI could never replicate. Scarier (and a better song) than “Sledgehammer.”
48. Peter Murphy – All Night Long
Peter is our godfather of goth, and it was tough to not include a Bauhaus song, but they did not *really* exist in the music video era. He borrows Bela Lugosi elements here in any event, and reached a new, arguably too young audience (me) with this video on Beavis & Butthead.
Tea parties are weird!
Les Claypool – another uncomfortable and spooky presence for which we are eternally thankful. This video is one of many we could have included, but the effective use of a Scary Tree (a solid 1990s music video staple) puts it over the top.
The Halloween party I’d most be interested in attending if it wasn’t for the fact that there are probably a few too many Batmen.
52. Queens of the Stone Age – Sick Sick Sick
A bad dinner party that turns full cannibal at the end. Spooky use of wet meats.
There are several Radiohead music videos that do this, but “There There” is the best at weaponizing Thom Yorke having a face and body that are just a little weird. Being turned into a tree is also one of his most unsettling music video fates–worse than nearly drowning in a fish bowl (“No Surprises”), being chased by a scary guy at night in a car (“Karma Police”), or seeing everyone dead on the sidewalk from an overlooking apartment (“Just”).
54. Ray Parker Jr. – Ghostbusters
I have a question. Who do you plan on calling when you find ghosts?
We have another entry in the skeleton category! This time it’s Robbie Williams taking off all his clothes, skin, and muscle, until he himself is the skeleton. And honorable mention must go to the sequence involving this song in BETTER MAN, which is not really spooky, but is one of the best things filmed in the last decade.
Driving the Munster Koach through a cartoon monster landscape looks like a lot of fun!
57. Rockwell – Somebody’s Watching Me
We thank Berry Gordy’s son Rockwell for this lighthearted 80’s spookfest.
More anxiety nightmares come to life–this time it’s the one we all have, where we chased through a school naked by a knife wielding Ghostface-type guy. Also, if you go straight from the Rockwell video to this one you’ll notice a shower fixture motif.
59. Sepultura – Roots Bloody Roots
Filmed in Brazil with depictions of indigenous rituals for a different, cooler, and more culturally significant form of spookiness.
60. Siouxsie and the Banshees – Scarecrow
Desolate fields, strobe lighting, and scarecrow close-ups best match Siouxsie’s sound, though their entire video catalogue could be listed as honorable mentions.
61. Skrillex – First of the Year (Equinox)
Dubsteb FIRESTARTER.
62. Smashing Pumpkins – Ava Adore
Dave Vanian of The Damned is a frilly shirt vampire, but Billy Corgan went more in the Nosferatu direction for this stage of his career. Filmed as a “oner,” but of course with several hidden cuts.
63. Soundgarden – Black Hole Sun
What’s scarier: Richard D. James’s face on a little girl, or the melting faces of suburban people (who are then vaporized by an apocalyptic sun disaster – something which will definitely never happen)?
64. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – Mary Jane’s Last Dance
Kim Basinger somehow outdoes Rosamund Pike’s possessed subway dance by sitting absolutely still in this video. I can’t believe we never saw Tom Petty play his morgue assistant role in a David Cronenberg type of movie.
If you didn’t know, the stop motion is all done by Adam Jones, who came from a Hollywood special effects house that worked on Freddy Krueger, Jurassic Park dinosaurs and other iconic characters. Unclear if he’s a better visual artist or guitarist (complimentary).
66. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Heads Will Roll
Glam rock and disco elements combined with AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON-style dancer close out our spooky playlist, and we bleed glitter not blood.
Feature drawing by Daniel Knox
This piece is in Recommend If You Like The Spooky Issue Fall 2026. You can find physical copies in bars, cafes and stores in Chicago and Washington, D.C. The newspaper is available for purchase here.
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