Halloweentown - TV Tropes

I feel alive
When I criticize
These ugly creatures with eight eyes!
Have I died?!

"Halloween Town, huh? Even better!"

• One Piece: Thriller Bark, an entire pirate ship with a horror motif. The island's population is mostly zombies created from lost pirates. The ruler, Gekko Moriah, resembles a vampire, and lives in a spooky mansion. There is also Perona, a woman with ghost powers.
• Soul Eater: Death City, where the Shinigami live. Idiosyncratic in that the city's located in a desert clime and that a representative "postcard shot" would probably show warm sunlight and clear blue skies. Still fits the trope.

• Casper and the Spectrals has Spooky Town, a city segregated into numerous boroughs for different supernatural beings that competes with each other to scare normal humans and ensure the local Sealed Evil in a Can stays sealed.
• The Underburbs: Countess Winifred Pale, a vampire, begins a world domination plot by turning a small human town into part of an evil dimension, transforms residents into monsters and effectively makes every day into Halloween.

• In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic Fanon, Hollow Shades (a town mentioned in passing by Apple Bloom and appearing as a dark and gloomy town on the official map of Equestria) has been latched onto as a perpetually dark town populated by Bat Ponies.

• Coraline: The world that the Other Mother creates invokes one, since it's magical and otherworldly in a welcoming and entertaining way. Also thoroughly subverted, in that it's a death trap.
• Corpse Bride, the spiritual successor to The Nightmare Before Christmas, takes place in this sort of setting as well. It is more specifically the Land of the Dead where the death-related trappings of this setting obviously exist like sapient black-widowed spiders and maggots, resting coffins, ravens and body replacements for corpses. Since they are not that passionate about fear it doesn't have a particularly dark or gothic aesthetic, however, using a more jazz-like and cheery environment.
• The Nightmare Before Christmas: The Trope Namer. It is the job of the inhabitants of Halloween Town to make Halloween happen each year. Halloween Town is filled to the brim with every kind of monster and scary creature you can think of. But, as they sing in their song, "That's our job, but we're not mean."
• Paranorman: The town inverts this, as the reason Blithe Hollow is so famous is that there's a legend of a witch haunting the town which the locals use as their only tourist attraction, despite the fact that they abhor anything out of the ordinary and their norms, including foreigners. While the town does have some supernatural elements which most of the populace ignores (inclduing the dead bodies of the judge and jury at the witch’s trial rising, though they only wish to pass on in peace), the only real danger turns out be those same citizens that are led by bigotry to cruelty and violence.
• Scary Godmother: The Fright Side is shown to be this. It's populated entirely by monsters (vampires, werewolves, etc.), and Halloween is the biggest holiday of the year for them.

• Halloweentown (1998): The titular town is the place where all the monsters that once roamed our world moved so they could live their lives apart from the mortals that feared them. The portal between the worlds is fittingly only open on Halloween, when they don't need to worry about being seen.
• The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: Holstenwall is a proto-example, which became a Trope Codifier for German Expressionism. It has the creepy mood and architecture (which were a visible inspiration for The Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride), but only one Mad Scientist and his sleep-walking Serial Killer.

• Do You See What I See?, a book series by the photographer Walter Wick, has one installment that involves exploration of a Halloween Town, starting from a hill overlooking the town, down into the streets and finally to a spooky house at the other end of the village. In one of his other series "I Spy" has a book focused entirely on the spooky house (Which may or may not be the same house as above, as he is known to reuse images in various books)
• Goth Girl, by Chris Riddell, is set in Gormless, a macabre English hamlet steeped in bizarre traditions. The heroine Ada Goth (a parody of a young Ada Lovelace) lives in a dark, labyrinthine, and proudly haunted mansion, and vampires, werewolves and other fantastic creatures abound.
• Hipira Kun, by Katsuhiro Otomo: Salta. For a town of vampires where the Sun never shines, the architecture is very colourful and burtonesque.

• Pumpkin Town, a freeware tabletop RPG, takes place in a small world inhabited by all sorts of Halloween monsters, who live in an otherwise-ordinary small town setting until Halloween night, when gateways to the mortal realm open up and the denizens can pass through and go trick-or-treating or do whatever other mischief they think they can get away with.

• The Haunted Mansion's bread and butter. Although it's primarily ghosts who live in the mansion, there are also giant spiders (in certain versions of the ride), animate skeletons, zombies, and even a mummy that call the mansion home. Doubly so in the Haunted Mansion Holiday overlay when the inhabitants of Halloween Town take over for Christmas.

• LEGO Monster Fighters takes place in the Monster Realm, a spooky land inhabited by all manner of spooky monsters whose machinations the titular Monster Fighters must foil.

• Animal Crossing has the Spooky furniture set, which can only be found on — of course — Halloween. It allows you to turn your house into one of these.
• Blaster Mystery Series: The games in this series revolves around Rave and Doctor Dabble are set in the town of "Bizzaroville", inhabited by many monstrous creatures. The majority of them are friendly though, with only Doctor Dabble's House being the primary haunted location, despite him being the seemingly Token Human Mad Scientist.
• Bugs Bunny & Taz: Time Busters: The Transylvania world.
• City of Heroes: Croatoa is fog-enshrouded, and inhabited by ghosts, witches, Red Caps, and fire-breathing Jack-o-Lantern plant monsters.
• Escape from Horrorland: The titular Horrorland is theme park centered around all things creepy and has areas themed around vampires (including the big guy himself), werewolves, and mummies alongside its namesake Horrors.
• Conker's Bad Fur Day: The Spooky level seems to be a mishmash of this in design and Überwald, with flesh-eating zombies and vampires that you have to kill.
• EarthBound (1994): The town of Threed, at least before you beat Master Belch, features zombie dogs, zombies, ghosts, a graveyard, coffins in an underground path leading to Grapefruit falls, and a Halloween enemy called the Trick or Trick kid.
• Fallout 3: "Underworld" is the closest the setting can offer. It's a settlement of ghouls (in the Fallout universe, this refers to ageless Technically Living Zombies who're usually sapient and got their condition from being massively irradiated) who took up residence in a museum exhibit about the afterlife, hence the name and the giant stone skull over the gate. Many of the people and places in there have names relating to death and mythological interpretations of the afterlife.
• Gabrielles Ghostly Groove takes place in the town of Monsterville, which naturally doubles as a Monster Mash.
• Guild Wars 2: During the annual Halloween activity, Lion's Arch becomes a Halloweentown, with permanent darkness, a leering moon, kitschy tombstones, Jack-o-Lanterns, creepy portals, and assorted other Halloween paraphernalia filling the Trader's Forum.
• Haunted House on the Atari is one of the first games to be set here.
• Impressive Title: Shrieking Hills is a set of gloomy dark hills filled with giant pumpkins, gnarled dead trees, and gravestones along with bats and crows flying everywhere. On top of this, it also has a pumpkin-shaped lake full of suspiciously-red liquid and a set of blue, crystalline Floating Platforms that overlook the landscape to let the player take in the spooky atmosphere.
• JumpStart Adventures 4th Grade: Haunted Island: The setting takes place on the titular Haunted Island, home to Ms. Grunkle. There are also various spooky locations from various horror genres located around the island from ghosts, to vampires, to mummies, and the Hunchback of Notre Dame.
• Kingdom Hearts: The protagonists visit the trope-naming town a couple of times, and get cool monster costumes to match!
• Magician's Quest: Mysterious Times has the "Creepy" and "Halloween" themes. "Creepy" is more haunted-house oriented while "Halloween" is full-out Jack-o-Lantern style Halloween.
• Miku'n Pop: Requiem Cemetery (stage 4) features gravestones, barren trees, jack o' lanterns, and twilight sky at its background. Creatures living here including bedsheet ghosts, large poisonous frogs, and pumpkin witches riding flying broomsticks.
• Nobody Saves the World: Damptonia is populated by witches and classic monsters like a vampire and a wolfman, pumpkins are growing everywhere, and black cats roam the streets, but the NPC citizens are perfectly friendly.
• Planet Zoo: The “Twilight Pack” DLC includes lots of gothic and Transylvanian-themed architecture and decorative options. There is also a career mode map based around this theme set in "Castle Myers", Transylvania.
• RollerCoaster Tycoon 2: The "Wacky Worlds" Expansion Pack lets you put Halloween and "horror"-themed decorations in your park, along with the option of bare dirt (or whatever you want) for the ground. Some rides are even Halloween-themed.
• Sly 2: Band of Thieves: Prague is home to monsters, a guillotine, a gothic castle, and a countess with spider legs ruling over it all.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Luigi's Mansion: Luigi goes about in a haunted setting (a haunted mansion in the first game, multiple haunted locations in the second, and a haunted hotel in the third) hunting ghosts with a souped-up vacuum cleaner.
  • New Super Mario Bros.: World 8-1 is decorated by dense clouds and skeletal trees, and is home to ghosts and walking pumpkins.
  • Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door: Twilight Town exists in a state of perpetual twilight, with a gigantic yellow full moon in the sky, and is inhabited mainly by crows and the gothic Twilighters. The town itself is under a curse where every time the church bell rings, a random denizen of Twilight Town is turned into a pig. Fortunately, No Ontological Inertia is in place.
  • Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins: The Pumpkin Zone is set inside a giant Jack-o'-Lantern and is home to ghosts, hockey-masked slashers, and yokai. Its boss is a Wicked Witch.
  • Super Mario World has an unlockable skin that, if you can beat the special stages, gives the game world an autumnal reskin and gives some enemies Halloween costumes, such as Piranha Plants become Jack-o'-lanterns, Bullet Bills turning into crows, and Koopas wearing Mario masks.
  • Super Mario Odyssey: The Cap Kingdom is a foggy, monochrome level inhabited by hat ghosts called Bonneters, with the hills, sky, and Danny Elman-like music giving it a heavy resemblance to the Trope Namer. It's a major Dark Is Not Evil example, as the Bonneters are universally Friendly Ghosts who are the victims of Bowser's recent rampage that left their airships wrecked.
• World of Warcraft:
  • Undercity, home of the Forsaken undead, is built completely underground. All the buildings are gothic in design, skull-shaped decorations abound. Green-yellow goo (in which you can surprisingly fish) flows in the canals. The city is guarded by giant abominations (read Frankenstein's Monsters). One of the quarters of the city is "The Apothecarium": a laboratory destined to the production of said monsters and the development of new Plagues. All the inhabitants are obviously undead. The ruler is a Banshee and the co-ruler (used to be, until his failed takeover attempt) a vampire-demon. This is the actual capital city for a player race, too. Not a vile dungeon filled with enemies. (Don't get us wrong, the Forsaken are mostly assholes, especially the Apothecaries, but still.)
  • As far as actual dungeons are concerned, Naxxramas is a flying necropolis filled with more undead horrors than your mind can comprehend.
  • There is also the Halloween-feel in Tirisfal Glades (with a bridge that feels straight out of Sleepy Hollow) and Darkshire, the only town in the spooky and foggy woods of Duskwood. It's Always Night in both locations.
  • Tirisfal Glades also plays host to the Headless Horseman, Pumpkin Fest, and Trick or Treat Mask give-aways every year around Halloween.

• Dreamscape: The vampire empire in the Underworld. Not just because of its populace, but also all of the buildings look like haunted houses and its got a red sky.
• Less is Morgue takes place in a Halloweentown version of Tallahassee, Florida. There are ghosts, ghouls, demons, vampires, and pet stores that sell zombifying rats and mind-controlling goldfish. The main characters even live at the delightfully silly address of 247 Mayhem Way.
• Neopets: The Haunted Woods in Neopets is halfway between this trope and Überwald. It's always night with a full moon, filled with spooky Neopets and other strange creatures.
• Ravensblight Manor, a site for the various artistic experiments of Ray O'Bannon, is modeled after a strange town which is capable of teleporting anywhere within the continental United States ^note . The site includes a toyshop in which you can acquire free downloadable papercraft of the various manifestations of spookiness that occur around the town. These include a Ghost Train, ghost aircraft, ships, haunted car, trucks, and multiple houses, each with a succession of occupants who either died tragically and miserably, were suspected of working foul magics, went mad, or did something weird and disappeared or had to face the locals' wrath. Cemeteries, monsters, coffins, and games about cemeteries... and the list goes on. And it's always midnight in Ravensblight! Don't take a ride on the abandoned carousel, even if it is still playing fairground music.

• Beetlejuice: The Neitherworld is full of bizarre buildings, Gothic-looking scenery, twisted backgrounds, and strange creatures of all shapes and sizes. Of course, the creatures are, for the most part pretty friendly if a little strange.
• Ben 10: Aliens designed after horror monsters all come from the Anur system, bathed in the light of a dark star. The ghost-like Ectonurites come from the surreal wasteland of Anur Phaetos; the Frankenstenoid Transylians and the now-extinct vampire-like Vladats come from the steampuk Gothic cities of Anur Transyl; the werewolf-like Loboans live in the dense forests of Luna Lobo; the mummy-like Thep Khufans come from the radioactive deserts of Anur Khufos; and the zombie-like Ormerowons come from Anur Ormerow.
• The Fairly OddParents!: In one episode, Timmy (temporary turned into a fairy) tries poofing to Fairy World, but instead ends up in Scary World. He meets a vampire, who scares him with a picture of his grandma's feet.
• Monster High: Depending on the Writer, the school is located in a town like this. In one of the movies the protagonists live in an entire monster counterpart of planet Earth.
• OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes has the house where Enid and her monster family lives in "Parents Day". It had vampire mom Wilhamena, werewolf dad Bernard, headless horse boy who had a pumpkin for a Head Icky, a Frankenstein's monster named Boris, and two ghosts named Spanky and Crudde.
• The Real Ghostbusters: Several episodes deal with villages or even worlds like this. Episode "No One Comes to Lupusville" has a village of vampires, and episode "Flip Side" works as a Mirror Universe episode with Boo York, the ghostly counterpart of New York with ghost citizens. Also the Containment Unity turns out like this becoming basically Another Dimension inhabited by spirits in a ghostly environment.
• Ruby Gloom is set in one named Gloomsville. We don't see much of it outside of the mansion the characters live in, but it's permanently night there and the residents are all manner of ghoulish creatures. Of course, most of Gloomsville's residents aren't really evil, just eccentric.

• Certain parts of Salem, Massachusetts try so hard to live this trope year-round. Unfortunately, the bar, or ice cream shop, or convenience store next door conveniently ruins the illusion.
• St. Helens, Oregon is a good example, seeing as it was also the same place used by Disney for the Halloweentown (1998) DCOMs.