Halloween is a special time of year. We come together to bring out the beauty in darkness and experience the heady adrenaline rush of horror. It’s the perfect time for a game night—to cast yourself as the star of your own personal horror movie, as you and your friends pick your way through a monstrous scenario. If you’re looking for a fun way to spend the holiday, try one of these horror board games and have as much fun as a child trick-or-treating!

Pandemic is unfortunately this year’s most relevant game, but have you tried Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu? In this game, it isn’t just disease you must fight, but also H.P. Lovecraft’s Great Old Ones themselves; horrific monsters from the depths of time and space who want to bring about the end of human life as we know it. Can you defeat the local doomsday cults and stop the summoning of these abominations before it’s too late?

Betrayal at House on the Hill is a respected classic about a haunted house, explored by the hapless players. It’s delightful for a chilly autumn night. And while there is already immense replay value due to the huge number of potential haunts that can occur, a version of the game called Betrayal Legacy extends it into a long-term campaign. If, like me, you celebrate Halloween all year round, this game is something you can return to over and over, as you chart the death or survival of generations of your family of ghost-hunters.

Gloom is a nice game about doing nice things for other people! But of course, it’s all a bit more sinister than that would suggest. Players control cursed and morbid families; the goal is for bad things to happen to your own family, and good things to happen to everyone else. It’s a darkly hilarious card game perfect for fans of Edward Gorey and The Addams Family—where else can you have a brain in a jar get elected to parliament only to die of despair?

All of the Arkham Horror games (including Eldritch Horror and Mansions of Madness) make fine Halloween game night choices, but if you aren’t willing to set aside an entire evening for one single game, consider Final Hour as an introduction. In this game (meant to last about an hour, as the title implies) an evil god has already been summoned and is arriving to destroy our plane of existence! There’s just one slight chance that the students and faculty of the local university might be able to send it back if they can work together and fight off the monsters already swarming them. Give it your all, because the world is counting on you!

And the most appropriate game of all, Mysterium, actually takes place on Halloween! Specifically Halloween 1920, where the players are mediums called upon to communicate with a ghost (except for the player playing the ghost)! The ghost communicates through symbolic dreams, expressed by achingly beautiful picture cards, and the mediums must decipher what they are trying to convey. Less outright scary than mysterious (as the name implies), Mysterium is one of my all-time favorite board games and makes for engaging play at any time of year.

Have a safe and happy Halloween, my friends!  Enjoy these games with a cup of apple cider, a seasonal cocktail or a bowl full of candy and rediscover the fun of All Hallows Eve.