“You know Blake,” some of you may be saying, “Just because it’s October doesn’t mean that EVERYTHING you write about has to be scary. Some of us don’t necessarily NEED to immerse ourselves in serial killers and cosmic horror and Stephen King 24/7.”

“You’re right,” I said.

“I…I am?” you reply.

“Yeah, you are. I guess just because it’s October doesn’t mean EVERYTHING has to be scary.”

“Oh. Oookay. Well…GOOD!”

“So this week,” I say, “I’ll talk about some stuff that isn’t scary at all.”

“Thank you.”

“Still gonna write about Halloween, though.”

“Damn it.”

We all know how much I love the creepy content during Spooky Season, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other things about Halloween that I love just as much – things that wouldn’t scare anybody but, at the same time, still contribute to the ghoulishly gleeful fun of this month. So if you’re NOT the kind of person who wants to be freaked out for Halloween but you still want to take part in the celebration, I’m going to give you guys a few recommendations for totally safe, family-friendly Halloween entertainment that will hopefully take you through to next month.

When I’m not watching somebody getting disemboweled in October, you know what’s the next best thing? Baking. I’ve been a fan for YEARS of the Food Network’s “Baking Championship” shows, and Halloween is the prime time. There are a whopping 14 seasons of Halloween Baking Championship available, and they’re all worth watching. In case you need someone to spell it out for you, it’s a pretty standard reality competition show. Each season a new group of contestants are gathered together and made to compete in a series of baking challenges, each episode one contestant is eliminated, and in the end, a victor is crowned. There are a wide variety of challenges as well – sometimes they have to make a certain type of dessert, sometimes they have to decorate their concoction based on a specific theme, sometimes there’s a specific ingredient they have to use. This is all well and good, but as I can’t actually eat any of the things that they’re making at home, I generally tune in to see what these creations look like. I’m in awe of some of these cakes and pies and cobblers that come out looking like monsters, skeletons, witch’s cauldrons, spellbooks, and any other sort of thing you can imagine.

Now, this isn’t one of those shows where they’re necessarily attempting to IMITATE real things (you’re thinking of Is It Cake?, where the goal is to make a cake that can trick someone into thinking it’s something else, like a shoe). This is purely about the artistry and creativity of the decorating and how good the food actually tastes. I don’t talk about it much, but I actually quite enjoy baking. It’s a fun, soothing, and edible hobby, and I think I can do a decent job making things that taste pretty good. However, absolutely NOTHING I have ever or will ever make in my entire life will look as amazing as the stuff we see on this show. Even the LOSERS turn out confections that put anything I could ever create to shame, and somehow I enjoy watching that.

I also like these shows way more than “traditional” reality competitions like Survivor or Big Brother because — unlike those other shows — you don’t have the pettiness, the nastiness, or the backstabbing that have made them world-famous. In fact, it’s not at all unusual to see the contestants on these shows HELP each other if they can. It’s not QUITE as cozy as The Great British Baking Show, but there’s still a vibe of camaraderie that makes this show far more entertaining than one where they’re voting each other off.

It’s not the only show that has this pedigree as well. There are two other Food Network shows with similar formats that I also enjoy. Outrageous Pumpkins is structurally the same, except instead of baking it’s about carving and building elaborate displays out of pumpkins. Then there’s Halloween Wars, which combines the two: on this show there are teams of food artists (typically a baker, a pumpkin carver, and someone skilled in making things out of sugar) working together to create remarkably elaborate dioramas that look like they could have spilled out of a haunted house. 

Maybe that’s not your thing, though. You want something with a story, a plot. I’ve got just the thing, guys, and it’s called Bob’s Burgers. This has been one of my favorite cartoon series for years. At its core, it’s an animated sitcom about the owner of a struggling hamburger joint and his lunatic family, including his wife Linda and their three kids. The thing about this show, though, is that no matter how strange, bizarre, or absolutely ludicrous that week’s misadventure may get, there is a warm and loving core. Bob and Linda Belcher love each other and love their children completely and without reservation. That doesn’t mean they never get mad or have conflict, because real love doesn’t work that way, but at the end of the day they deeply care about one another, and that’s really refreshing in an era where so many TV comedies are about families who can’t even be in the same room together without being jerks. 

The Belchers are in their FIFTEENTH season, and they’ve actually done more for holiday episodes than almost any other show I’ve ever seen. Over a dozen of their fifteen seasons have included Halloween episodes. Not only that, but they almost always have a Thanksgiving episode AND a Christmas episode each year. Plus, while not exactly an annual occurrence like the others, there have been several Valentine’s Day episodes as well. The people behind this show LOVE their holidays. If you’ve got the Hulu streaming service, there’s a spot in their “Huluween” library where you can actually access every Halloween episode of Bob’s Burgers right now. Just try to ignore the fact that 13 Halloweens have gone by and Louise Belcher is still eight years old. It’s a cartoon, you know how this works. 

Last year, I spent an entire column writing about some of the great Halloween specials and how much I want new ones. I’m not going to go through all of them again (go ahead and read last year’s column), but let’s remember how many awesome non-scary Halloween specials actually exist. Beyond the classics like It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and Garfield’s Halloween Adventure, there are lesser-known but still worthy movies and specials like Rankin and Bass’s Mad Monster Party, Halloween is Grinch Night, or The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. 

But what about the SHORTS, guys?

I have often felt like a man out of time in many respects, and none more so than my craving for theatrical animated shorts. There was a time, a halcyon era before I was born, when buying a movie ticket would include not just the feature film, but at least one short film. It’s the place where the Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry, and the Disney pantheon all came from, and the fact that not even Pixar is still consistently giving us theatrical cartoon shorts makes me a sad, sad panda. But back in the day, these studios gave us some magnificent Halloween shorts that are still fun to watch today. Let’s talk about two of my favorites, both of which star the same phenomenal voice actor, the immortal June Foray. 

In 1952, Jack Hannah gave us Disney’s Trick or Treat, which is in the running for my favorite Donald Duck cartoon of all time. I know you’ve seen this one: Donald pranks his nephews while they’re trick-or-treating by dumping water on their heads, because Donald is just that kind of a jerk sometimes. This transgression is witnessed by Witch Hazel – voiced by Foray – and she decides to give Donald his comeuppance. She comes after Donald with the help of the boys, some singing ghosts, and a magic spray that gives her control over his legs. 

It’s a funny cartoon with gorgeous animation and, along with it, a song that should by God be a national Halloween anthem. I’m not even joking – if a kid came up to my house singing the “Trick or Treat” song from this cartoon I would just dump all of my candy into their bag and close the door, because they just won Halloween. Plus there’s June Foray as Witch Hazel, the only person in the history of American cinema who even comes close to Mel Blanc as a voice master. Some people have even called her the “female Mel Blanc,” while others find it more appropriate to refer to Blanc as “the male June Foray.” I’m not going to argue with either one of them.

But it didn’t end there. Four years later, in 1956, director Chuck Jones asked Foray to reprise her role as Witch Hazel – not in a Disney short, but for the Looney Tunes. You see, Jones noticed that “witch hazel” is the name of an actual plant and, therefore, Disney could not trademark the name, making it free for him to use as well. Armed with the law on his side, he recruited Foray into his acting troupe for the cartoon Broom-Stick Bunny.

In this one, Bugs Bunny is wearing a witch costume for his trick-or-treating and winds up in the mansion of, once again, Witch Hazel, who thinks he IS a fellow witch and invites him in. It’s a great cartoon and knowing that Jones deliberately cast Foray to voice the character in an attempt to “remake” the Disney version makes it even funnier. Foray, for her part, did attempt to differentiate the two witches, using an American accent for the Warner Bros version instead of the British accent she gave the Disney witch, but it’s hard to watch the two cartoons back-to-back without picturing them as the same character. Foray would reprise the Witch Hazel role several times and ultimately became a frequent collaborator of Chuck Jones. The voice of Cindy Lou Who from How the Grinch Stole Christmas may have been totally different if Jones didn’t want to poke at the Disney machine just a little bit.

If you want to join in on the fun of Halloween but you don’t want to be scared, there are still plenty of options out there for you. Round up the kids, watch some of these classic cartoons, try to recreate some of the eerie edibles from the Food Network shows, and just have fun with it. Halloween should be fun, and if your idea of fun doesn’t involve having your blood chilled, there’s nothing wrong with that. You’ve just got to find what unlocks your inner ghoul with lighter fare. 

QUICK NOTE: If you’re the type of person who actually reads the title of these columns (hi!) then you may notice that this issue the 95th installment of Geek Punditry. Coming up on the two-year anniversary and, perhaps more important, the nice, round 100th column. I’m the kind of nerd who likes nice, round numbers, and I want to do something special for the big 1-0-0…trouble is, I don’t know WHAT to do. So if you have a suggestion for something you think I should write about or something I’ve discussed in the past you’d like me to go back to, here’s your chance to let me know I’m open for suggestions! You can drop them in the comments here, on whatever social media you followed to get to this post, or email me at info@blakempetit.com!

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He’s still not sure what he’s going to dress up as for Halloween this year. He was considering a Stephen King costume, but he hasn’t been able to find a Maine travel guide.