Sales From the Crypt: Halloween Smashes on Billboard Charts Over the Decades

Christmas music decks the halls of the Billboard Holiday 100 at the end of every year, but some creepy cuts lurk around the October charts as well. And make no bones about it: If you create a monster hit in the lab, it may come back to haunt the hit parade every fall. For years, Billboard has tracked the graveyard smashes, thriller nights and legal nightmares that have sunk their teeth into the KILLboard Rot 100.

‘Monster’ Hit

After the novelty single “Monster Mash” by Bobby “Boris” Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers began getting radio play in Boston, the Sept. 29, 1962, Billboard reported that “Boris, Igor and the other bloodsuckers” were clawing their way up the charts. A week later, Billboard profiled Pickett, calling the Army veteran and stage comedian a “versatile lad” who “still holds on to his ambition to be an actor.” On the same page ran a feature about another new act: The Beach Boys. Pickett’s song hit No. 1 by the end of the month — a feat that took the surfin’ slackers another two years.

License to Thrill-er

“The video has a ghoulish theme,” warned the Dec. 3, 1983, Billboard of Michael Jackson’s zombie-filled video for “Thriller,” “but it is brightened by clever plot twists.” The article explained why the video opens with a title card disavowing any “belief in the occult”: Jackson’s discomfort with the video’s imagery, “one reason he avoided a Halloween tie-in.” He didn’t need one. The Dec. 24 issue said the video “shipped a reported 100,000 units — the highest initial shipment in history for an original non-theatrical video.”

Giving Up the Ghost

“It’s the ‘bad boy’ at his most playful in a call-and-response dance-rocker from the film of the same name,” the June 9, 1984, Billboard said of Ray Parker Jr.’s “Ghostbusters.” In the Aug. 11 issue, a headline declared “Bustin’ Makes Ray Feel Good” as the song hit No. 1. And while Parker wasn’t afraid of no ghosts, what about Huey Lewis’ lawyers? They sued him in a plagiarism case for similarities to Lewis’ “I Want a New Drug.” “It’s more like M’s ‘Pop Muzik,’ ” Parker insisted in the Aug. 25 issue.

Lawyers Just Don’t Understand

The Fresh Prince & DJ Jazzy Jeff scared up a lawsuit of their own with the Hot 100 top 15 hit “A Nightmare on My Street.” That title “is turning out to be prophetic,” quipped the Aug. 6, 1988, Billboard. “New Line Cinema, which produces and distributes the A Nightmare on Elm Street series of films, has served papers.” The legal scare buried the song’s video but the soundtrack to the fourth Freddy Krueger flick was still DOA. “Nightmare films have never produced a hit soundtrack,” declared the Sept. 3, 1988, issue. “This one won’t do the trick, either.”

This Is Halloween

“While the holiday doesn’t generate monster-selling albums like Christmas does, the scary celebration has spurred a number of solid-selling titles,” according to the Nov. 2, 2013, issue, citing the “soundtrack to Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas,” as well as a long-out-of-print sound effects collection called Sounds of Halloween, which “had moved 528,000 copies to date.” Now, thanks to screaming — er, streaming — platforms Halloween hits rise from the grave every year.

This story appears in the Oct. 25, 2025, issue of Billboard.