31 Days of Horror | 2026 Kickoff

Kris 0:01

Greetings and salutations, listeners. It's time to turn up and tune in for this special news bullish from WHOS Television, your home for all things horror this spooky season. Reporting live on the scene, it is I, your friendly neighborhood slash enthusiast Chris, and joining me out in the field for this very important update. Welcome to our creepy correspondent and demonic darling chell.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Freaking bats and love Halloween.

Kris 0:28

Folks, it's only been a few weeks since Camp Hackerslash closed its doors after a fantastic summer ween season and break, but we are back once more to celebrate the spooky season in 2026.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

This year we are checking the TV guide and we are changing the channel back to what some may call the good old days. This year's spooky season theme is all about the nostalgia and callbacks to when we were baby horror fans, who only had to worry about if mom would order Pizza Hut for dinner that night and if the horror movie they rented for Blockbuster would give them nightmares or not.

Kris 1:03

Oh man, you're saying Pizza Hut and you're really taking me back makes me wish I ordered some tonight. Those were simpler times, obviously, and over the course of this year's spooky season, we invite all of our listeners to not only celebrate the season with their favorite horror movies, but with a soft spot for all those feelings and those memories that really made this time of year so special. And dare I say magical when we were kids.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

This spooky season will feature call-outs to show off your favorite childhood costume photos, sharing your favorite Halloween memories, and resurrecting some of the fun feelings that can only really come from staying up all night, watching horror movies with your best friends, and sneaking some of that trick-or-treat candy that mom told you not to touch till the next day.

Kris 1:48

Okay, I am so excited for all of what we have in store, Cho. But before we jump into all the great things on the calendar for the spooky season, please tell us what nostalgic memories does the spooky season bring up for you?

SPEAKER_01 2:00

Chris, so before I was a baby horror fan, I was a baby Halloween fan. And nothing gets me more into my spooky season and holiday vibes than It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. It has been a tradition in my family to watch that every year. And God, it nothing gets me more excited for the Halloween season. It's one of the first things I watch every year to really get me into those vibes.

Kris 2:26

I love that so much. I wish we were even more of a Halloween family when I was growing up. Like we watched horror movies for sure. Then we did some light Halloween decorations, but it was nothing like super crazy. But what I loved most was just the energy surrounding everyone for Halloween and just the spooky season coming to life. Obviously, AMC Fear Fest and thinking about uh the uh Tales from the Crypt and the Crypt Keeper. There are so many moments looking back in my childhood where getting to nussle up on the couch with some blankets and watching horror movies in October was just such a fun thing to do with my siblings. And I'm even thinking about the Jiffy Pop. I need to find where I can find Jiffy Pop because I I am determined to do it. And I think what I'm really excited about is not only redoing some of those traditions I had when I was younger, but also creating new traditions now as my nephew's moved in with me and he's like already committed to carving jack-o'-lanterns. So I think about the spooky season, I think about togetherness, I think about sharing a love for horror, and I can't wait to turn it up more this year.

SPEAKER_01 3:33

Absolutely. I think that's what this is all about. It's that anticipation. You know, you're at school and you're talking about what you're gonna be for Halloween and where you're gonna go trick-or-treating. And even though you kind of knew that the horror movies weren't real, there was always kind of just that little bit of undercurrent, you know, you're nine years old, you don't know everything. Maybe this is the year something spooky actually happens to you. And it kind of scared you, but also really excited you.

Kris 4:00

Yeah, and again, I want to throw it back. Greece too, it's not weird, weird, but exciting weird. That's what it feels like. Obviously, we have really conjured up the nostalgic feels here, Chell. But for now, let's dive into all the great stuff that station WHOS has planned for this spooky season. As is tradition here at Hackerslash, we will be celebrating the 31 days of horror with a calendar filled with a theme of every day for the month. But this year, Chell, you've added an extra twist to the calendar, haven't you? So please tell us about that.

SPEAKER_01 4:32

I sure did, Chris. Every year when I plan the 31 days calendar, right around when Summerween ends, I try to find a new twist to make each year unique. Last year we had office hours for Hackerslash University with themes that aligned with the favorite flavors of our horror hosts, uh, which they liked the most, and invited them as our esteemed professors to celebrate that day, give their recommendations and talk about why they love that genre so much. So this year I really wanted to think about some of those memories again that we just talked about that made the holiday season and the spooky season so exciting. And it just came to me. So I started with themes for every day of the week to call into those nostalgic instincts. And from there, I let those themes determine the specific horror genres that would fill out those days. So it helped me figure out what Mondays should look like, what Tuesday should look like, and so on and so forth. And I just got really excited about it.

Kris 5:33

Yeah, I love that so much. You really have some fantastic themes that you've conjured up here. I mean, obviously, we have Monster Monday, we have Sunday Scaries, we have Throwback Thursdays. But what I love the most, Shell, and what I'm most excited about, especially because of what's coming in our community, is sleepover Saturdays.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

Yes, that is going to be a great feature, and we'll dig deeper into it. But who among us haven't had a Saturday night where you just you roll up your sleeping bag, you get your pajamas on, you go over to your friend's house for a sleepover, knowing very well you're probably not going to sleep, and you're gonna probably watch a few movies that are just so fun to watch with your friends.

Kris 6:12

I made this very honest statement in the past. I didn't grow up with friends in that nature, but I did grow up with cousins, and I remember what a treat it felt like being able to go to my cousin's house for a sleepover and staying up late watching horror movies. Oof.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

And staying up late is the inspiration for my favorite day of the week, which is late night Friday flicks. One of my favorite things to do was to sneak in uh to the living room after my parents had gone to sleep, or once I got a TV in my room, turn it down low and see what was on after like 11:30 p.m. And sometimes it was some gems. That was how I first saw the movie Clue way back in the day. Uh, but then there were also some some freaky things on AMC that you know you heard us you heard a creak and you flipped it over to Nickelodeon so that your parents didn't get mad at you for watching it. But something about just a late night Friday flick Chris is really, really resonated with me. So I'm really excited to share that with with the listeners this year.

Kris 7:16

Yeah, I'm excited because now you're even reminding me that those late nights in the living rooms when I was on well, on summer break, but then also in October with the horror movies, standing up late baking French bread pizzas in the oven and just going ham. So we got we have some more magic to create. And while we are reveling in those feelings of the past, this year's spooky season, we'll see station WHOS jumping into the future with our very own website and tracking system to let everyone keep track of all the great movies they're gonna watch this season. And folks, I am so fucking stoked about what we've cooked up here.

SPEAKER_01 7:52

It is fantastic, it is user-friendly, it is very intuitive. Chris and I have been playing with it for a few days now. So, in addition to being able to track all of your days, every day we'll also have recommendations. So maybe you're new to Hackerslash, or maybe you just need some guidance on what you should watch on a certain day. Well, there will be listings of plenty of recommendations based on episodes of Hacker Slash that the team has already done to kind of help you along, give you a companion podcast to listen to after. And Chris went the extra mile of adding their letterbox links so you can get a little bit more of a vibe, maybe get a rating, a runtime to really decide what the perfect movie is for each day of the calendar for you.

Kris 8:35

Yeah, I'm so stoked about this. So, as Shell mentioned, we're gonna have your daily logs. So when you actually go to this website, it is WHOSH-13.tv. You have to put the WW down for it. We'll drop links in this episode description. We'll be sharing it on social media, we'll have it in our Discord. Don't worry, you'll be able to find it. But what's really cool is you'll have four different tabs. You'll have the tonight tab, and tonight will always default to whatever the current day is, and you'll be able to see the theme, a little quick description of the theme. You have the option of filling in the title of the movie that you're going to watch. You can mark if it's a first-time watch. You can then score it. Is it a hack or a slash? And then you can also, if you want, uh choose any number of questions that you want to answer, whether it's about your scoring itself, it's the experience and the thoughts that you have after it, if you're logging some expectations you had before going into it, a little bit of a free form and free-for-all, if you will. So you can make this as simple or as comprehensive and as and as expansive as you want. You have you have complete control over that. And once you finish this summary, as Chell mentioned, obviously, we can give you recommendations. You have the episode link, the letterbox link. But once you hit marked night complete, that's gonna automatically update in the tracker portion. And folks, we have tried this the last few years. One year was a spreadsheet, one year was just like a survey. I think this is the best way that we've gotten it so far. But if you go into the second tab, which is programming, you'll see actually a progress in a calendar view highlighted in orange of the days that you completed, a highlighted yellow ring around today's day, any dotted lines around the ones that you missed. You can then look at every single uh theme right at right beneath that. And then in our archive tab, we have uh again two different two or three different ways that you can look at this. You can look ahead and plan your week. So there's a this week view, and you can see the themes and what are the movies that we recommend for those themes for this week. You can flip over to all 31, which will show you every single day, every single theme, and link every single episode that we recommend. Or let's say you're making your progress throughout the month, but you missed a day, you can click on nights I missed, and if you've not completed one and it's already passed, it will actually show you the themes and recommendations for that specific theme. Cho, what do you think so far?

SPEAKER_01 11:11

I am so excited, and I know I'm one of many people that the 31 Days of Horror is more than just checking off a day. So being able to track and look back at the end of at the end of the month and say, wow, I watched all these great movies. What were my new movies I hadn't seen before? What were some oldies that I've loved forever that I watched? And being able to rate them and to really talk about them and give reviews, I know that's something that a lot of our fans and a lot of our listeners love doing. So I love that there's a place for them to do that. I really think we've refined it this year. And I think the listeners are gonna absolutely love it, new and old, uh, when they start using it to track the days they've survived.

Kris 11:52

Yeah. And what I'm even more excited about is the my record tab, and it's our last tab that you'll see on this website. So your my record is gonna be a summary of everything that you've input on the tonight or the programming section. And when you go through this, you're going to see how many nights you've completed of the 31 days of horror. You'll see a breakdown of every movie you've done, if you've added the title, what the theme was. It'll also show you if you scored it. Then you have a button that says share my record. And when you do that, you're going to generate an image that you can download. And that image is going to be as, again, as simple or as expansive as you want. You can either show just the number of days that you've completed, or you can have a calendar breakdown with the movie titles of what you watched, when you watched it. You can denote a star if it was your first time watch. You can also show your scores on there. It's honestly, I'm just so stoked, folks, because you have complete control and then get to share that along with along with your friends throughout the whole month. I know that 31 Days of Horror, a lot of people have different variations of this challenge, and people share a daily update. So we made a way for you to also share a daily update as you participate alongside us.

SPEAKER_01 13:09

I'm one of those people I love posting a daily update on Instagram. So this is going to be such a fun thing for me to have for people that know they always check in with me in October. And if you're one of the folks that is going to be posting it, make sure you're tagging hackerslash. We want to see the movies that you're that you're posting, that you're sharing, that you're talking about. Maybe you'll even get a shout out. So definitely make sure you're tagging us and sharing it when you put it on your social media.

Kris 13:35

Absolutely. Now, again, beneath that share my record button, you're also gonna have two more sections here. One is gonna give an automatic tally throughout the month of your hacks and your slashes and a percentage bar on the vibe for your October. Is it mostly hack? Is it mostly slash? I'm also gonna work on an update here where you can even see what percentage of your movies watched were first time watches. So I think that's gonna be cool. And beneath that, we're also gonna have a your month in horror where you get to review the summary of all of the movies you watched and reviewed. Again, I mentioned earlier, you can choose if you answer any extra questions about the movies that you watched. And if you do, you're gonna be able to copy all those responses and send us an email submission to hello at hackerslash.com. And if you do that, that's gonna allow us to then tally all this data is completely yours. We're not saving any of it unless you choose to email us a recap of uh of what your month looked like. And if you did that, then Shell and I will crunch some numbers and we'll get some great participation. So please, please do send it to us. We do want to know. We want to see your final cards at the end of the month for sure, along with your daily updates on social. But please send us your final cards and then also send us your final thoughts and like your analysis on everything. Because we cannot wait to just really bring it all together for the community and then share a recap at the end of the month of how it all went for everyone.

SPEAKER_01 15:08

Share your sweet, sweet data with us.

Kris 15:10

But again, just for clarity, your data is your data, and we actually cannot see it. So when you fill this out, it is saved locally in your browser, and we only see what you choose to send us. But obviously, child, the WHOS tracking app is not the only way that our hackerslash listeners can get and stay connected this spooky season. We also have a whole bunch of great ways to keep the community engaged and excited all month long.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

That's right. So the station WHOS Discord channel is live and on the air, a place where our spooky season spectators can jump in to get movie suggestions, share what they're watching, and even participate in some of those fun photo call-outs we mentioned at the top of the show. Questions of the deck, maybe some fun challenges, some polls to really just evoke all of those feelings that we want to enjoy. If you haven't joined the hyperslash Discord before now, this is a fantastic time to jump in and get acquainted.

Kris 16:08

And of course, if that's not enough to get you excited about the spooky season, we'll also be hosting a whole slew of awesome community events meant to replicate the after school hangouts and slumber party vibes from our younger days. So, for example, our first throwback Thursday watch party celebration and the kickoff for spooky season is going to be a watch party of Bride of Chucky. Because again, this is apparently millennial nostalgia, and I remember what a ride that movie was when I was a kid.

SPEAKER_01 16:38

I just remember that was right around the time that I became really cognizant of just what horror movies are. You start looking at the blockbuster video covers a lot more. And I just remember the Bride of Chucky one really standing out to me. Uh, so even though I didn't watch it till much later, it's always just kind of been this looming presence since a young Chelsea walked through the halls of Blockbuster.

Kris 17:01

I I'm honestly so excited to see it now after having re-watched Bride of Frankenstein so recently.

SPEAKER_01 17:08

And then our next day were or next week, and then that next week, we will for Time Travel Tuesday on October 6th, be immersing ourselves in a period piece. Uh, we will be doing a community watch party of Annabelle, placed in the 60s, the time of the mansons. And I think it'll be a really fun way for people to to dive in and really enjoy Time Travel Tuesday.

Kris 17:34

Oh, I am so sorry for that because again, I have not seen Annabelle.

SPEAKER_01 17:37

Which is absolutely bananas to me. I love the Annabelle movies. I'm on record as a conjuring verse stan, but the Annabelle movies have such a special place in my heart, so I'm so excited to revisit this.

Kris 17:49

Yeah, it's gonna be such a fucking blast. And speaking of blasts, we have an even better way to keep the fun going with another installment of Cocaine Theater, hosted by Drew Baca on Weird Out Wednesday, which will be October 7th. And we'll be then staying up late together on Friday, October 9th for Mystery Meat Theater.

SPEAKER_01 18:08

Chris, I think one of the best parts about our community in the Discord is that we have these fun little events that pop in. We've got Nathan's feature presentations, we've got Drew Baco at the Cocaine Theater, we've got Mystery Meat Theater. So when we reached out to them when we were planning our spooky season in early, early September, it was so exciting to reach out to them and say, yeah, absolutely. What day do you want to do it? And it's just so much more fun to be able to get more than just us hosts involved with some of the fun. And we are so excited to see what these guys bring to the table to really beef up our spooky season fun.

Kris 18:47

And I know a specific flavor of fun you tend to love is your boy Joe Bob Briggs.

SPEAKER_01 18:53

Yes, again, we will be staying up late on October 23rd with the king of late night flicks. Joe Bob Briggs' Halloween special will be running on AMC and Shudder. So we are going to have a ideally a watch party as long as Shudder allows us to do that on here. If not, we will do a watch and chat along where you bring your own streaming service and we will chat up in the in one of the channels to talk about what movies Joe Bob Briggs has for us for his Halloween house party this year.

Kris 19:25

Yeah. And if you want a more chill vibe and you just want to shoot the shit with your fellow horror fans, we're actually even going to be opening up the voice chat on a couple Sunday evenings for a casual hangout session to help soothe away those Sunday scaries in October. Of course, we just cannot forget that every Saturday night in October, we will be staying up all night, or at least some of the night, maybe most of the night, for sleepover Saturdays with a lot of fun events. We've actually got video game marathons for Phasmophobia and Halloween the game plan. We'll be binge watching classic tales from the crypt episodes and the newest episodes of Camp Crystal Lake, and of course, watching all the Halloween movies we can handle on the on the 31st.

SPEAKER_01 20:09

Yes, again, what is a sleepover, if not friends all staying up way too late watching things that they probably shouldn't have been watching at a very young age. So these will be times where you don't have to show up at a specific time. We will be setting up whatever it is in the in the watch party or the event stream, and you can hop in, say hi, hang out for a little bit, maybe hop out, maybe go to bed, maybe don't be the first to go to bed because we all know what happens to the first fall asleep at a sleepover. Or if you decide to just check in in the morning and see what us hooligans got up to on Saturday night, that's cool too. But it is a come and go as you please, and we are so excited to uh see everyone jump in and join us.

Kris 20:52

100%. I love this time of year because this is when our podcast and our community really comes to life in a whole new way. And we always end up welcoming more people into the Patreon family, into Discord during this time of year. And I'm honestly just so excited, Chell, to see how many people we reach with the 31 Days of Horror Tracker on WHOS13.tv. Uh, I am absolutely blown away by the positive feedback that we've gotten on this tracker for some more beta testers, and I just can't wait to see it out in the wild.

SPEAKER_01 21:28

Yes, I'm so excited. And again, just the evolution of spooky season from year to year. It seems this is a great time for people to come in. A lot of people who maybe haven't been part of the Discord before come in and then they become a really cool part of our community. We've had quite a few folks, um, I believe Perfect Organism and quite a few others that they came along for uh one of those spooky seasons and they never left and they are fantastic, important parts of our community.

Kris 21:56

Folks, we are so thrilled to welcome you in on this journey. Obviously, 31 Days of October starts now, so today's theme is Stephen King. Kick off October with the King of Horror himself. Fill out that tracker, it's linked down in the description, and keep the party going all month long. Now we've obviously covered a lot here, but there's so much more lurking beneath the surface over in our Discord, over on our Patreon. So check the link in our episode description and come introduce yourself. Have fun. We don't bite unless you're into that. We'll see you next time, folks. And remember, 30 days till Halloween, Halloween, Halloween, Silver Shimmer.