Five Scary Songs That You Don't Hear All the Time

Who hasn't had the desire to curl up on a rainy night and let the ambiance of creepy music fill the room? Here are five (perhaps somewhat lesser known) great songs for just such an occasion, or really for any night at all where you want to submerge yourself in the darkness and let the music of the night wash over you. Or, you know, just 'cause they're cool songs.

NOTE: These are all best played through headphones for full feartastic effect.

FORMER LEE WARMER - Alice Cooper
Coop is no stranger to a great scary song. In fact, he has tons of them in his repertoire; it's what he's known for. From the Vincent Price spoken word prologue of Black Widow to the angsty, crazy eyed relentlessness of The Ballad of Dwight Frye to the off-kilter carnival music box notes of the bizarre Years Ago, he's always been a master at crafting a song to make the hairs of your arm stand up and scream. Former Lee Warmer is an amazing example, with its bizarre lyric about a particularly unnerving family member and a deceptively lovely refrain. It sure is pretty...except the whole thing has an underlying motive that becomes fairly apparent once he croons out the words, "When I hear him play in his twisted key / That's the way he calls to me..."

Bob Ezrin and Dick Wagner helped our hero Alice with the song composition, which features some sweeping melodies and nifty chord changes. Incidentally, it's off an album (Dada) that Coop himself says is probably his most terrifying...because he doesn't remember recording it. Give a listen here:

SWAMP WITCH - Jim Stafford
Before good ol' Jim Stafford was being handed gold records for his soundtrack work on Clint Eastwood and Disney flicks, he penned this amazing ode to "Backwater Hattie", an old witch who lived "back in the swamp where the strange green reptiles crawl". From the outset of the haunting opening chord, strummed plaintively with an eerie effect, there's little doubt what Jimmy was going for...he was writing a campfire folktale set to one of the spookiest melodies this side of Alice himself.
Stafford had his first hit with Swamp Witch in 1973, somehow charting in the top 40 despite the fact that it legitimately sounds like it was recorded in the black bayou. To be honest, this is one of those things that sent goose pimples up my arms as a young lad, and now even a picture of the 45 record my mother used to have (maybe still does) is a bit foreboding, I won't lie.

BRRRR. Kids, ask your parents what this is.

Stafford went on to have even more chart success, hitting #3 in winter of '74 with Spiders and Snakes. For me, his immortal contribution to horror and pop culture is in the form of this truly swamp dripping little ditty about a collective sleepy little Okeechobee town who believes they've been cursed by a witch. Let Old Hattie send you to bed with this sweet little melody in your soul here:

THE LEGEND OF WOOLEY SWAMP - The Charlie Daniels Band
So, this is a bit of a cheat based solely on our criteria of being somewhat lesser known. Then again, when people think of horror songs associated with the Eddie Van Halen of the fiddle, Mr. Charlie Daniels, the one most would think of first is The Devil Went Down to Georgia. But this song here, a modest country hit and bigger pop hit in the summer of 1980, gets the job done plenty well, thank you very much. When I played Stafford's Swamp Witch for my buddy Gil in the early nineties, he responded by showing me a couple country creepers that reminded him of Stafford's little glade driven gem. One was David Allan Coe's The Ride, about a feller who hitches a ride in a Cadillac driven by the apparent ghost of Hank Williams, and the other was Daniels' tale of a miserly old coot named Lucius Clay who hides his riches in "13 rusty Mason jars" somewhere near his house in the backwoods area of Wooley Swamp.

Now, there's no way that our talented pal Charlie and his gang weren't influenced by Stafford's marshland masterwork. It's just way too similar in terms of tone and setup to be coincidental. When the music drops off into an eerie quiet, punctuated by Charlie's best ghost story rasp, it feels like a definite bookend to the tale of Old Hattie. The Legend of Wooley Swamp is a MUCH more directly darker song lyrically, with a group of boys from Carver's Creek congregatin' near Clay's house in Booger Woods (yes, really) in order to feed the old man to the alligators and steal his buried cashola. Needless to say, it doesn't work out to well for the youngins, and now the ghost of Lucius is enough to keep others at bay; at least, if YOU ever go out to Wooley Swamp, well, "Ya better not go at night". Reckon the chronicles of Clay and the Cable Boys right here:

NIGHT OF THE VAMPIRE - Roky Erickson and the Aliens
Hey, have you ever seen the documentary You're Gonna Miss Me about this really troubled musician who borders on genius and has to deal with his demons? No, not Daniel Johnston...the other guy.
You haven't?? Then do so immediately! But until then, to hold you over, let's talk a little about Roky's ode to, well, vampires, in the form of this super creepy, guitar wailing, vocal shriekin' evil ballad in E minor. Now, this aint Roky's only trip to Scary Town, Population: Roky. Oh, no. On the insidiously titled album The Evil One (Plus One) that boasts this eerie creeper, songs like Two Headed Dog, I Think of Demons, The Wind and More and Don't Shake Me Lucifer are all legitimate hair raisers in their own right, made all the more ominous when armed with the feeling that Roky was actually tapping into something. But there's something about Night of the Vampire that makes it really stand out, and it's an easy call...Erickson's otherworldy vocal delivery. He sings some of the strangest lines ever written for rock with such a "matter of fact" straightforward assurance that it makes you wonder a little if he truly knows of which he speaks.

Give a listen to his foreboding (but exhilarating) monument to menace here:

THIS HOUSE IS HAUNTED - Alice Cooper
Two Alice songs. Yup...deal with it. Besides the fact that I'm a bit symmetrically OCD (self-diagnosed), I get bugged when I hear people say things like, "Alice Cooper USED to be awesome." Sure, Alice fans know the truth. And yes, there's very little use in defending Alice's Desmond Child excursion of the eighties. But here's the deal...Alice has had some great moments in his "modern" era. This super uncomplicated, amazingly crafted 2003 paragon to the paranormal proves it. Over a bare bones musical track, Alice alternates between whispering and warbling out the spooky (but sweet) paean to a departed loved one who still appears to live in his house with him. It's a quiet, almost playfully mournful track (how can that even be a thing?) but the result is very, very...heavy.

Wielding lyrics like, "Then I feel your lips touch mine just like we used to do / I'm so happy all alone being here with you", Alice achieves a feat of small profundity (how can THAT even be a thing?) by creating a depth that wavers between macabre and empathy. It's quite effective, and just one more way that Alice validates the notion that he's keeping Halloween alive, honey...365.

Alice's anthemic apparition aria available here: