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Since the first Treehouse of Horror episode aired on October 25, 1990, The Simpsons’ Halloween episodes have become as much an annual tradition as dressing up in a scary outfit, putting up the decorations, and using a kitchen knife to carve up the bodies of young, nubile teena- er, pumpkins. Yes, carving pumpkins. Young, terrified pumpkins.

Where was I? Oh yes, The Simpsons. To appease the Gods of All Hallows Eve (and the editors of BOP, who are almost interchangeable with the Gods of All Hallows Eve) I’ve put together a list of the ten best Treehouse of Horror segments, along with some key quotes from each segment to bring a little light into your day. Now, I’m writing this before the 22nd instalment airs, and I know it’s a risk to make the list without all the available data, but I’m fairly sure none of the segments in that episode will trouble this fine selection. (That sentence is as sad as it is true.)

10. The Raven (Treehouse of Horror)

Bart: You know what would have been scarier than “nothing”?
Lisa: What?
Bart: ANYTHING!

I’m including this one not because it is funny – in fact, apart from the above quote, there aren’t really any jokes in it at all – but because it’s the best segment from the inaugural Treehouse of Horror and because it’s one of the strangest things The Simpsons ever did; an almost completely straight-faced rendition of Edgar Allan Poe’s classic poem of love, loss and terror. On the DVD commentary for the episode (yes, I’m one of *those* people) the writers talk about how they added the bits of Bart mocking the tale because they were worried that if they just had the narrator (James Earl Jones) and Homer read The Raven for five minutes it would have been the most pretentious thing they had ever done. Whilst there’s some truth to that, to the five-year-old me there was nothing weirder and creepier than watching characters I loved acting out this menacing and unsettling story.

9. The Thing and I (Treehouse of Horror VII)

Doctor Hibbert: Too crazy for Boystown, too much of a boy for Crazytown, the boy was an outcast.

This segment, in which Bart discovers that he has a crazy, evil twin who Homer and Marge have secretly been keeping in the attic, feeding him nothing but fish heads for the entirety of his life (sure, it’s monstrous, but it saved their marriage) gets its place almost solely for two visual gags, which are probably the amongst the best that the show has ever done. The first occurs after Hugo has taken Bart prisoner and is preparing to sew Bart and himself back together. When Bart protests, Hugo says that he used the technique to create a Pigeon-Rat, a creature which can neither fly nor fit through holes in the wall. The second - and it may be the finest moment of comic timing in the history of the show - comes moments later, when Doctor Hibbert calms Hugo down by inquiring if he has ever seen his own face in a mirror. As Hugo comes to look in the “mirror”, it is revealed to be an empty frame through which Hibbert punches Hugo, knocking him unconscious. Yet again, The Simpsons proves that violence against the young is as hilarious as it is prevalent.

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