HA, HA, HALLOWEEN: THE HAUNTED SIDE OF ROCK & ROLL
Cursed recordings, ghostly encounters and things that go bump in the night
Somewhere between the last guitar riff and the final flicker of the studio lights, the music stops being the scariest thing in the room.
Forget the plastic skeletons, the cheap cobwebs and the same old Halloween hits played until the neighbours threaten to call the police. We're going somewhere darker this year. Somewhere the corridors are cold, the recording equipment has a mind of its own, and the dead might just have something to say.
Rock and roll has always had a complicated relationship with the dark side. Musicians have flirted with the occult, recorded in supposedly haunted buildings, and told stories of encounters that would make even the most hardened horror fan think twice about switching off the lights.
Some of these tales come from the musicians themselves. Others have grown through decades of retelling, somewhere between genuine recollection, rock folklore and a very well-timed publicity stunt.
Are they proof of something beyond our understanding? Probably not. Are they wonderfully creepy stories to tell around a Halloween campfire?
Oh, hell yes.
So turn down the lights, crank up the volume and leave that Ouija board exactly where you found it.
Welcome to the haunted side of rock and roll.
1. The Mars Volta: Don't Ask Questions You Don't Want Answered
In 2006, guitarist Omar RodrÃguez-López of The Mars Volta returned from Jerusalem with an unusual gift for vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala: an antique Ouija-style talking board. They called it The Soothsayer, and what began as a curiosity soon became a regular ritual after the band's performances.
According to the musicians, the board began delivering messages from entities, one of which they called Goliath. The messages eventually became part of the inspiration behind the band's fourth album, The Bedlam in Goliath.
Then things allegedly started going wrong.
The band's home-studio environment suffered flooding and electrical problems. Audio tracks reportedly disappeared from hard drives. Their original engineer abandoned the project after suffering a serious mental breakdown, while Bixler-Zavala needed major surgery on his foot.
Coincidence? A nightmare recording process? Or something the band had invited into their lives without understanding the consequences?
RodrÃguez-López eventually broke the board and buried its pieces in an undisclosed location, hoping to put an end to the trouble.
The album was completed, but the story refused to die.
There's an important wrinkle here: the curse narrative has been questioned, and elements of the album's mythology have been linked to a fictional story. That doesn't make the tale any less atmospheric. If anything, it adds another layer to an album already steeped in paranoia, strange voices and musical chaos.
Perhaps the most unsettling part is that The Bedlam in Goliath sounds like the sort of record you'd expect to emerge from a studio where something had gone terribly wrong.
One thing's for sure: if an antique board starts spelling out names in the middle of the night, you don't need to be a paranormal investigator to know it's time to find a new hobby.
2. Slipknot: The House That Didn't Want Them There
Recording a heavy metal album is demanding enough without the building itself apparently joining the band.
During the making of Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses), Slipknot worked at the Mansion, a property in Los Angeles with a reputation for paranormal activity.
The stories surrounding the sessions describe a place where the atmosphere could turn oppressive without warning. Drummer Joey Jordison was said to have experienced a bedroom door that swung open repeatedly at the same time every night, despite attempts to keep it shut.
Late bassist Paul Gray reportedly felt an intense aversion to part of the basement, while frontman Corey Taylor was associated with accounts of strange orbs and sudden drops in temperature.
Imagine spending hours recording music designed to sound like the inside of a disturbed mind, then heading upstairs to find that the house has its own ideas about what constitutes a good night's sleep.
The Mansion has accumulated plenty of spooky stories over the years, although the specific Slipknot incidents are difficult to establish independently. They belong in the category of rock's reported paranormal encounters rather than proven supernatural events.
Still, there's a delicious irony here. Slipknot built a career on making the uncomfortable sound magnificent. Perhaps a supposedly haunted house was simply the natural next step.
And if a door opens by itself at exactly the same time every night?
Maybe check the hinges.
Then check them again.
And perhaps sleep somewhere else.
3. Dave Mustaine: Footsteps Above the Empty Room
Megadeth's Dave Mustaine has spent a lifetime confronting musical demons, but one reported encounter involved something considerably less tangible.
The story concerns a California recording property known as The Castle, reportedly associated with gangster Al Capone and rumours of hauntings.
Mustaine was allegedly alone in a large tracking room when he heard heavy footsteps pacing directly above him. They sounded like someone wearing substantial shoes, walking back and forth across the floor.
There was just one problem.
When he went upstairs to investigate, he reportedly found nobody there. The upper floor was empty and locked down.
Now, anyone who has spent time in an old building knows that pipes knock, floorboards creak and sound travels in peculiar ways. A noise from one room can seem to come from somewhere entirely different.
But that's the rational explanation, and rational explanations aren't nearly as much fun when you're sitting alone in a recording studio after midnight.
Picture the scene: the amplifiers are silent, the control-room lights cast long shadows, and somewhere above your head, somebody is walking.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
You investigate. Nothing.
You return to your chair.
And then the footsteps begin again.
Whether Mustaine encountered a ghost or an unusually convincing architectural illusion, it's a fine reminder that sometimes the most frightening instrument in the room isn't a guitar.
It's silence.
4. Black Sabbath: A Figure in the Castle
Before heavy metal became the soundtrack to horror films, Black Sabbath were already writing music that sounded as though it had crawled out of a forgotten crypt.
So a reported encounter with a ghost at an ancient English castle feels almost too perfect.
While working on Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, the band spent time at Clearwell Castle in Gloucestershire. The historic building provided an atmospheric retreat for musicians seeking inspiration away from the distractions of everyday life.
According to stories associated with the sessions, Tony Iommi and Ozzy Osbourne encountered a mysterious, cloaked figure moving through the castle corridors.
They reportedly followed the figure towards an armoury, only for it to disappear.
The experience was said to have unsettled the musicians, with tales of the castle's resident ghost adding to the atmosphere.
There is something wonderfully cinematic about the whole thing. Imagine wandering through an old castle at night, surrounded by stone walls, creaking doors and centuries of history, only to see a figure dressed for a funeral that happened hundreds of years ago.
And then it vanishes.
Of course, old buildings have a habit of turning shadows into shapes and ordinary noises into something far more sinister. The details of this particular encounter are part of the band's surrounding folklore, rather than a verified paranormal incident.
But let's be honest: if you're going to write some of the darkest riffs in rock history, encountering a ghost in a castle seems like a reasonable occupational hazard.
Perhaps the spirit simply wanted to hear the new material.
Or perhaps it had been waiting centuries for someone to turn the volume up.
5. Foo Fighters: The Haunting That Wasn't
Every good collection of ghost stories needs a twist, and Dave Grohl supplied one that deserves its own little corner of the crypt.
When Foo Fighters worked on Medicine at Midnight, stories emerged about strange occurrences at the house where the album was being developed. Reports included mysteriously altered equipment settings, missing recordings and unexplained activity.
The band supposedly encountered enough oddities to make the house's reputation part of the story surrounding the album.
There was talk of a place that didn't want to cooperate, a recording environment where technology seemed to have developed an attitude of its own.
Naturally, the rumours spread. Rock fans love a haunted studio almost as much as they love a lost album.
Then came the confession.
In 2022, Grohl admitted that the haunted-house story was a lie. The band had been developing the idea for its horror-comedy film Studio 666, and the supposed paranormal incidents helped set the scene.
The movie transformed the premise into full-blown horror, complete with demonic possession, bloodshed and a rock band discovering that some recording locations are best avoided.
So no, the Foo Fighters' famous haunting wasn't the supernatural smoking gun we might have hoped for.
It was a prank.
A gloriously entertaining prank, admittedly, and one that demonstrates something important about rock folklore: sometimes the scariest thing in the room is a musician with a good imagination and a marketing plan.
Still, if a band announces that its next album was recorded in a haunted house, I'm listening to the record before I decide whether to believe them.
And checking the film release schedule.
6. Ozzy Osbourne: When the Ouija Board Says Your Name
If anyone could turn an ordinary evening into a supernatural horror story, it would be Ozzy Osbourne.
A story associated with Ozzy and the recording of Blizzard of Ozz involves a Ouija board, a séance and a particularly disturbing name.
According to accounts attributed to bassist Bob Daisley, members of the circle reportedly received messages that included the name Randy Rhoads, the gifted guitarist who would later die in a plane crash in 1982.
The story has circulated through retellings of the band's early days, with the details varying between versions. It should be treated as rock folklore, not as an established prediction of Rhoads's death.
But the association is chilling all the same.
Rhoads was an extraordinary musician whose life ended at just 25. Knowing what happened afterwards gives the story a tragic weight that it would never have possessed otherwise.
It's also a reminder of how the human mind works. We remember the coincidences that seem to mean something, especially when tragedy follows. A strange message becomes a prophecy, and an ordinary evening becomes a moment that people revisit for the rest of their lives.
Whether anything supernatural happened is impossible to establish from the story alone.
But if a glass starts moving across a board and spelling out the name of someone you love, I suspect the last thing you'll want to do is ask another question.
Some mysteries are best left unanswered.
And some names are best remembered for the music they left behind.
7. Radiohead: The Voices in the Old Monastery
Radiohead's OK Computer captured a world of alienation, anxiety and technological unease. Its recording locations seem almost designed to extend that atmosphere beyond the music.
Some of the album's sessions took place at St Catherine's Court, a historic Somerset mansion with a long and atmospheric past.
Thom Yorke later described disturbing experiences associated with staying at the property. Accounts include hearing voices while asleep and feeling sufficiently unsettled to resort to an unusual late-night haircut with a penknife.
It's an image that's difficult to shake: one of alternative rock's most distinctive voices, awake in an ancient building, listening to sounds he couldn't explain.
The property has a history stretching back centuries, and its old rooms, unfamiliar noises and isolation could easily unsettle someone working long hours and sleeping badly.
That's the rational side of the story.
The other side is the one that keeps us reading.
What if the voices weren't dreams? What if the building's history had left something behind? What if, in the small hours of the morning, when the music had stopped and everyone else was asleep, the walls had something to say?
There is no reliable evidence that Yorke encountered a ghost. His account is better understood as a disturbing personal experience than proof of the paranormal.
But the setting is perfect for Halloween.
After all, if an ordinary house can feel strange at night, imagine spending your days and nights in a centuries-old building while trying to create an album about a world coming apart.
Perhaps the real ghost was anxiety itself.
Perhaps it was just the house.
Either way, I'd recommend keeping the penknife in a drawer.
8. Rockfield Studios: Ozzy and the Graveyard
And now, for a final stop before we close the gates.
This story doesn't require a ghost, a cursed board or an unexplained recording. It simply requires Ozzy Osbourne, a graveyard and a night that probably seemed perfectly ordinary to him.
A tale associated with Ozzy's early recording days in Wales describes a young child encountering the singer in a cemetery, reportedly dancing among gravestones and howling at the headstones.
To a rock fan, this might sound like another evening in the life of the Prince of Darkness.
To a child who wasn't expecting to find a grown man behaving like a creature from a horror film, it must have been terrifying.
Imagine looking out into the darkness and seeing a figure moving between the graves, silhouetted against the night sky. No stage lights, no cheering audience, no band behind him.
Just a man, the moon and a collection of silent witnesses.
Of course, the story is anecdotal, and the details are difficult to verify independently. But it captures something essential about Ozzy's public persona: he understood that rock and roll could be theatre, provocation and sheer outrageousness all rolled into one.
And sometimes, the best horror story isn't about a ghost.
It's about being in the wrong place at the wrong time and discovering that the Prince of Darkness doesn't necessarily need a stage.
He just needs a graveyard.
The Playlist: Soundtrack to the Séance
Enough talking. It's time to let the music take over.
These aren't your usual Halloween party staples. They're dark corners, unsettling atmospheres, ominous riffs and songs that feel as though they were recorded with the lights off.
Hit play ▶️ — and whatever you do, don't answer the door if nobody's there.
1. The Mars Volta — “Goliath”
A chaotic, ferocious descent into the album's unsettling mythology. The perfect place to begin.
2. Black Sabbath — “Black Sabbath”
The original warning from the masters of doom. Rain, bells and that riff. What more could you possibly need?
3. Slipknot — “The Virus of Life”
Claustrophobic, sinister and deeply uncomfortable. It feels like being watched from the other side of a locked door.
4. Megadeth — “The Conjuring”
Dark thrash metal with occult imagery and an atmosphere that belongs nowhere near a candlelit séance.
5. Radiohead — “Climbing Up the Walls”
An unnerving study in paranoia, with a sound that seems to creep under your skin rather than simply reach your ears.
6. Ozzy Osbourne — “Mr. Crowley”
A theatrical plunge into occult history, driven by Randy Rhoads's extraordinary guitar work.
7. King Diamond — “Halloween”
A dark, theatrical metal classic from a musician who understands that a good horror story needs atmosphere, drama and a few sinister surprises.
8. The Rolling Stones — “Sympathy for the Devil”
Because every Halloween gathering needs one final reminder that the devil doesn't always arrive looking like the devil.
One Last Thing Before You Go…
Rock and roll has always thrived on the strange, the forbidden and the unexplained. Its greatest musicians have spent their careers pushing boundaries, challenging conventions and wandering into places where sensible people might think twice about following.
Sometimes the stories are rooted in real experiences. Sometimes they are embellished by memory, superstition or a well-timed publicity campaign. And sometimes the facts are lost somewhere between the first telling and the hundredth retelling.
We may never know whether The Mars Volta's board was cursed, whether a cloaked figure wandered through Clearwell Castle, or whether strange footsteps echoed above Dave Mustaine in an empty building.
But perhaps that is the point.
A mystery with a neat explanation is simply a problem solved. A mystery that refuses to leave you alone is something else entirely.
So this Halloween, turn off the lights, put on the headphones and let the darker side of rock and roll have its say.
Just remember one thing.
When the last song finishes, the room goes quiet and you hear three slow knocks from the other side of the door…
Don't open it.
It might just be a neighbour asking you to turn the music down.
Or it might be something that heard you listening.
Ha, ha, Halloween.
B-Side Man — Press skip and find the magic. Even in the dark.
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