I'm Getting Ready For Spooky Season And These LEGO Sets Have My Attention

As a dedicated horror fan, I don't really need any excuse to load up a scary movie and enjoy the frights, but I love spooky season regardless and take advantage of it every year by checking out as many genre films/TV shows as I can during the two-month stretch. And do you know what makes the full Halloween experience even better? Watching those seasonally-themed titles while also building an appropriately themed LEGO set.

My love of building with LEGO bricks goes back even further than my love of horror movies, and if you have matching sensibilities, there are a number of amazing designs that are worth checking out – both ones that are tied to specific films and some that are just generally awesome in their spookiness. This year, there are a number of sets on sale that are perfect for the season, but these are the three that have specifically caught my eye.

Disney Hocus Pocus: The Sanderson Sisters' Cottage

I think there might be a rule written down somewhere that if you're a millennial, you must view Hocus Pocus as a Halloween classic... and I take no umbrage with that thought. I have distinct childhood memories of being entranced by the haunting tale of the Sanderson Sisters, and that history leaves me particularly susceptible to the charms of the Sanderson Sisters' Cottage LEGO set. The general design of the cottage is impressive, particularly the way in which it opens up so that you can adjust scenes that take place inside, but I'm personally a sucker for Easter eggs, and this package has them. There is strong attention to detail, like including both the magic book and the Black Flame Candle, but my favorite inclusion is Mary Sanderson's flying vacuum cleaner.

Disney Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas

I've obviously written this piece to celebrate LEGO sets to build during spooky season, but one of the nice things about the Nightmare Before Christmas build is that it's a double holiday treat: you can put it together as excitement grows for Halloween, and then you can take it apart in anticipation of building it again when December 25 rolls around. What makes this creation particularly great is the way in which it perfectly captures the aesthetic of the classic stop-motion film – specifically through its shapes. The curl on the cliff where Jack Skellington and Sally stand in front of the full moon? Perfection.

Haunted Mansion

Even if you take pop culture connections out of the mix, there are still amazing spooky LEGO creations to play with, and one of the most intriguing and exciting recent productions is the new two-story Haunted Mansion. It's smaller and less complex overall than the other two sets that I've previewed here, but it has some amazing qualities. In addition to featuring some amazing monstrous minifigs – including a classic glow-in-the-dark ghost, a skeleton, a vampire, a werewolf, and Frankenstein's creation – the big bonus of this creation is that it's a 3-in-1 build: not only can you use the pieces included to build a scary house, but there are also instructions included so that you can build a creepy train and haunted boat.

All of the sets highlighted here are now available and shipping immediately from LEGO, so if you want to have them to build throughout spooky season, you should pick them up sooner rather than later.