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Do you like Halloween parties? Or are you the kind of person who prefers to celebrate at home, watching horror movies with friends or handing out candy to trick-or-treaters? Well, thanks to the magic of television, you can (virtually) do both — experience all the fun of a great shindig with none of the effort. TV has brought us no shortage of spooky and hilarious Halloween parties over the years. Relive ten of our favorites, from How I Met Your Mother’s legendary “slutty pumpkin” party to Buffy’s demonic frat party, after the jump.

How I Met Your Mother: The slutty pumpkin party

Why would a single, heterosexual man pass up the opportunity to spend Halloween on a yacht with costumed Victoria’s Secret models? Because he’s got to do what he does every year: go to the party where he once met a woman in a “slutty pumpkin” costume who might have been his soul mate, if only he hadn’t lost her phone number. In an episode that may be the most famous in How I Met Your Mother history, Ted spends his fifth straight Halloween dressed as a “hanging chad” (that would be some 2000 election humor, for those who don’t remember) and — as usual — has no luck finding his mystery girl.

But that’s not where the story ends. In last year’s Halloween episode, Ted tracked down the slutty pumpkin — who turned out to be Katie Holmes (or, rather, a woman named Naomi who was played by Katie Holmes)! And, wouldn’t you know it, things don’t exactly work out the way he had fantasized.