Listen — if you dare! The spooky, eerie sounds of the season are a great and scary way to enjoy Halloween

What scares you?

Ghosts? Hell? Opening your monthly bills?

Fear is different for most people. While Halloween is a time to celebrate things that go bump in the night, to remember the dead and avoid the undead, everyone has their own special fears.

That’s why scary movies vary so greatly.

For some, it’s a subtle story with shadows and suggestions, a tale told with hints of the horror that might just be creeping up on you.

Others are drawn to a gorefest — the more blood on the screen the better. They prefer axes and long, jagged knives, screams and splatter.

The best movies combine those sensations. The original “Halloween,” released in 1978, is a classic because director John Carpenter understood people could be just as scared by what might happen, what was possible, as the actual deadly deed.

Yes, there are gruesome moments in the movie, but the scenes that portend danger are just as frightening, equally as memorable. The music — composed by Carpenter — was a major part of the experience.

Sound can be thrilling. While movies are best-known for their images, the aural experience adds tremendously to the experience.

That’s why I am listening to more radio shows this time of year. Radio ghost and horror stories can be downright devilish.

Orson Welles was the force behind “The Mercury Theater on the Air,” which terrified America with its “War of the Worlds” broadcast on Oct. 30, 1938. Welles took the story (a movie poster of the film made years later is seen above in a public domain photo posted on wikimedia commons) written by H.G. Wells (no, they were not related, as the differing spelling indicates) and amplified it, in every sense.

The reports of mass suicide and panic among listeners were overstated, but Orson Welles, who was just 23, made his name with that production.

Other classic radio shows — “Inner Sanctum Mystery,” “The Mysterious Traveler,” “The Whistler,” “Quiet Please,” “Suspense,” “Weird Circle” — and others from the 1930s through the ’50s offered a steady supply of scares to millions of regular listeners.

Many of the shows are preserved on YouTube or on websites such as Old Time Radio. Some of the best feature big-name stars who appeared in these radio plays, their distinct voices adding to the excitement. I caught Cary Grant on “On A Country Road,” a 1950 radio program, on Halloween 2014 and that show, available online, is worth a listen this time of year.

Radio allows your mind to create the setting, to “see” a car stuck on the side of the road with a mad killer loose and a hand scratching at the door. It allows you to envision the terror on the faces of the couple inside the car, and imagine what you would do when someone begs you to let them in.

While the middle of the 20th century was the high point for daily and weekly radio programs, it came back to life in 1974. “CBS Radio Mystery Theater” was a nightly one-hour program that revived the concept of scare on the air.

Acclaimed actor E.G. Marshall hosted most of the episodes. Himan Brown, a radio veteran who created “Inner Sanctum Mysteries,” updated some old stories, used some classic stories from writers like O. Henry, Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Dickens and Oscar Wilde, and also produced new tales by modern writers.

The show featured veteran performers such as Kevin McCarthy of the original “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” Fred “Herman Munster” Gwynne and Kim Hunter of the “Planet of the Apes” movie series.

It aired 1,399 episodes before it was sent to the radio graveyard in 1982, although National Public Radio dug it up in the 1990s. All its episodes have been preserved and are available online at www.CBSRMT.com.

The show ended with the sound of a creaky door closing and Marshall intoning, “Until next time, pleasant ... dreams?”

Douse the lights and give these shows a listen ... if you dare.

Tom Lawrence has written for several newspapers and websites in South Dakota and other states and contributed to The New York Times, NPR, The  Telegraph, The Daily Beast and other media outlets.