Yay Halloween!  We revel in all that is spooky, dress up in unusual ways, and pig out on loads of yummy, cavity-causing candy.  What's not to love, and why stop there?  Let's take it to the garden.  Here are some of my favorite plants in all there festive, creepy, otherworldly beauty.

Let's start with Tacca chantrieri, the black bat flower. Dark bracts resembling bat wings surround small maroon flowers while long whiskery filaments hang down resembling a bat in flight.

Or perhaps if you like something more visceral, Spilanthes oleracea, the eyeball plant, will seem to follow you where ever you go with its round cream and russet inflorescence. Incidentally, it's also called the toothache plant, for those of us who over do it in the candy corn department. It's leaves have a numbing affect when chewed.

Lack of chlorophyll lends the Monotropa uniflora, 'Ghost Plant' the look of bony apparitions rising from the dark ground deep in forests where the sun never shines.  Parasitic on Mycorrhizal fungi, they derive their nutrients from photosynthetic trees, which pass their energy on to the fungi, and finally on to our little ghouls.    
Gorgeous and monstrous come together in the Dracula orchids, whose scents range from something sweet to something the cat dragged in. Talk about your tricks or treats! They can be brightly festive, or subtle and broody. Unlike some other orchids, the lip in the Dracula is mobile. So does that mean it bites?

Terrible beauty is all well and good, but how about something a little more common? Go get a black plastic cauldron from the Halloween isle at your local store, punch a hole in the bottom, and plant some orange pansies with black spidery looking Mondo grass. Decorate with Spanish moss.  See? some of the scariest ones have been hiding in plain sight right there among us all along. 
Well, Sleep tight!