The Travel Channel Takeover is nearly complete. Eli Roth has upped the quality of horror on the network during Ghostober and beyond with not only one program, not two series, but three TV shows for the spooky season… and then there’s the clown-filled terrors he helped bring to life in a feature film based on Zak Bagans’ Haunted Museum. You could safely say it’s been a busy month for the filmmaker!

Last year, the basic cable channel released Eli Roth’s A Ghost Ruined My Life to get the party started right. And as a long-time pet person, I was pleasantly surprised by Eli Roth Presents: My Possessed Pet earlier this year. Naturally, there was eager anticipation for his next release, and Roth did not disappoint.

“I’m absolutely thrilled to grow my incredible collaboration with Travel Channel, discovery+ and Zak Bagans,” said Roth. “They’ve given me the freedom to explore new creative avenues for scary stories and to bring fresh new directorial voices to the screen. I set out to help make this Ghostober the scariest year ever. You have been warned.”

Eli Roth’s Urban Legend turns well-known stories of local lore into hour-long feature films. Not all of these tales are tall (some are even unrecognizable), but what’s guaranteed is the level of familiarity on display that they bring. If you haven’t heard these stories before, maybe it was someone you know — it could be a friend of a friend — who told you these stories and absolutely swore they were true. As they are presented, that possibility feels plausible.

“The Red Room” presents a mother-daughter combo that fights for a second chance in life after taking a deep dive into the dark web. What kind of horrors hatch when a young couple vacations on an off-limits isolated tropical beach? You’ve got the makings of “The Bite.” Filmmaker Justin Harding was responsible for the first two episodes of this horror anthology series, tackling torture porn and body horror via his entries.

Ever hear about the prom dress with a dark past that possesses everyone who wears it? “The White Dress” brings some decent jump scares while a high-school girl prepares for the big dance. What about “The Choking Doberman,” which deals with an intruder hiding inside your house? These two episodes were probably my favorites at the half-way point of Season 1, both brought to the small screen by director Ethan Evans.

While the stories are obviously the main course, each episode offers a side dish for the ultimate consumption of horror fans. As a coda, a five-to-10-minute “Filmmaker 2 Filmmaker” final segment goes behind the scenes as Roth briefly interviews each episode’s director to get the influences for each story. These setups, however brief they might be, were by far my favorite portions of this show. Clearly, they color in shades of Eli Roth’s History of Horror, and I loved them for it.

The final half of the season definitely has some momentum building, with “The Harvest,” “The Creep in the Walls,” “The Haunted Shower” and “The Scuba Diver” soon to premiere. The cinematic style is outstanding so far, as each episode is closer to being a mini movie than a horror anthology series. I just hope the slow-burn storylines from earlier episodes have been abandoned for more in-your-face scares to wrap it all up.

While I may be a little late to the creepy party, Halloween is a year-round experience for horror fanboys and fangirls of all ages. It’s possible I was a little preoccupied throughout it all, so be on the lookout for a future write-up of Roth’s The Haunted Museum: 3 Ring Inferno very soon!