Halloween, when did you get so... big?

The Seacoast has a powerful and somewhat disturbing appetite for Halloween debauchery, and this year will be no exception. It’s a time of ghastly jack-o’-lanterns, horrific haunted houses, raucous costume parties, terrifying parades and processions, and so much more.

And since there is no such thing as too much of a good thing, The Wire has created this calendar to help you make the most of the season. We hope you have a blast shambling, plotting, smashing and rocking your way through the most twisted month of the year.

Oct. 8
The haunting Halloween Parade (I Gotta) Rock Show hits the Coat of Arms, featuring Supermachine, Wimpy and the Medallions, A Minor Revolution, and Bastards of the Young. This show is not for the faint of heart—consider attending only if you are confident you can withstand a loud, dark and stormy night with the likes of Tim McCoy, Wimpy Rutherford, Kurt Baker, Geoff Palmer, Dave Nebbia, and Tim Theriault. Raffle prizes and T-shirt sales to benefit the parade.

Oct. 17
Metropolis, with Walter Sickert and the Army of Broken Toys:  The seminal 1927 sci-fi classic Metropolis meets its match with an original score performed live by the Boston steam-crunk ensemble and RPM Challenge favorites, in a partnership with The Music Hall and Portsmouth Halloween Parade, 7 p.m.

Oct. 20
Smash a pumpkin, win a prize! All ages welcome at the Halloween Parade Pumpkin Smash at Portsmouth Farmers’ Market, Saturday, Oct. 20, 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. (rain date Oct. 27).

The brand new Scarecrow’s Ball will give scarecrows their own night to boogie down while raising money for the Scarecrows of the Port seasonal display and contest across Portsmouth, when residents, schools and businesses prop up scarecrow scenes and compete for prizes. Dance to Granite Planet and One Step Up at the Portsmouth VFW on Deer Street  at 7:30 p.m., then go online to www.scarecrowsoftheport.com to take a virtual tour and make your vote for best community scarecrow.

Oct. 24
Modern New England horror cinema with the local premiere of Murder University. Also: pre-show with The Dirty Dishes Burlesque Revue shaking what they got, blood wrestling (yes, blood wrestling), and talk back with cast and crew of the film right after! Hosted by Bunny Wonderland and CJ Lewis at Seacoast Repertory Theatre in Portsmouth.

Oct. 25
(Undead) Beat Night at the Press Room offers spooky open mike poetry readings with musical accompaniment by Groove Bacteria to benefit the Portsmouth Halloween Parade, 7 p.m.

Oct. 26
Gothambilly Motorshow Revue is a one-time-only rockabilly Batman costume bash to benefit the parade at The Press Room. Hot rods outside; inside, music by Bob Halperin’s Amazing Bar Tabs and Jimmy Farquhar’s Surfing Dead. The show is hosted by a group marching in the parade as rockabilly superheroes from the DC Universe, inspired by original drawings from Italian artist Denis Medri.

Lady Luck Burlesque’s Halloween Bizarre will offer Halloween tricks ’n’ treats at Portsmouth Gaslight Co. at 8 p.m.

In Rochester, an undead mass of decrepit teens and adults will dust off their grave soil and vengefully shamble through downtown for the Rochester Zombie Walk, beginning at 6:45 p.m. at the Union Street parking lot.

And Portsmouth’s Ghosts on the Banke returns! Seventeenth-century shopkeepers and wayward pirates haunt the streets and houses of Portsmouth’s oldest neighborhood while visitors trick or treat from house to historic house during Strawbery Banke’s famous Halloween celebration, Friday and Saturday, Oct. 26 and 27, from 6 to 8 p.m. Activities include: outdoor movie, bonfire, wandering werewolves and ghostly graveyards, haunted hemlock grove and more. Enjoy kettle corn, fruit pies, and other treats at this family friendly event (best for children ages 12 and under). Members are welcome free; otherwise, admission is $6 per person. For more, call 603-433-1107 or visit www.strawberybanke.org.

Oct. 27
Rotting corpses, merrily drooling blood and dragging their decaying limbs, will crawl through downtown Dover for the annual Dover Zombie Walk. The reprobates will lurch away from the Dover Chamber of Commerce at 2 p.m., stumble down Central Avenue and end with a corpse-tacular celebration at Adelle’s Coffeehouse, including a hideous feast of a hideous feast of Jell-O brains, a costume contest, and zombie socializing. If you’re not un-dead yet, you might want to touch up your make-up. Child zombies always welcome.

The Jumbo Circus Peanuts, born from the cauldron that was the first Halloween Parade, throw their annual Jumbo Circus Peanuts Seacoast Halloween Ball at the Portsmouth VFW on Deer Street at 8 p.m. Costumes, dancing, seriously funky.

The Ghosts of Smuttynose Haunted House is a haunted house-style theater piece written and directed by George Hosker Bouley, performed by student actors and presented by York Department of Parks and Recreation and Olde York Historical Society at the historic Jefferds Tavern, York, 5:30 p.m. Admission includes a visit to the dessert bar. For more information, call 207-363-1040.

Oct. 31
The dreadful horde that is the Portsmouth Halloween Parade will assemble on Peirce Island at 6 p.m., then at 7 p.m. begin dancing, gamboling and marching the streets to the thundering beat of drums. Formed in a burst of demented enthusiasm 17 years ago, it remains true to its origins as a grassroots, creative and all-inclusive alternative to contemporary Halloween, “striving always to strip the plastic out of the holidays fantastic.” Details are at www.spookyportsmouth.com, but part of the charm is that you don’t need detailed instructions, just show up. Not sure what to wear? The Portsmouth Halloween Parade Mask-Arade Coloring Book returns this year, for sale at parade events, RiverRun Bookstore in Portsmouth and Jetpack Comics in Rochester.

After the parade, send out Halloween with a bang by enjoying an after party or three. Bling Cherry at Seacoast Rep will have you dancing to a blend of Abba, Bee Gees, The Dead, Blondie, Wild Cherry, David Bowie and Heart, to benefit the parade. Or take on Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Tobe Hooper’s seminal 1974 cult classic, at The Music Hall at 9 p.m.  Or stay at Prescott Park for Interference, a hair-raising in-real-time show about a group of ghost hunters investigating a possible haunting inside a New England theater, at The Players’ Ring at 8:30 p.m.

for the kids
The Seacoast Science Center’s Hauntingly Fun Family Evening features a family style dinner, trick-or-treating around the darkened and decorated center, with ghostly tales from Roxie Zwicker of New England Curiosities and spooktacular science experiments with Bill the Magician, Thursday, Oct. 18 at 5:30 p.m., www.seacoastsciencecenter.org.

Get your costumes on, bring your carved pumpkins and join in potato races, pumpkin bowling, cider making and more for Halloween Harvest on the Farm at the Raitt Homestead Farm Museum in Eliot, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2-4 p.m. Spooky wagon rides down the haunted trail also take place Oct. 19, 26 and 27, 6-10 p.m. More information at www.raittfarmmuseum.org.

The Eliot Halloween Party and Haunted Trail will include games, refreshments and a costume contest, with prizes in each age group, including adults. The party will also feature a walk through the haunted woods behind the school. Friday, Oct. 26, at Eliot Elementary School, with special times for each age group: 5:30-6:45 p.m. for children in kindergarten or younger; 7-8:15 p.m. for children in grades 1-3; and 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. for children in grades 4-8, www.eliotcsd.org.

The Not-So-Scary Spooktacular at the Children’s Museum in Dover invites visitors dressed in costume to tour the museum’s decorated bat cave and receive a small prize from a costumed character, experience science experiments with the museum’s own Wacky Scientist, and enjoy non-food trick or treating. There will be costumes to try on, face painting, and constructing of “silly spiders” in the project area, Saturday, Oct. 27, www.childrens-museum.org.

Halloween Fun at the Wentworth House in Rollinsford recalls old fashioned entertainment, with mildly scary scenes, strobe light and eerie sounds, appropriate for school-age children. Activities will include ghost stories read aloud upstairs in the spooky attic; a well-seasoned fortune teller; and classic outdoor games like toss the ring on the witch’s hat, toss the bones in the cauldron, and douse the candle in the jack-o’-lantern. Refreshments will be available, and all are urged to come in costume, Saturday, Oct. 27, 5-8 p.m., www.paulwentworthhouse.org.

plot twist
Local authors, playwrights, and actors have been plotting for months to kill you with suspense.

Murder in New Hampshire is the theme of this year’s NH Book Festival in Concord from Oct. 10 through 14, including readings from the anthology “Live Free or Die, Die, Die!” on Friday night at the Barley House, presented by NH Writers’ Project, www.nhwritersproject.org.

An updated Interference, a thriller about a group of ghost hunters investigating a possible haunting inside a New England theater, will be at the Players’ Ring in Portsmouth Oct. 19-31, with a post-parade show at 8:30 p.m. The theater is offering a double feature this month, with the classic Wait Until Dark also playing Oct. 19-Nov. 4.
Rocky Horror Picture Show, an annual tradition, with all the expected shenanigans plus prizes for best costumes, will be at Seacoast Rep in Portsmouth the weekends of Oct. 26 and Nov. 2; and at Firehouse Center for the Arts in Newburyport on Friday, Oct. 26 at 11 p.m.

Seacoast Rep also features several events all month long. Their mainstage production is the wildly popular British noir thriller The Woman in Black, Oct. 5-28, but they’re also offering Haunted REPutationsGhost Tours, a backstage look at one of the nation’s most haunted theaters with New England Curiosities on Sundays throughout the month, topped with a Ghostly Gala on Tuesday, Oct. 30.