Halloween comes a bit early this year, as the Disney Channel serves up two mildly spooky treats this month —The Ghost and Molly McGee, and this year’s Big City Greens Halloween Special.

A new series debuting this month is The Ghost and Molly McGee–a story of a young tween Molly (Ashly Burch) whose family finally stops relocating and moves into her “forever home” in Brighton that just happens to be haunted by Scratch (Dana Snyder,) the grumpiest ghost in town.

What might be frightful to most is nothing but serendipity to the invincibly optimistic Molly who can only see in Scratch the BFF she’s always wanted.  For Scratch, being the negative to all of Molly’s relentless positivity, it is hate at first sight that ultimately leads him to curse her with a forever haunting…which has the unforeseen effect of tying him to her in perpetuity while she lives in his house.  Will Scratch succeed in scaring the family out of town?  Or will Molly’s sunny exuberance win over the cranky poltergeist first?  Three guesses, and the first two don’t count.

The show has the cute character design and smooth animation that we’ve come to expect from Disney Television Animation, with the all-age appropriate humor we’ve seen creators Bill Motz and Bob Roth previously produce on LEGO Star Wars:  The Freemaker Adventures.  Although Molly’s over-the-top extroversion is initially a little grating for those of us closer to Scratch in temperament, she quickly grows endearing as successive episodes show her subject to the same insecurities and worries that any kid might have after a nomadic childhood without any long-term friends.  Snyder does a great job as a ghost who only wants to Rest In Peace, keeping him suitably irritable without ever letting him cross the line of actually being mean or hurtful.  It soon becomes clear to both Scratch and the audience that Molly’s determined friendliness and good humor might not be so much foolish as a refreshing contrast to the negativity and cynicism of our times.

Big City Greens, the animated comedy-adventure series about the Green family who lose their farm in the country and are forced to move in with their grandmother in Big City, ushers in their third season with the Halloween special “Squashed.”

In “Squashed,” father Bill Green takes his daughter Tilly to Big Tech to make a produce delivery while the rest of the family gets ready for a Halloween party.  Things liven up however, when the well-meaning Tilly attempts to cheer up her dad by fertilizing Bill’s tiny urban crop of pumpkins with arguably mad scientist Gwendolyn Zapp’s alien chemical compound.  While the pumpkins do achieve an impressive size, they also mutate into giant, mobile, head-munching monsters that quickly incapacitate most of the party and force Bill, Tilly, and her brother Cricket to figure out a way to defeat them and save Halloween…and the world.

As an introduction to the world of Big City Greens, Squashed is probably not the best entry episode as the bulk of the episode does involve dealing with the alien pumpkin disaster, however, it’s easy enough to get the feel of the main characters–good-natured Tilly, rambunctious Cricket, and their cautious farmer dad Bill–and their kind of reverse-Green Acres situation.  The special is fun, fast-paced, and not too scary for younger viewers, as it becomes quickly evident the head-munching leaves no permanent damage.

Halloween is a holiday that always has had its share of frights, ranging from the benign to the malignant.  If the prospect of going out into crowded areas with potentially unvaccinated kids is too scary for you this year, you could definitely do worse than stay home and celebrate with Scratch, Molly McGee, and the Green Family.

Both The Ghost and Molly McGee and Big City Greens can be found streaming on the Disney Channel, Disney+, and the DisneyNOW app.

Be sure to follow @allearsnet on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter!

Check out our YouTube Channel for reviews, news, information and more!

Click below to subscribe to the AllEars® newsletter so you don’t miss any of the latest Disney news!

Are you going to be tuning in to Disney Channel? Let us know below!