Halloweentown (film series)

Halloweentown is an American television series consisting of four fantasy films released as Disney Channel Original Movies: Halloweentown (1998), Halloweentown II: Kalabar's Revenge (2001), Halloweentown High (2004), and Return to Halloweentown (2006). The series imagines that fantasy beings—such as warlocks, vampires, werewolves, mummies, ghosts, trolls, ogres, zombies, pumpkin heads (a race with jack-o'-lanterns for heads), skeletons, goblins, and humanoids with extra heads, limbs, or sensory organs—are real but separated themselves from Earth’s history a thousand years ago to avoid human fear and persecution. They built their own community, called Halloweentown, in an alternate universe.

Travel between Halloweentown and the ordinary world (called “The Mortal World” by its residents) requires magical help and is normally only allowed on Halloween, until the portal closes at midnight. In the second film, the portal is permanently opened, and the third film widens the gap further. Many mortal Halloween traditions are said to be based on regular Halloweentown customs—for example, mortals wear costumes mimicking Halloweentown creatures, often making them look scarier than they really are. In Halloweentown, residents dress up every day, and most are friendlier than human legends suggest.

Magic is common in daily life there, but only a limited number of people actually practice or control it. These are mostly humans called witches (female) and warlocks (male). They appear human but have a biological extra-sensory ability to harness magic, which is hereditary in their families.

The films focus on the Cromwell–Piper family. The matriarch, Agatha Cromwell, has been a pillar of Halloweentown society for centuries. Her daughter, Gwen Piper, married a mortal and left Halloweentown for the Mortal World. By the time of the films, she is apparently widowed and raises her three children—Marnie, Dylan, and Sophie—away from magic, rejecting contact with Halloweentown and her mother’s influence.

Halloweentown II: Kalabar's Revenge (2001)

In the first film, Marnie, Dylan, and Sophie discover they come from a family of witches. Two years later, in the second film, an angry warlock named Kal steals a magic spell book and plans to turn everyone into the costume they are wearing at midnight on Halloween.