Spooky is the most neglected of the five basic human emotions: spooky, joy, sorrow, grouchy, and wet. Get horror glands pumping with today’s Groupon: for $12, you get one adult general-admission ticket to the haunted theme park at Screams Halloween Theme Park in Waxahachie (a $24.99 value). Screams Halloween Theme Park is open to the public Friday and Saturday nights, September 30 to October 29, from 7:30 p.m. to 1:30 a.m., and Sunday, October 30, from 7:30 p.m. to 11 p.m.

Screams Halloween Theme Park' macabre workforce of professional ghoulish actors populates five eerie attractions and activities designed to cull shrieks from frightened visitors. Anxious explorers tread lightly among Peril Point's island of three-dimensional apparitions and the Castle of Darkness, the scariest of all royal haunts, which incurs skyrocketing bills for scepter bedazzling and red-carpet steaming. Circumspect eyes stay peeled during spine-tingling treks through the straight-jacketed Arcane Asylum or while viewing the menacing circus performers in Unkel Koy's Klown Maze and the undead specters roaming the Ghoulish Graveyard. Tense nerves take a rest with more lighthearted activities including face painting, classic-horror-movie screenings, and Scary-oke singing that disguises terrified shrieks as showcases of falsetto vocal range.