With summer finally coming to a close we are in the beginning of my favorite season. Chilly sweater weather, pumpkin everything, adorable Halloween decorations and the start of the return of all out favorite fall television shows. When you add fall T.V. and Halloween together it makes for some of the best horror and dark fantasy shows so here's a guide to the new, returning and future series.

New Shows for 2016-2017

Emerald City (2017-)

Picked up by NBC, Emerald City is a re-imagining of the classic Wizard of OZ that follows 20 year-old Dorothy Gale as she is swept into a realm with lethal warriors, dark magic and a bloody battle for supremacy. There is no trailer yet, but based off the photos released it looks as if the show will be set in a more gritty, futuristic and avant-garde distopian world than the original movie and based off of this first poster, it looks like the Emerald City is going dark.

Midnight, Texas (2017-)

Another show picked up by NBC is Midnight, Texas based off of Charlaine Harris'Midnight Crossroads three-part novel series. Many people are calling this show a spin-off of Harris' other series, HBO's True Blood because it is set in the same world with vampires, werewolves, weretigers, ghosts, physics and more. Since Midnight, Texas is premiering on prime-time cable, not HBO, it will be more vanilla than True Blood. However, the novel series' strong story-line following Manfred the physic and his move to less-than-ordinary Midnight, Texas gives it an edge over the gratuitous sex and weak plot on True Blood.

The Exorcist (2016-)

Following the tradition of re-making classic horror movies into hit televisions shows like Bates Motel and Damien comes the highly anticipated The Exorcist on FOX. The show will tell a similar story to the original movie about a family with demon problems, but will feature two priests, instead of one, with different approaches to exorcism. Based on the trailer this show looks like it's going to be excellent. It looks scary, dark and gritty. It's a bold move for prime-time. It even looks like it might be better than the original movie. The show will air on FOX September 23rd.

Van Helsing (2016-)

SyFy's new show Van Helsing is set in a post-apocalyptic world overtaken by vampires and focuses on resurrected Vanessa "Van" Helsing, the daughter of Abraham Van Helsing who is a famous vampire hunter that first originated in Bram Stoker's novel Dracula. Traditionally Van Helsing has been portrayed as a man so seeing a woman take the lead should be interesting as well as seeing vampires reclaiming their roles as villains. The show premieres on SyFy September 23rd.

Channel Zero: Candle Cove

Okay, so I found out about this upcoming show this morning after seeing Mr.Tooth from the promos (picture above) all over my Twitter feed, and I'm pretty excited about it. Following the footsteps of American Horror Story, Channel Zero is a new Syfy original anthology horror series that is based off of creepypasta stories. The show has already been signed on for two six episode seasons, the first one being Candle Cove, focusing on a child psychologist who returns to his small town home to investigate the mysterious disappearance of his twin brother and other children in the 1980s, and how it is connected to a bizarre local children's television show that aired at the same time.

Candle Cove was originally written by webcartoonist Kris Straub and posted on creepypasta. It's formatted as a chat forum about people talking about a television show called Candle Cove, a demented puppet pirate show, when they were children and how disturbing it was, (SPOILER ALERT) by the end of the story it's revealed that the show never existed at all. Creepy. Even creepier is that real life people are claiming to have seen Candle Cove when they were little too, versions of the show have even popped up on YouTube and there's a Wikipedia page claiming that the show really did exist.

So I'm pretty excited about this one, even though Mr. Tooth makes my trypophobia flare up. The show premieres in September.

Returning Shows

American Horror Story ?6

The promo for American Horror Story has been the most annoying things that the show has ever done and it's genius. Normally, the anthology show would announce the theme around March, the cast and general plot around May, film all summer, then in October we know pretty much everything about the season. This year the show premieres a month earlier, September 14th on FX, and we still don't even know the theme yet. All we know is that the series regulars Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters, Denis O'Hare, Angela Bassett, Matt Bomer, Leslie Jordan, Cheyenne Jackson and Lady Gaga will be returning.

We have also been given around fifteen teasers all showing different ideas surrounding everything from farmhouses and creepy farm people, alien abductions, millipedes and spiders, mutants on train tracks, haunted houses, rotten teeth and dirty bathtubs and the creature from the black lagoon. We aren't going to know what this season is going to be about until it premiers, but I have a good feeling that it's going to be their best yet.

Scream Queens

The second second of Scream Queens is coming back to FOX on September 20th with Emma Roberts, Lea Michele, Billie Lourd and Abigail Bresiln returning as the Chanel's, this time graduated to a Hospital run by Jamie Lee Curtis' Cathy Munsch. The colorful cast also includes returning Keke Palmer and Niecy Nash, John Stamos and werewolf Taylor Lautner as doctors and James Earl.

Bates Motel

A&E will be airing the final season of Bates Motel (sigh) in early 2017. It's defiantly the most underrated show on television right now and the final season plans on covering the events that take place in the Psycho movie. The show is a modern-day prequel to Psycho telling the story of Norman Bates and his Oedipus complex. Pop-star Rihanna is joining Vera Farmiga and Freddie Highmore to play a modern-day Marion Crane. I still don't know how I feel about that casting choice, but I trust that the show writers know what they are doing.

Outcast

Outcast is a show on my list of things to watch once I'm able to (it's only on Cinemax). It's based off of Robert Kirkland's (The Walking Dead guy) comic book series of the same name and was renewed for a second season premiering some time next summer. From what I have heard the show is actually very, very scary. It's about a man named Kyle Barnes who is trying to figure out why him, and his family, are being plagued by demonic possessions.

The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead

Too bad I gave up on The Walking Dead because there's apparently a man with a pet tiger in the new season premiering October 23 on AMC. I have a love-hate relationship with this show, the first three seasons were excellent, but after that things went downhill for me in a boring, boring way. Hopefully the tiger will add some spark. It's spinoff Fear the Walking Dead has also been renewed and is currently airing on AMC.

The Vampire Diaries, The Originals and Supernatural

I've lumped all of the CW horror/fantasy/drama shows together because many of them seem to be on their way out. The Vampire Diaries will be airing it's final eighth season on October 21 with promises of the most evil villain yet, a darker Damon Salvatore and the return of Nina Dobrev as Elena Gilbert. It's spin-off series The Originals fourth season premiere has been bumped back to the mid-season time slot in 2017 and will have a five year time-jump from the last season, while Supernatural is still going strong and will air it's twelfth season on October 13.