In a classic passage in his horror novel Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury brilliantly evoked the impatient expectation that surrounds Halloween. “And if it’s around October twentieth and everything smoky-smelling and the sky orange and ash gray at twilight,” Bradbury wrote, “it seems Halloween will never come in a fall of broomsticks and a soft flap of bedsheets around corners.”

Well, the bosses at the Travel Channel want to wait no longer. Throughout the year, not just when the leaves have turned, and Reese’s peanut butter cups have changed into pumpkins, the channel presents an extraordinary lineup of reality TV-style paranormal programming, including its signature shows “Ghost Adventures” and “The Dead Files.”