10 Soft Stories With Queer Witches For a Cozy Halloween

You can enjoy this spooky time of year, even if you're a scaredy-cat like me!

I am what is scientifically known as a "big fat scaredy cat" and have always been so. Peed my pants in the haunted house my kindergarten teacher forced us into. Always made my sister go up to porches to ring doorbells first on Halloween, to scout for actual monsters. Literally threw my best friend in front of a mask-wearing fella wielding a chainsaw while trick-or-treating in fifth grade. (The chainsaw didn't have a chain on it, and anyway she just stood there and glared at this fully-grown adult man waving a gas-powered decapitator in her face. She's gay now too.) 

Worst of all, one time in elementary school on Halloween, my bus driver dressed up like Dracula. In the nanosecond between pulling back the orange streamers hanging down from the door, and seeing a Dracula driving my bus, I decided that this malignant fiend had eaten my real driver, the widowed Mrs. Nana Scott from the Methodist church over in Cedar Town, and was kidnapping an entire bus full of schoolchildren for some nefarious blood-draining purpose. I leapt back out the door, and ran across the street without even waiting for the signal that it was safe, across my front yard, screaming, "IT'S A TRICK! IT'S A TRICK! JENNIFER IT'S A TRRIIIIICK" with the hope that my sister would follow me. When she didn't, I crashed through the front door of my house and slid down against the wall, sobbing and hollering to my parents that we'd lost my sister forever. 

As an adult I love spooky season because it's cool weather and crunchy leaves, a little bit eerie and perfect for magic; plus also there's so many cats in costumes all over Instagram — but I still absolutely hate to be scared by anything or anyone ever. Last year, I punched an animatronic demon scarecrow in the face in the grocery store because it came to life in the produce section when I walked by the zucchinis and started screeching threats at me. The point I'm trying to make is that you can still enjoy this spooky time of year, even if you're a grown-up lesbian baby like me. In fact, here's ten soft stories with queer witches for a cozy Halloween. 

Hocus Pocus: An All-New Sequel

Before the Hocus Pocus movie sequel, Disney released a YA Hocus Pocus book that takes place 25 years after Allison and Max faced down the Halloween hijinks in the original film. It focuses on Allison and Max's teenage daughter, Poppy, who gets interested in the legend of the Sanderson sisters because the girl she has a crush on, Isabella, is obsessed with them. The book is half magical adventure and half two girls falling in love with another girl for the first time. It's the sweetest thing in the Hocus Pocus universe. 

Witches of Thistle Grove series

Lana Harper's rom-com book series follows a bunch of modern day witches and their families who live in Thistle Grove, a Stars Hollow-y kind of town that's teeming with supernatural power. The first book, Payback’s a Witch, centers on Emmy Harlow, a bisexual witch who skipped town due to a broken heart, and is forced to return for an all-families spellcasting tournament. She hates being back, but she loves the way her former arch-enemy, Talia Avramov, makes her feel. Flushed and tingly and giggly and light as actual air. Talia's a witch too, but this is a whole other kind of magic. 

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

Okay, the main romance in this super adorable, super cozy book is straight — but there's a gay romance between two grandpa-age men who have been together a million years that's just as important and oh so lovely. Sangu Mandanna's The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches tells the story of Mika Moon, one of the dozens of real-life witches hidden around Britain, who gets roped into becoming the live-in magic teacher for three orphaned girls who haven't yet been reported to the governing body of witchy activity. Things are sticky at first at Nowhere House, but soon enough she and the girls learn to trust and love each other as they all learn more about the real depth of their powers. If you like found family stories, this one's for you. 

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

The Elemental Princesses in ND Stevenson's modern She-Ra adaptation are all witches, really. And that includes queer heroes: Glimmer (bisexual), Scorpia (queer), Mermista (bisexual), Perfuma (queer and possibly trans), and Adora (lesbian). And that's just the witchy queers! There's like a dozen more LGBTQs on the show: Lesbian couple Netossa and Spinnerella, Scopria's lesbian moms, Bow's gay dads, Bow himself (bisexual), bad guy throuple Rogelio and Lonnie and Kyle, bisexual autistic tech genius Entrapta, trans man Jewelstar, and nonbinary chaos agent Double Trouble. And, of course, Catra (lesbian), whose relationship with Adora is one of the best slow-burn, epic queer love stories ever ever ever, in any storytelling medium.

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power streams on Netflix.

Mooncakes

Nova Huang is a magical teen witch who works in her grandmother's bookshop in New England. In Moooncakes, they lend out spellbooks and also do a little supernatural investigating on the side. During one such bit of detective work, Nova stumbles across her childhood crush, Tam Lang, in the forest fighting a demon. They begin working together and find their romantic feelings coming back full-force. Nova is hard of hearing and it's an important part of her journey. Tam is a nonbinary werewolf. Their love story and their adventure story are both so adorable and soft and lovely. You'll probably finish this graphic novel and then turn right around and read it again, looking for sweet little clues you missed along the way because you were so invested in Nova and Tam's happy ending. 

Monster High

Nickelodeon's live-action musical-fantasy adaptation of the 2010s Mattel cartoon stepped directly into JK Rowling's face and flung open the doors of its magic school to trans kids. It's High School Musical meets Jem and the Holograms, to be completely honest; kind of silly and very adorable. There's Clawdeen Wolf, a half-werewolf, half-human (heavy on the gay symbolism as all werewolves are). Early on in the 90-minute movie, she meets her best friend, the brilliant Frankie Stein, a nonbinary student who’s been Frankenmonstered together with the bodies of genius philosophers, scientists, artists, mathematicians, physicists, and even Marie Curie. “Frankie Stein, pronouns they/them" is how Frankie always introduces themself and they're even played by trans actor Ceci Balagot (he/they). Monster High is all about reconciling the different parts of yourself and finding the people who accept you, fully, for who you are.

The place to stream Monster High is Paramount+.

Disenchantment

Matt Groening's satirical medieval adult cartoon centers on Abbi Jacobson's magical Queen Bean, who's basically like all the little tomboy scoundrels you grew up loving (Anne Shirley, Scout Finch, Jo March, Kristy Thomas, Nancy Drew) but as an adult who loves to drink and gamble and get up to much higher-stakes hijinks. She falls in love with a mermaid named Mora who helps her figure out who she really is and what she really wants, and yes — spoiler alert! — they do live happily ever after. This is the least soft story on this list but it's still full of tender moments of friendship and true love. And, of course, there’s endless sight gags that will have you howling like one of those queer werewolves.

Disenchantment is streaming on Netflix.

The Owl House

You would never expect to find a cartoon as queer as The Owl House on TV, especially on the Disney Channel, but creator and showrunner Dana Terrace pulled off a major coup with her gloriously gay witch-filled animated series. Our main character is Luz, a bisexual human who’s obsessed with fantasy stories about witches, and who trips her way through a portal and into a magical world with real witches when she’s supposed to be at summer camp for normies. She attends magical school and falls for a lesbian witch named Amity. Her witchy pseudo-mom, Eda Clawthorne, is bisexual. The love of Eda's life is nonbinary. Eda's sister is asexual. Luz's shape-shifting basilisk step-sister is queer. And her step-sister's love interest is also nonbinary. Like with She-Ra, this list of sexualities doesn't come close to doing the show justice in terms of the depth and nuance of its queer storytelling. Just trust me: The Owl House is one of the softest, most magical queer love stories ever told. Bonus points for my favorite-ever parent of a gay kid, Camila Noceda. (Sorry, Burt Hummel.) 

The Owl House is streaming on Disney Now and Disney+.

Improbable Magic for Cynical Witches

You know how in all the best romances, the main characters figure out how to be bravely and authentically themselves because they finally open their hearts up to true love? Yeah, this is that but witchy! Eleanor works at the Salem Gift Emporium and meets a cute girl called Pixie the very day a package of homemade tarot cards arrives for her. Eleanor starts with The Fool and works her way through the major arcana throughout the course of the book. Plus! More chronic illness rep! Eleanor's mom has Lyme disease. Pixie belongs to a coven that participates in pagan rituals. Improbable Magic isn't fantasy, really; it's learning what magic can be in the real world. It's also not soft all the way through, but it's full of hard-won hope and tender happiness. 

Adventure Time

The specific witch I want to talk about on Adventure Time is Maja. She appears in season five, episode 29, "Sky Witch," and is the reason we finally got official confirmation that Princess Bubblegum and Marceline the Vampire Queen are waaaay more than friends. Maja gets her hands on Marceline's prized possession, her beloved stuffed toy Hambo. She needs something full of loving sentiment to brew a potion, and what's got more human feelings attached to it than a teddy bear? Well, I'll tell you: A t-shirt the love of your life gave you one time before you broke up, and which you still sleep in and bury your face in from time-to-time because it still smells like them. That's how PB gets Marcy's Hambo back; she trades the Sky Witch a shirt Marcy gave to her when they were together. I have spoiled the story for you, but even so, you'll squeal when you watch it because it's just that dang cute. 

Adventure Time streams on (HBO) Max.