October is here, and it’s inevitable that local theater companies would try to haunt us with some spookier fare. Here’s a look at who’s obliging our more macabre sensibilities next month:

>> Don’t tell Mom, well, anything about the babysitter? Studio Theatre has Marie Ndiaye’s Hilda, a horror story about a mother’s growing obsession over the woman she hires to care for her kids (Oct 5).

>> There’s double, double, toil and trouble over at the Cramer Center, where VpStart Crow Productions stages Bell, Book and Candle, about a witch in love (Oct. 7).

>> New start-up the Meat & Potato Theatre Company explores the work of Edgar Allen with its Poe 2000, an updated medley of the former Baltimore resident’s poetry and prose. Meat & Potato attempts to beef up Poe’s fear factor by invoking everything from the Iraq war to hip-hop culture (Oct. 13).

>> Scena Theatre goes to hell with its production of Sartre’s No Exit, where three individuals wreak havoc during the afterlife (Oct. 15).

>> And there’s still time to see Synetic Theatre’s production of Dracula, which the Post had mixed feelings about; it runs through Oct. 23.