From amongst the creepy swirling doomy death that surrounds me in music, I've come up with Halloween CD mixes of suicide, country death, and songs to murder your woman by. Throw in a nice bug mix.

But of course, we need to consider a compilation of country murder songs. Really, what would life be without a little murder and mayhem down on the farm?

Let's start with a true story told by one of the survivors. Reaching into the way back machine with the Doc Watson Family, "The Triplett Tragedy" involves crazy drunken honor murders within a family, recounted a cappella by one of the widows. This is pure creepy freakiness.

You might balk at calling the Violent Femmes "country," but it's in the very title of the "Country Death Song." Plus, it's an appropriately bleak story about a father throwing his young daughter down the well. Grim scene, baby.

Obviously you've got to have Johnny Cash up in this. Heck, they even put together a whole CD compilation of Johnny Cash called Murder. "Folsom Prison Blues" obviously needs to be here. Note that his expressions of regret did not extend to giving a damn about the dead guy, but only that he knew he could never be free again. I personally get a lot more out of "Delia's Gone." That's the psycho stuff where he's hearing the patter of Delia's feet in his jail cell- and still apparently not regretting it.

The real king of country psycho killers, though, is actually Porter Wagoner. All the cool people know about "The Cold Hard Facts of Life." That's a beautiful scene with him driving around and around the house, drinking what was supposed to be their celebratory homecoming booze as he works up his courage to walk in with that knife.

Ah, but even better psycho Porter comes out in "The First Mrs Jones" in which the reasonable and quiet spoken Mr Jones explains the fate of the late Betty Jones- to the second Mrs Jones.

Now, Loretta Lynn only got worked up to murder late in life, with the 2004 recording "Woman's Prison." Killed that cheating SOB. He had it coming, but there she is in the death chamber hearing her mother's voice singing gospel as they're strapping her in. Top that off with some tasty Jack White blues guitar, and you've got a winner.