Songs to Make the Hair on Your Neck Stand on End.

Are there songs that make the hair on the back of your neck stand on end? For me it's usually the ones with harmonies of multiple instruments or voices. As a change from Metal Weekend, I'd like to share three haunting songs.

First up is an instrumental from Metallica and Symphony, Ecstasy of Gold. This is an orchestral piece orginally written by Ennio Morricone for the 1966 film The Good the Bad and the Ugly and Metallica uses it as the intro to their live shows. It's great when they do it alone, but when they did it with the symphony orchestra for their S&M tour it was something else! Close your eyes in a room with some good surround sound speakers for the best effect.

Up next is Simon and Garfunkel’s Sound of Silence. I've always loved the harmonies of their songs, but this has got to be the best one. It was first released in 1964 on the album Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. which was a flop and they split up. Thankfully, it was remixed and re-released the following year as a single by the producer. It was so successful that it brought them back together and they followed up with a string of other hits.

This song has been covered numerous times, but so far the original still remains my favourite.

Saving the most haunting till last here with Enya’s Evening Falls Released 1988. This song was worked around a ghost story where an American woman keeps having dreams of wandering around an old house. Many years pass by and she and her husband retire to England where she comes across the very house in her dreams. She knocks on the door and the people in the house regard her with fear. When asked why, they tell her that they have seen her haunting the house.

Although this exact story is not told in the words of the song, its haunting harmonies are very fitting for the idea and listening to it gives me goose bumps every time!