The Ultimate Halloween Watch: 2023

For the last couple of years, I’ve dared to name an “Ultimate Halloween Watch,” taking advantage of the spectral holiday to exhume some tales from the crypt and recount horology’s haunted history. Since I have a particular sweet tooth for American brands, this has meant unearthing buried and forgotten American watch stories.

In some cases, these are long-deceased brands that simply cannot rest in peace, and in others, we find a surge of resurrected zombie brands feasting on fresh wrists.

We’ve explored the legacy of the Gruen watches, who, while facing their fate as a company in the early 1950s, still managed to dig deep and produce one of the fiercest, most badass midcentury watch models.  Gruen introduced it as the Barclay, but history has dubbed it the Spider.

And we’ve kept a watchful eye on the raised-from-the-dead Benrus brand, in particular, their resurrected reference #3061 that originally reached fame on the wrist of Steve McQueen in his death-defying car chase in the 1960s movie “Bullit.”  Some 60 years later, it can still stare down a San Francisco trolley with swagger.

Which brings us to the present day: which brand can exorcise its demons this year?

Well, remember, not all zombies emerge from underground.  Some have been dwelling among us for years, transparently lurking among the living, just waiting for their moment to strike — and if there’s any brand that has shown its teeth lately, it’s Bulova.

Now, if you haven’t been paying close attention, the name Bulova might scare you for other reasons, conjuring ghastly images of fashion watches and unsightly (and unnecessary) skeleton dials.  I hear you.

But in the last few years, Bulova has rekindled its buried and forgotten past with its Archive Series, to rousing success.  Whether you prefer the funky swagger of 1970s chronographs, from “Surfboard” to “Stars & Stripes,” or the stoic salute of mil-spec reissues from the Vietnam War era, or the space-age nostalgia of the Lunar Pilot, Bulova offers a risen star for almost any taste.

This year, they have truly awakened the beast.  The website may list it as Oceanographer, but you know it as the Devil Diver.

Originally released in 1968, it garnered immediate notoriety for its bold orange and black colorway and its nick-namesake: the diabolical depth rating of 666 meters.  Sure, it read “Snorkel” on the dial, but come on. Give the devil his due.

Now, after that splashy release, the Devil Diver largely went quiescent.  From 1972 to 2018, the hell-born model was only available on the vintage market; still a fiendishly strong value proposition search on eBay, by the way.

In 2018, Bulova re-issued the dormant Oceanographer line — larger, more legible, and now officially labeled Devil Diver, which The Time Bum reviewed in detail, and the sea serpent Leviathan has been loose ever since.

Most recently, the Oceanographer line shape-shifted to a GMT model in 3 colorways with a true “flyer” GMT hand and of course, the original 666 depth rating.  While I don’t usually dare to put dive watches on leather straps, this rose gold root beer version feels like it’s destined to be a “go-with-anything” black or brown base option.  Not to mention the haunting already begun, “Affirm, Affirm.”

Still, for this Halloween, I’ll be wrangling the original fiery orange and pitiless black.  No rest for the wicked. As it turns out, this is the first watch on any of my Halloween lists to feature festive colors.

There you have it, the Ultimate Halloween Watch 2023: a devilish diver exorcising demons of the past with a fresh line of strap monsters.