The best Halloween events in London for ghost stories, films and scares

Time Out is putting its own cobwebby stamp on spooky season with ​a new outdoor cinema season called The Trick or Sweet Film Club, with Time Out x NERDS. It’s running from October 23-31 at London Bridge’s buzzy outdoor venue Vinegar Yard, is curated by our film editor and boasts a line-up of tried-and-tested frighteners with a family-friendly flavour, including Ghostbusters, Gremlins and Addams Family Values. Tickets are a devilish £6.66, with lots of surprises promised and NERDS as far as the eye can see. There will be prizes for the best costumes, so dust off your Stay-Puft suit accordingly.

Following a successful debut last year, the producers of Kew Gardens’ beloved Christmas trail are bringing back their Halloween trail through the iconic botanical gardens. It’s a light trail, basically, but a souped up one: we’re promised eerie illuminated trees, ghoulish installations, fire performers and more, with a troupe of actors on hand to stoke up our horrors (in a family friendly way, of course).

There are three timeslots: Daylight sessions run during the daytime and are intended for younger audiences who want an absolute minimum of spookiness (or simply not be hoe too late); Twlight slots are between 6pm and 7.30pm and things are definitely getting a bit scarier (ie darker); finally the Moonlight slots run after 7.30pm when it should be fully dark.

Following its annual summertime horror bonanza in August, London’s primo horror film festival – dubbed ‘the Woodstock of Gore’ by no less an authority than Guillermo del Toro – is once again resurfacing, Kraken-like, for a spooktacular weekend of Halloween screenings at the Odeon Luxe West End. The line-up for this year’s event will be announced in late September, but horror afficionados can expect a handful of terrifying indie movies, typically including one or two UK premieres. Bedwetters need not apply, and, needless to say, the festival has an 18 rating. 

From last year’s Halloween Screamings at the Prince Charles to its Flightmare on Old Street the year before, north London-born craft brewing giant Beavertown always does something special for the spookiest night of the year, and 2025 is no different. This year, the brewery has jumped on the immersive bandwagon, taking over Shoreditch venue Kachette to stage a 90-minute immersive experience set across ‘five twisted rooms, each offering a surreal new reality to explore.’

It’s keeping pretty hush about what exactly that entails, but visitors are promised ‘unexpected encounters and side quests’, with the journey culminating in a pop-up Beavertown Bar where DJs will be spinning tunes, with some exciting surprise guests headlining each night. Feel like sticking your neck (oil) out? Tickets include a drinks token, two cans of Beavertown and a snack. 

London Month Of The Dead’s annual programme returns this spooky season to get you in the mood for Halloween with a programme of more than 60 fascinatingly macabre events investigating our city’s relationship with death. The line-up offers a plethora of ghostly tours that will take you around crypts, cemeteries, undertakers, execution sites and other eerie locations across the city, alongside talks  exploring everything from the study of human decomposition and the psychology of fear to the theme of murder in art and the criminal history of necrophilia. Highlights of this year’s programme also include a five hour immersive workshop where you can try your hand at some forensic anthropology, a screening of the original Nosferatu with live musical accompaniment, a magic show inside West Norwood Cemetery, an insect mounting workshop at the Kensal Green Cemetery and a circus-themed Halloween party at Soho’s Century Club. It doesn’t get more gothic than that! Check out the full programme here. 

What's creepier than a theme park after dark? One filled with extra-creepy live action mazes, that's what, and Thorpe Park is delivering the terrifying goods once again this Halloween with its special Fright Nights late openings. There are five special mazes to shriek your way through, but even the regular rides can provide some creepy fun. Hop on the park's Saw-themed ride with swinging pendulum blades, the Ghost Train or the Zombie-filled The Walking Dead rollercoaster. If that doesn’t scare you shitless, there’s always the notorious 236ft-high Hyperia, plummeting you into a dark abyss at 80mph. 

To help you get the most out of your trip, we've ranked the rides that will be staying open late.

Find more Halloween events happening in London

The Alexandra Palace Fireworks and Drone Festival (as it’s now called) is easily one of the biggest, baddest displays in town. And this year, it's also the spookiest, as it falls right on Halloween weekend. So that means that its cutting-edge drone show will fill the night sky with glowing ghosts, vampires, demons and witches. And that’s not the only spooky entertainment on offer; alongside the funfair, street food village, German beer hall and music tent, visitors can amp up the chill factor on Halloween tours of the supposedly haunted Alexandra Palace Theatre. 

London attractions don’t come scarier than the London Dungeon, especially in the run-up to Halloween. Each October, the South Bank venue launches a brand-new, blood-curdling show in honour of the spookiest time of year. With recent years’ Halloween productions having been inspired by everything from true crime podcasts to a famous Victorian exorcism, 2025’s show focuses on one of spooky season’s most iconic characters: Dracula. The attraction’s first ever Halloween show based on a fictional character, Dracula: A Victorian Nightmare will transport visitors to the decaying Kingstead Cemetery in 1886, with ivy-strangled statues, mossy coffins and eerie soundscapes setting the stage for a terrifying encounter with The Count. 

It seems fairly apparent that a relatively large number of people have watched Netflix’s South Korean gameshow satire Squid Game and thought ‘I'd love to play that’. Presumably some of these people are simply of the belief that they would win while everyone else died. The majority, one would hope, take the view that it would be fun but you’d want to eliminate the ‘almost everyone dies’ aspect. Inevitably the second party is catered for better than the first – London has already had a VR Squid Game, and now here’s an official immersive experience. Taking in five games in 60 minutes – so rather breezier than the show – Squid Game: The Experience will feature non-lethal recreations of iconic challenges from the show, including the glass bridge, marbles, and – of course – Red Light, Green Light (featuring that horrifying doll thing). 

Hopefully it’ll all be a good laugh and the lack of actual danger won’t leave you feeling like you’re just playing some random children’s games. On that note, kids of all ages are welcome to participate, though depending on how good a parent you are they may be bewildered as to the exact context.

London’s newest – and cultiest – picturehouse, Clerkenwell’s Nickel Cinema is celebrating its first ever Halloween in style this October. A thoroughly DIY affair, the grindhouse cinema specialises is the perfect place to catch some niche horror picks. You won’t find Hocus Pocus and Ghostbusters on the programme here; instead, expect slashers, sexploitation films, Italian murder mystery, German industrial cinema and B movies galore, all leading up to an all-day marathon on October 31. Beginning at midday on Halloween, the first annual Nickel Cinema Halloween Psychotronic All-Dayer will feature six ‘mind-melting rarely (or never) screened movies’ alongside rarely-screened trailers, an exclusive poster sale and surprise guests. Costumes are very much encouraged!

This Halloween, why stop at a scary movie night or mildly creepy ghost tour? If you want to really face your fears, take on The Hunting Grounds, a ‘horror maze like no other’. For 40 hair-raising minutes, you’ll be wondering down the pitch-black corridors and disorienting rooms of an eery abandoned industrial site overtaken by hunters. Not much else has been revealed about the experience, but we do know that you’ll need to psych yourself up to face sinister live performers and plenty of horrifying jump scares. It’s in a secret location in the east of the city – you’ll only find out the exact venue after booking. 

Opening in time for Spooky Season and running through to May 2026, ‘Dark Secrets’ is a massive new exhibition of esoteric artefacts in Waterloo’s appropriately dingy Vaults – and a cracking day out for anyone into the occult, macabre or bizarre. 

A sprawling labyrinth of 27 rooms, it’s fundamentally an exhibition of stuff: more than 1,000 individual artefacts, many of them (apparently) displayed for the first time outside of private collections. There are some genuinely grisly artefacts including at least two actual human skeletons and a calcified foetus, plus a particularly gruesome room on ritual murder which, let’s just say, definitely won’t be to all tastes.

It’s not cheap at £23 for a standard ticket, and it’s definitely not kid-friendly,.But for the right audience, this is an unparalleled cabinet of curiosities that’ll easily eat up 90 minute. Come with an open mind (and a strong stomach) and you’ll leave entertained, informed and more than a little creeped out.

It’s the perfect time of year to explore the grand, gloomy corridors and courtyards of Henry VIII’s haunted palace.

In contrast to previous editions of Hampton Court Halloween, where the action has mostly been inside, this October 2025 half term the main focus will be the gardens, where we’re promised ‘atmospheric projections and creepy sound effects’ in a new outdoor trail, that will also incorporate ‘spirits roaming the grounds’. 

Although it sounds like the inside of the palace will be less ‘halloweeny’ than it has been in previous years, there still be wnadering ghosts sharing their stories, plus spooky storytime sessions. 

Pumpkin patches, UV discos and marshmallow-toasting stations will be joining the furry inhabitants at London Zoo for its ‘Boo at the Zoo’ Halloween programme. Pick and paint the perfect orange ​​gourd, make a ‘flapping bat’ in craft workshops and join a silent disco. Or, find out more about the Zoo’s nocturnal animals by prowling around its darkened The Cassons area and hear about the mysterious lives of nighttime creatures in special expert talks. 

As usual, beloved central London repertory cinema The Prince Charles will be showing more frightening films than Dracula has had bloody dinners during month-long season of spooky cinema this October. The wildly eclectic programme features almost 100 titles this year, encompassing everything from horror classics to niche B movies, all-night marathons and, of course, its famous Sing-A-Long-A Rocky Horror Picture Show (Oct 31 and Nov 1). 

Highlights of the programme include the original 1977 Suspiria (various dates Oct 4-Nov 1), The Night of the Living Dead (Oct 26), the original 1922 Nosferatu performed with a live score (various dates Oct 6-Oct 31) and several all night marathons, including all six Final Destination films (Oct 25), a mystery space-themed bonanza (Oct 4) and another mystery line-up on All Hallow’s Eve itself (Oct 31). 

There’ll also be several screenings on 35mm, including The Exorcist (various dates Oct 11-31), The Shining (various dates Oct 10-Nov 6) and Texas Chainsaw Massacre (various dates Oct 13-31). And that’s just a few options; there really is something for absolutely everyone acxross the month. Excluding wusses. 

Recommended: The best scary film screenings in London for Halloween 2025

As Halloween approaches, immersive experience Phantom Peak gets even more eerie… Each autumn, this interactive show celebrates its Lunar Festival, with ghosts and ghouls taking over the minds and nightmares of the townsfolk. There's a creepy themed menu, as well as ten new trails and spook-filled mysteries to explore.

Get adult tickets for £36.52, down from £42 to Hallowed Peak, only through Time Out Offers.

Hounslow adventure park Hobbledown Heath has had an autumnal makeover complete with a huge pumpkin patch. Great squashes have taken over an expansive meadow on the River Crane, right beside the Hounslow Heath nature reserve. Grab a wheelbarrow and wend your way through the rows of brightly-coloured gourds and take your favourites with you. Book a combined ticket and you can make your pumpkin-picking sesh into a full day out, by sticking around to enjoy Hobbledown’s ultimate adventure playground and zoo, too. Or click through for more places to select a gorgeous gourd this October.

This Halloween, Serafina the Sea Witch will take up residence at the SEA LIFE London Aquarium, where she’ll be setting magical challenges to all who pass through to help her protect her ocean home. Grab an activity sheet and complete the tasks as you make your way around the aquarium, learn about the tricks of the ‘scary not scary’ sea creatures who make up our seas and earn some SEA LIFE Halloween treats to take home with you. Sounds like a spookily good day out to us.

Billed, curiously, as the most successful ‘entertainment event’ of all time, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s opus The Phantom of the Opera still works hard for its audience. Sure, chunks of it have never left 1986. But whereas describing a musical as ‘stuck in the ’80s’ is usually shorthand for cheap, thin synth orchestration, nothing could be further from the truth here: the portentously swirling keyboards and crunch of hair metal guitar that powers ‘Phantom’s title song have a black hole-like immensity, sucking you in with sheer juggernaut bombast.

It’s totally OTT – in one scene the Phantom zaps at his nemesis Raul with a staff that fires actual fireballs – but its blazingly earnest ridiculousness and campy Grand Guignol story are entirely thrilling when realised with the show’s enormous budget. And it makes for the perfect Halloween theatre outing. 

Ghouls, skeletons and creepy critters will be lurking the grounds of Kenwood House this October half term. Winding through the brand new light trail, you’ll have to navigate your way through a spider tunnel, brave a slime web, wander down a warped laser garden and brace yourself for a fair few frights and eerie surprises. Hot toddies, hot chocolate and a banquet of street food options will be on sale to keep you warm and full. Spooky costumes are, of course, strongly encouraged.

Horror movies aren’t just for Halloween. In fact, as Ari Aster’s ‘Midsommar’ proved, the summer can be just as scary as the rest of the year. There really is no bad time to settle down on the sofa and scare the bejesus out of yourself by watching something frightening. Thankfully, Netflix has loads of brilliant and bonkers horror movies available to stream, no matter whether you’re into gorefests, the paranormal or heart pounding psychological scares. From genre classics like ‘The Blair Witch Project’, to modern favourites like ‘The Conjuring’ and ‘Hereditary’, there’s bound to be something for you on our list of the best horror movies streaming on Netflix UK right now.

Recommended: The best horror films of all time.

The spooky fun doesn't stop after October 31. On the first of November, eight of London’s most hyped taco slingers are coming to Stratford's Riverside East for a one day Day of the Dead fiesta. There'll also be micheladas and margaritas aplenty, plus a mariarchi band to give an authentically Mexican flavour to proceedings. Sign up to one of two sessions (11am-4pm or 5pm-10pm) and join the party. There'll be a mix of covered and uncovered spaces to enjoy your tacos in, plus DJs if you reckon you can dance after eating more tacos than you have fingers.