13 Towns That Go Completely Over the Top for Halloween
Photo credit: John Andrews, Destination Salem
Some places put out a few pumpkins and call it Halloween, while others turn the entire destination into an experience worth planning a trip around. Think thousands of glowing jack-o'-lanterns, costumed coffin races, Headless Horsemen galloping through the night, Mardi Gras-style Halloween parades and entire towns that have been celebrating spooky season for more than a century.
And then there are places where things get even stranger. You can visit the real-life Halloweentown, spend Halloween in the shadow of the hotel that inspired The Shining, or head to a town that celebrates a 10-day festival called Neewollah. Yes, that's Halloween spelled backward.
Whether you want genuinely creepy, completely quirky or just ridiculously fun, these destinations don't simply celebrate Halloween. They go completely over the top for it.
Here are 13 of the best U.S. towns and cities to add to your Halloween travel bucket list. 🎃
Table of Contents
🧙 Salem, Massachusetts
Photo credit: witchcityimages, Destination Salem
👻 Known for: The city that basically becomes Halloween
🎃 Don’t miss: Salem Night Faire, the Zombie Walk and Halloween night festivities
Salem doesn't just celebrate Halloween. It practically becomes Halloween for the entire month of October. Haunted Happenings takes over the city with costumed crowds, ghost tours, psychic readings, street fairs, haunted attractions and nighttime events, all against the backdrop of a city forever linked to the 1692 Salem witch trials.
Photo credit: CreativeCollectiveMA, Destination Salem
And this isn't simply a collection of haunted houses and pumpkin patches. You can join a Zombie Walk through downtown Salem, wander the eerie Salem Night Faire after dark, watch decorated boats and costumed crews during a Halloween boat parade, or dress up for events ranging from vampire masquerades to elaborate Halloween balls.
Of course, part of what makes Salem different is that you don't need a Halloween attraction to find something spooky. The city's centuries-old streets, historic cemeteries, witch-trial history and reportedly haunted buildings are there year-round. In October, all of that history becomes the backdrop for one enormous celebration.
Then Halloween itself brings the month-long party to its finale, when thousands of costumed visitors fill the streets for one last night of festivities.
Salem doesn't just have a few fun Halloween events. For one month, Salem basically transforms into Halloween.
🐎 Sleepy Hollow, New York
👻 Known for: Bringing the legend of the Headless Horseman to life
🎃 Don’t miss: The Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze and a haunted ride through Sleepy Hollow
If you grew up hearing The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, this is where the story comes to life. Take a haunted ride along the route associated with Ichabod Crane’s terrifying escape from the Headless Horseman, passing the Old Dutch Church before heading into the dark woods of the hollow.
Then head to the Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze, where more than 7,000 hand-carved glowing pumpkins transform the landscape into incredible displays. Think life-sized dinosaurs, a working pumpkin carousel and even a planetarium made from gourds. There’s also a pumpkin dance party and a Headless Horseman’s Hideaway where you might come face-to-face with the Horseman himself.
And if that’s still not enough Halloween for one trip, spend an evening inside a Gothic mansion transformed into the twisted world of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death.
Sleepy Hollow doesn’t feel like you’re visiting a Halloween attraction. It feels like you somehow wandered straight into the story.
🎃 Anoka, Minnesota
👻 Known for: The self-proclaimed “Halloween Capital of the World”
🎃 Don’t miss: Multiple Halloween parades, a community bonfire and some seriously competitive house decorating
Anoka has been celebrating Halloween for more than a century, and the whole thing reportedly started because local kids were causing so much Halloween mischief that cows ended up wandering Main Street, windows were soaped and outhouses were tipped over. In 1920, the town decided to channel all that chaos into a giant Halloween celebration instead, complete with a costume parade, treats and a huge bonfire. The tradition stuck, and Anoka eventually proclaimed itself the “Halloween Capital of the World.”
Today, October brings multiple parades, including a nighttime parade filled with illuminated floats followed by a community bonfire, a 1.5-mile Grande Day Parade, a medallion hunt, pumpkin events and a house decorating competition so serious that participating homes are actually assigned scare ratings ranging from family-friendly to TV-MA. There is even a Big Parade of Little People where local schoolchildren march through historic Main Street, continuing one of the town's oldest Halloween traditions.
And here's one of the more unusual pieces of Anoka's Halloween history. In 1937, a 12-year-old Anoka boy traveled all the way to Washington, D.C. wearing a sweater emblazoned with the Halloween Capital insignia and carrying a proclamation declaring his hometown the “Halloween Capital of the World.”
More than 100 years later, Anoka is still making a pretty convincing case for the title.
⚜️ New Orleans, Louisiana
👻 Known for: Halloween with a Mardi Gras vibe
🎃 Don’t miss: Krewe of BOO!, the Zombie Run and a nighttime ghost or vampire tour
New Orleans already has voodoo legends, above-ground cemeteries, haunted mansions and enough ghost stories to fill an entire vacation. Add Halloween and things get even wilder.
The Krewe of BOO! brings Mardi Gras-style Halloween madness to the streets with elaborate floats, marching bands, dance crews and costumed characters. Riders even toss Halloween-themed throws into the crowds, giving you a taste of Mardi Gras several months early, only considerably spookier.
Then there’s the Zombie Run, where runners make their way through the Warehouse District while being chased by members of the Big Easy Rollergirls dressed as zombies. Add elaborate costume parties, haunted tours, vampire lore and the famously atmospheric streets of the French Quarter after dark, and you have a city that seems almost designed for Halloween.
The best part is that New Orleans doesn’t need fake cobwebs and plastic skeletons to create the atmosphere. Its centuries-old buildings, shadowy courtyards, cemeteries and legends of ghosts, vampires and voodoo are already part of the city’s story.
New Orleans doesn’t really need Halloween to feel a little spooky. In October, it simply turns the volume way up.
⚰️ Manitou Springs, Colorado
👻 Known for: Racing coffins down the street
🎃 Don’t miss: The Emma Crawford Coffin Races and Festival
If you've ever wondered what happens when a historic Colorado mountain town decides to turn a bizarre local legend into a Halloween tradition, Manitou Springs has the answer. Every October, costumed teams strap on their running shoes, decorate a coffin, put one brave teammate inside and race it down the street in front of thousands of spectators.
The tradition is inspired by Emma Crawford, a young woman who moved to Manitou Springs in the 1800s hoping the area's mineral springs and mountain air would help her tuberculosis. After her death, she was buried high on Red Mountain. Years later, erosion reportedly sent her coffin sliding down the mountainside, and her remains eventually had to be reburied.
Naturally, Manitou Springs turned the story into a race.
Today, the Emma Crawford Coffin Races feature teams of wildly costumed “mourners” pushing decorated coffins at full speed while crowds line the streets. Teams compete not only to be the fastest, but also for awards celebrating their costumes and coffin designs.
It may be the only Halloween trip where you'll find yourself cheering for a coffin to cross the finish line first.
🧹 St. Helens, Oregon
👻 Known for: The real-life Halloweentown and a surprising Twilight connection
🎃 Don’t miss: The giant pumpkin lighting, original Halloweentown filming locations and a tour of Bella Swan’s house
If you ever watched Disney's Halloweentown and wished you could step through the screen, you actually can. Much of the original movie was filmed in St. Helens, Oregon, and every fall the town transforms itself into the Spirit of Halloweentown for weekends filled with Halloween events.
The centerpiece is Pumpkin Plaza, where the town recreates the movie's Halloween atmosphere and lights its giant jack-o'-lantern after dark. But you can go much further into the movie than that. Hop aboard a trolley for a tour of actual filming locations, wander streets decorated for Halloween, explore a haunted house, watch dancing witches, enter costume contests and catch live entertainment throughout town.
And this year gets even better for Halloweentown fans. Several actors from the movies are scheduled to return to St. Helens for special appearances, including Judith Hoag, who played Gwen Cromwell Piper, along with Emily Roeske, J. Paul Zimmerman and Phillip Van Dyke.
Here's the unexpected bonus. Halloweentown isn't the only famous supernatural movie connected to St. Helens. The town was also a filming location for Twilight, and on select weekends you can actually tour the real house used as Bella Swan's home in the first movie.
Come for Halloweentown. Tour Bella Swan's house. Watch a giant pumpkin light up after dark. This might be the ultimate Halloween trip for anyone who grew up loving spooky movies.
🏨 Estes Park, Colorado
👻 Known for: The famously haunted Stanley Hotel and the inspiration behind The Shining
🎃 Don’t miss: A nighttime ghost tour through the Stanley Hotel
If spending Halloween inside the hotel that helped inspire Stephen King to write The Shining sounds like your idea of a vacation, head to Estes Park. The Stanley Hotel has been looming over this Colorado mountain town since 1909, and its grand white facade, long hallways and decades of reported paranormal activity have made it almost as famous for its ghosts as its luxury accommodations.
The story gets better. Stephen King and his wife stayed at the Stanley in 1974 near the end of the hotel's season, when they were reportedly among the only guests there. King has said that wandering the nearly empty hotel that night and dreaming about his young son being chased through its corridors helped inspire the setting for The Shining. The Stanley wasn't actually the hotel used for the exterior shots in Stanley Kubrick's movie, but its connection to King's novel is very real.
Today, you can deliberately go looking for the things most hotel guests hope they never encounter. The Stanley offers nighttime paranormal tours through some of its famously eerie spaces while guides share stories about unexplained activity, former guests who may never have checked out and the hotel's long history.
And you're doing all of this in Estes Park, surrounded by the mountains and forests at the doorstep of Rocky Mountain National Park. By late October, the historic hotel against the cold Colorado landscape looks like it was practically designed for a horror movie.
Most people choose a hotel because they want a good night's sleep. At the Stanley, you might secretly be hoping something wakes you up.
🪦 Savannah, Georgia
👻 Known for: Being one of America’s most famously haunted cities
🎃 Don’t miss: After-dark ghost tours, haunted historic buildings and a trip inside the infamous Sorrel-Weed House
Savannah doesn't need to transform itself into a spooky destination for Halloween. With moss-draped oaks, shadowy historic squares, centuries-old mansions and stories of restless spirits seemingly everywhere, the city already looks like someone designed it specifically for ghost season.
Once darkness falls, things get even more interesting. You can climb aboard a hearse for a ghost tour, wander through the Historic District searching for paranormal activity, investigate reportedly haunted buildings after dark or head inside places such as the Sorrel-Weed House, where visitors have reported everything from unexplained voices to apparitions.
Then there is Bonaventure Cemetery, one of the most beautiful and atmospheric cemeteries in the country. Its elaborate monuments and enormous live oaks dripping with Spanish moss look almost too perfectly Gothic to be real. Add Savannah's long history of fires, epidemics, war and tragedy, and there seems to be a ghost story attached to nearly every corner of the city.
And unlike destinations that pack away the skeletons on November 1, Savannah's spooky side doesn't disappear when Halloween is over.
In Savannah, Halloween isn't about creating a haunted city. It's about exploring one that's been telling ghost stories for centuries.
🦇 Las Vegas, Nevada
👻 Known for: Taking Halloween to completely ridiculous Vegas proportions
🎃 Don’t miss: Universal Horror Unleashed, AREA15’s Halloween takeover and the massive costume party on Fremont Street
Of course Las Vegas isn't going to celebrate Halloween quietly. In October, you can walk through Universal Horror Unleashed, a year-round horror experience filled with movie-inspired haunted environments, visit Zak Bagans' Haunted Museum, escape from SAW and The Blair Witch, and then head to AREA15, where an entire month of strange Halloween events takes over the immersive entertainment district.
And AREA15 gets wonderfully weird. The lineup includes Edgar Allan Poe immersive theater, a spooky fashion show, haunted karaoke, Monster Prom, a family rave and even a show where mediums combine spiritual readings with stand-up comedy. On Halloween night, three AREA15 venues transform into ScAREA15: Strange Circus Massive, complete with DJs, roaming performers and sideshow-inspired encounters.
Then there is Fremont Street. On Halloween night, thousands of costumed revelers descend beneath the enormous Viva Vision canopy for live entertainment and an over-the-top costume competition with thousands of dollars in cash prizes.
You can even check into a fake haunted hotel at the Palms where cocktails arrive in blood bags, poison bottles, mini coffins and creepy doll-head mugs.
Las Vegas already specializes in excess. Give it Halloween as an excuse, and apparently there is no such thing as too much.
🎃 Louisville, Kentucky
👻 Known for: Turning thousands upon thousands of pumpkins into glowing works of art
🎃 Don’t miss: More than 5,000 hand-carved pumpkins at the Jack O'Lantern Spectacular and the new Jack's Lantern Trail through Iroquois Park
If your idea of Halloween is less blood and guts and more absolutely magical, Louisville may be the place to go. The city's longtime Jack O'Lantern Spectacular features more than 5,000 hand-carved pumpkins, but these aren't your average triangle-eyed jack-o'-lanterns. Artists turn pumpkins into intricate portraits, characters, landmarks and enormous illuminated displays.
And recently, there’s been a huge change. The original Jack O'Lantern Spectacular moved to Kentucky Kingdom, where its quarter-mile trail is themed “Planet Pumpkin: A Glo-bal Adventure.” More than 5,000 carved pumpkins recreate landmarks, traditions and cultural icons from around the world. The rest of the amusement park joins in with another 1,000-plus illuminated pumpkins, giant glowing sculptures, more than 30 rides operating into the night, trick-or-treating, a hay maze and live entertainment.
But Louisville didn't give up the glowing woods that made the tradition famous. Iroquois Park created a brand-new Jack's Lantern Trail, where thousands more Kentucky-grown pumpkins light a nighttime path through the forest. “Woods of Wonder” includes prehistoric dinosaurs, whimsical woodland villages, pumpkin animals, magical creatures and even musical skeletons.
Louisville didn't lose its famous pumpkin tradition. It basically ended up with two of them.
🧛♂️ Irvington, Indiana
👻 Known for: One of the country's longest-running neighborhood Halloween celebrations
🎃 Don’t miss: The Vampire Run, Zombie Bike Ride and Halloween Street Fair and Parade
Irvington is technically a historic neighborhood of Indianapolis, but during Halloween week it practically becomes its own spooky little world. In 2026, the Historic Irvington Halloween Festival celebrates its 80th year with an entire week of events leading right up to Halloween.
And the event names alone are enough to make you want to go. There’s a Vampire Run, Zombie Bike Ride, Spooky Organ Concert, Halloween Ball, horror movie night and even a blood drive appropriately promoted with the question, “What’s a little blood among friends?” There are also ghost stories, live theater and other Halloween events throughout the historic neighborhood.
Then Halloween itself is the grand finale. More than 120 vendors take over the streets for a massive Halloween Street Fair with live music, entertainment and a costume parade. The tradition actually dates back even further than the current festival. Irvington held its first Halloween celebration in 1927, when masked and costumed residents paraded down Washington Street behind the Indianapolis Military Band before ending the night with a street dance.
Most neighborhoods decorate for Halloween. Irvington has spent generations turning Halloween into part of the neighborhood's identity.
💀 Independence, Kansas
👻 Known for: Celebrating Halloween backward with a nine-day festival called Neewollah
🎃 Don’t miss: Three parades, Queen Neelah and a downtown carnival that takes over the town
Independence doesn't just celebrate Halloween. It celebrates Neewollah, which is Halloween spelled backward, and the tradition has been going on for more than a century.
It started in 1919 as a way to give local kids something fun to do instead of the Halloween mischief that had become a problem around town. The original celebration centered around parades with decorated cars and carriages, along with the crowning of Queen Neelah. Yes, Neelah is “Halloween” backward too, minus the “low.”
Today, Neewollah has grown into a nine-day celebration that organizers call the largest annual festival in Kansas. Independence normally has around 8,500 residents, but organizers say the population swells to roughly 75,000 during the final days of the festival. Downtown fills with a carnival, food vendors and nightly entertainment, while the schedule includes a musical, chili cook-off, Queen Neelah pageant and three completely different parades.
And one of those parades is wonderfully weird. The DooDah Parade is essentially an adult version of the children's parade, described by organizers as a “parade of rowdies,” with outrageous costumes, groups competing for prizes and a Mardi Gras-style atmosphere. The next day brings the Kiddie Parade, followed on Halloween morning by the enormous Grand Parade, a two-hour procession that draws spectators downtown early just to claim a good spot.
Then there is Queen Neelah. What began with a queen selected through penny votes in 1919 has evolved into an elaborate annual tradition with talent night followed by a coronation.
Only a town that spells Halloween backward would turn it into nine straight days of parades, carnival rides, costumes and a queen named Neelah.
🎭 West Hollywood, California
👻 Known for: Outrageous costumes, over-the-top nightlife and one of the country's biggest Halloween street parties
🎃 Don’t miss: The West Hollywood Halloween Carnaval, spooky rooftop movies and Halloween parties along the Sunset Strip
West Hollywood doesn't save Halloween for one night. Throughout October, the city leans into spooky season with themed pop-up bars, horror movies under the stars, costume parties, bar crawls, masquerades and Halloween events at hotels, restaurants and nightlife venues.
But everything builds toward the West Hollywood Halloween Carnaval, when a mile-long stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard closes to traffic and fills with more than 100,000 costumed revelers. It's one of those events where watching the crowd is half the entertainment.
And these aren't your average last-minute Halloween costumes. Expect enormous wigs, elaborate makeup, pop-culture parodies, barely-there outfits and creations that look like they took months to build. Add live music, DJs and the anything-goes atmosphere of West Hollywood's Rainbow District, and the entire neighborhood becomes part of the party.
You can also spend an October night watching horror movies from a rooftop overlooking the city, order Halloween cocktails inside a bar temporarily transformed into something much creepier or head to the legendary Sunset Strip, where clubs, hotels and entertainment venues get in on the Halloween madness.
And if you want even more scares, West Hollywood makes a great base for exploring the rest of Los Angeles' enormous Halloween scene, including Universal Studios Hollywood's Halloween Horror Nights.
Some destinations celebrate Halloween with a few special events. West Hollywood turns October into an excuse to make an already outrageous nightlife scene even wilder.
✨ Pro Tip: The Halloween Carnaval is open to the public, but organizers recommend leaving kids and pets at home. The enormous crowds and sometimes risqué costumes make this one better suited to adults.
More Fall & Halloween Travel Guides
Not ready for fall adventures to end? From spooky season to colorful national parks, here are a few more ideas for your fall bucket list.
🎃 Halloween in Orange County, California: Pumpkin patches, haunted houses, family-friendly events and some of Southern California’s biggest Halloween celebrations.
👻 Halloween in Nashville, Tennessee: Haunted attractions, fall festivals and spooky experiences around Music City.
🏞️ Best National Parks to Visit in Fall: Discover some of the best national parks for fall foliage, cooler hiking weather, fewer crowds and unforgettable autumn scenery.
🍁 Best Places to See Fall Colors in the Southeast: Plan your leaf-peeping adventures with scenic drives, mountain towns and some of the South’s most beautiful fall destinations.
