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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.