Halloween events in Los Angeles for spooky fun

Stroll through a mile-long trail filled with all things pumpkins, including an illuminated forest of jack-o’-lanterns, during Descanso Gardens’ annual Carved. For three weeks in October, the event will line a loop of the botanical garden with thousands of professionally-carved pumpkins in all sorts of forms: as a sea monster rising from a pond, arranged on the ground like a white-and-orange paisley, stuck together with branches in the form of some oversized bugs and cobbled together into a house.

This hour-long, Halloween-week experience from the folks behind Midsummer Scream will set up 13 themed trick-or-treating stops at Heritage Square Museum, the final resting place for some ornate late-1800s houses. Despite the scary name, the event is mostly aimed at kids, particularly during the day. But the event organizers do suggest that things will become spooky-but-not-scary as eerie characters and ghostly effects invade the evening.

Well, well, well, what have we here? The Nightmare Before Christmas’s bug-stuffed sack is once again taking over the Halloween duties at Disneyland, holding the theme park’s annual after-hours, specially ticketed seasonal event at Disney California Adventure for Oogie Boogie Bash.

Face your fears and head to the Natural History Museum’s Spider Pavilion, where you can observe several hundred orbweaver spiders in a living exhibit just outside of the museum. Scared the spiders might be hard to spot in the wild? Fret not. In previous iterations we’ve spotted ones about the size of an adult’s palm. Gulp. (But don’t worry: The scariest ones are in enclosed habitats.) 

Walk across the grounds of the scenic King Gillette Ranch as the Santa Monica Mountains hideaway is illuminated with thousands of hand-carved jack-o’-lanterns. Nights of the Jack reverts to an on-foot, two-thirds-of-a-mile trail this year (with a “Spookeasy,” too). Timed tickets required each night; expect to spend an hour to an hour and a half there.

See the Bob Baker Marionette Theater’s Halloween performances during this monthlong lineup of spooky festivities. The puppet theater will be performing “Bob Baker’s Halloween Spooktacular!”—a refurbished production of its long-running  “boo-sical revue.”

Haunt’oween will celebrate spooky season with a walkthrough in Woodland Hills that features a pumpkin patch for both picking and carving, a scarecrow garden, a trick-or-treating–filled town and an illuminated carnival, plus face painting, performances, games and food trucks.

Go pumpkin picking in the pines as this Halloween-themed month of activities hits a perennially-Christmas theme park Lake Arrowhead amusement park. On weekends from October 9 through 31, SkyPark at Santa’s Village hosts its Pumpkins in the Pines activities, which—you guessed it—sees pumpkins and hay bales covering the grounds of the park.

The L.A. Zoo’s annual Halloween celebration includes a month of spooky decor, a conservation-minded graveyard of departed species and up-close-and-personal interactions with some of the zoo’s creepiest crawlers. On weekends, you’ll find creepy crafts, a mad science show and a photo op. The animals typically get in on the Halloween action, too, with pumpkin or carcass feedings scheduled over the weekends. Show up on October 23, 24, 30 or 31 for trick-or-treating.