Halloween events in Los Angeles for spooky fun

Confront familiar foes at Universal Studios’ annual Halloween festivities, where big-budget scares meet iconic horror movie characters. You’ll be able to navigate multiple scare zones and mazes, including ones based on The Haunting of Hill House, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Exorcist, The Walking Dead, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (a peculiarly specific choice in the Halloween saga) and the Bride of Frankenstein, plus the return of “The Curse of Pandora’s Box.” The Studio Tour will also morph into the Terror Tram, complete with a The Purge tie-in.

Its past installments have found attendees stealthing their way through a Victorian home and embarking on a Blade Runner-esque bounty hunt. And now this celebrated immersive horror theater event is returning to L.A. for an event an a 146-year-old mansion.

See Danny Elfman step back into the role of Jack Skellington for a live performance and screening of The Nightmare Before Christmas at the Banc of California Stadium.

What could be a better fit for Halloween than spooky films screened in a cemetery? Catch showings of A Nightmare on Elm Street, Labyrinth, Blade and The Shining.

Each year the Walt Disney Concert Hall adds a little bit of Frank Gehry to Halloween with a silent film screening accompanied by organist Clark Wilson for an extra eerie feel. This year, take a seat for 1923’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, starring the legendary Lon Chaney.

After a year as a drive-through in San Dimas, this haunted event heads back to Griffith Park with a traditional hayride and a return to its 2019 setting: the mid-’80s ficticious town of Midnight Falls, which borrows a little bit of the road culture of Sons of Anarchy and the isolation of Twin Peaks.

The masters of alfresco rooftop movie viewing have returned, with both a Santa Monica “drive-up,” a new rooftop in El Segundo and its returning location in Downtown L.A. Between the three locations, you’ll find as many as eight showtimes in a single night, with everything from Paranorman and Casper to What We Do in the Shadows and The Lost Boys.

For dinner and a movie, all in one, just follow the food trucks to this outdoor screening series. For the park-hopping October schedule, you’ll find showings of The Nightmare Before Christmas, Hocus Pocus, The Craft and Beetlejuice.

After last year’s self-guided tour of houses fit for a witch, Friends of Residential Treasures: Los Angeles is back with another map of storybook-style homes. Amber Benson, the Witches of Echo Park novelist and a mid-series regular on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, has once again curated a guide to five castles and cottages, spread out between Los Feliz and West Hollywood.

Watch a slate of recent classics from one of the prettiest rooftops in Hollywood at this outdoor screenings series. The Montalbán’s Halloween block includes showings of Beetlejuice, Pan’s Labyrinth, American Psycho and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, among others.