October 2020 events calendar for Los Angeles

Trick or treating will look a little different this year, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get the whole family together for a drive-through experience to get spooky. Coming to Woodland Hills on October 9, a new Haunt’oween L.A. event promises jack-o’-lantern tunnels, pumpkin picking, family-friendly sights and even a bit of “door-to-door” trick or treating—all socially distanced, of course. The new drive-through event will run through Halloween and comes by way of Experiential Supply, a company that recreates sets and builds immersive activations for big-budget movies like IT: Chapter 2 and Ready Player One. Now, they’re building driveable mini maze paths, a tunnel featuring 1,000 lit pumpkins, a sanitized pumpkin patch station and even two rows of residential streets where costumed, masked characters will hand out wrapped candy with poles and buckets to safely recreate trick or treating. If you want to keep the memory of Halloween going all year round—and don’t we all?—every car gets a photo op and a green screen video to remember the trek. The entire experience runs between 25 and 35 minutes and costs $70 per car. You’ll find it at 6100 Topanga Canyon Boulevard on the site of the former Westfield Promenade. Tickets are on sale now.

Neither experienced from your car nor bent on scaring the gourd out of you, Descanso Gardens’ new monthlong event is bringing some fresh air and family-friendly fun to Halloween. Throughout October, you can take a socially-distanced stroll through the La Cañada Flintridge gardens and its seasonal displays: a hay maze, a pumpkin arch, wooden jack-o’-lantern boxes, a scarecrow trail through a forest and a house made entirely out of pumpkins. And over at the Oak Grove, you’ll find mandalas of orange, white and green pumpkins swirling around the trunks of trees. Halloween is included in regular admission ($15, kids $5), and reservations (and masks, of course) are required. Tickets are currently sold out for weekend dates, but if you can visit on a weekday, that’ll probably make for a more peaceful and leisurely experience anyway; we swung by on a Saturday and found most of the pumpkin photo ops near the entrance area bustling with families, though the farther reaches of the gardens were still uncrowded. You’ll be able to visit Descanso daily from 9am to 5pm, with extended 5 to 8pm hours the final week of October (Halloween night is reserved for Family Plus members).

If you like your haunts with a bit of mystery, a new Halloween event called Fright Farms promises to build on the drive-through format by adding clues and a spooky storyline. From October 26 all the way through November 29, five acres of the SilverLakes Complex in Norco, California, will flip to an immersive experience where you'll solve the mystery of Hillsdale and its recently missing resident, Emma Parker, cruising through creepy terrain all the while. Clues and directions will be broadcast over your car radio, while interactive aspects such as Parker's missing-persons report will pop up on your phone—and naturally there'll be creatures lurking in the shadows.  Tickets run $65 to $75 per vehicle entry and are on sale now, and if this 13+ spookfest is a little too scary, there's a sibling drive-through concept—Not So Spooky Farm—on the grounds, too. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Fright Farms (@frightfarms) on Sep 24, 2020 at 12:00pm PDT

Halloween is basically canceled and seemingly every other event in SoCal has made the jump to the drive-in. So it was only a matter of time: A drive-through haunted house is coming to Costa Mesa this fall. Urban Legends of Southern California will roll into the OC Fair & Event Center most evenings in October. The experience will translate bits of spooky folklore into a series of special effects and creature-filled sets, plus three interactive show zones that you can park inside of. (Fingers crossed there are sets about earthquake weather and the death of the streetcar—oh, not those kinds of urban legends? Whoops.) The event comes from the producers of Winter Fest OC and the creators of the Queen Mary’s Dark Harbor; you can hear them talk a bit more about the experience here. As you might expect, you’ll need to remain in your vehicle the entire time and keep to a 3mph speed limit. You can open your windows if you want, but you’ll need to wear a mask—and don’t worry, the monsters will be practicing social distancing, too. Urban Legends of Southern California runs Wednesday through Sunday nights from October 1 through November 1. Tickets cost $50 per vehicle on Wednesdays, $60 on Thursdays and Sundays, and $70 on Fridays and Saturdays—but prices will increase on August 23.

Cruise 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 returns this year with a drive-through edition, with timed tickets required each night. Expect to spend about 25 minutes on the mile-long trail, and just a heads up that there will be no food or beverages for sale, nor will bathrooms be available.

This new event is combining the appeal of a food festival with all the creepiness of a haunted trail—and all from the safety of your car. The Bite LA is a Halloween-themed food crawl complete with virtual campfire and "creature safari," where you'll drive from station to station and costumed ghouls and other dark entities will serve you eight bites along the way. (Still hungry? There'll be additional food for purchase, plus vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free options.) Bring your own flashlight for the "creature safari," where you'll shine light into the woods to find the monsters roaming the trees, and at the end, park your cark for the virtual campfire, which includes  scary stories, a themed campfire dessert, and your choice of hot cocoa, cider or coffee. If you're the type who likes to dress up everything, there's also a car costume contest where your decorated ride can help you win prizes. The fun runs Friday to Sunday throughout October, with a few weekdays added, and tickets run $38-$98 per person, depending on how many are in your vehicle with you. Learn more about The Bite LA here.

This Stranger Things-themed experience will bring the Netflix series to life with an hourlong adventure that transports visitors to Hawkins and the Starcourt Mall circa 1985. And as the name implies, you’ll be able to take it all in from the safety of your own car. Hatched by the UK’s wildly creative Secret Cinema, the experience will take groups of 24 cars at a time through “a world of bitchin’ tunes, mullets and monster hunts,” including sets complete with actors in costume and special effects. You’ll drive through the Starcourt Mall, Russian labs and the Upside Down and stop for extended periods of time at each to see different scenes play out.

The park is technically still closed, but Knott’s Berry Farm is still finding a way to make the season spooky. Normally California’s oldest theme park goes all-out for Halloween with haunts and trails during Knott’s Scary Farm, but this year, it’s instead throwing a brand new food festival on just a portion of the grounds. The new Taste of Fall-O-Ween is set to include food stations packed with all the pumpkin-spiced treats, apple cider, funnel cakes, soup bread bowls and other fall fare you could want, plus more eerie options such as frozen “bloody” lemon slime margaritas. And while there will be adult concoctions to purchase, it’s a family-friendly event—so much so that there’s even a children’s trick-or-treating trail.  There’s no admission needed for the fest, but you will need to purchase a tasting card, with five tastes for $35, or $20 for a kids card with three tastes. Find the full story on Taste of Fall-O-Ween here.

We might be passing go-in-the-pool season, but sit-by-the-pool season isn’t going anywhere. You can do just that—and eat dinner and watch a movie while you’re at it—during this poolside screening series at Downtown’s JW Marriott. Each $45 reservation includes one appetizer or snack, one entrée and unlimited popcorn.

Looking for a Halloween adventure that's suitable for all ages? How about an immersive, interactive treasure hunt for the booty of dread pirate Bluebeard?  The team behind the creepy and mystery-laden Fright Farms drive-through is giving guests another option, one that's a little less scare and a little more adventure. During Not So Spooky Farm, you'll follow the Jack-o-lantern–headed Stingy Jack to drive through Jurassic Park, a hedge maze, a castle and more, picking up candy clues, and watching the storyline as you go thanks to QR codes on your smartphones. Each vehicle costs $65 to enter and receives adventure kits and supplies for the 35-minute journey ahead. Tickets are on sale now.