Halloween 2026 at three of America’s famous haunted landmarks

Every October, a handful of American buildings with famous ghost stories turn into some of the busiest Halloween venues in the country. This year, three of the best-known – a ruined prison in Philadelphia, a retired ocean liner in Long Beach and a mountain hotel in Colorado – are all in full swing. Here is what each is offering this season, based on the venues’ own listings and local news coverage, and a reminder of how much of the fun is theater built on top of real history.

Eastern State Penitentiary, Philadelphia

Halloween Nights opened on October 2 for its 35th season and runs on select nights until November 7, according to FOX 29 Philadelphia. The festival has five haunted houses – The Crypt, Nightmares, Machine Shop, Dark Tides and Big Top Terror – and more than 200 performers each night. The Crypt has doubled in size this year and adds a “Scare Cam” that shows visitors their own reactions. A new After Dark VIP Tour adds a 40-minute guided flashlight tour, and visitors can also pay at the door for a 20-minute flashlight tour of the old hospital block, if there is space. Guests who want performers to grab them, or to be pulled through hidden passages, wear a glow necklace; everyone else is left alone. Children under seven are not admitted.

Eastern State’s events calendar also lists a behind-the-scenes “Hidden History” evening on October 21 and a free costume festival for children on October 25, after a Pride Night held on October 8. The museum’s regular history programming continues alongside the haunted houses.

The building’s story is worth knowing before the scares start. Eastern State opened in 1829 as a model of solitary confinement, closed as a state prison in 1970 and opened for history tours in 1994. Its first Halloween fundraiser was held in 1991. TV ghost-hunting shows, including Ghost Hunters and Ghost Adventures, have filmed there, and the British series Most Haunted Live! broadcast a seven-hour investigation from the prison in 2007. What those programs offered were impressions and anecdotes, not evidence. The site’s own exhibits focus on the people held there and on today’s debates about prisons.

The Queen Mary, Long Beach

Queen Mary’s Dark Harbor opened its 13th season on September 18 and runs on select nights until November 1, with tickets from $50.99, Hoodline reported, citing NBC Los Angeles. The festival is produced by Thirteenth Floor Entertainment Group and has six mazes, including a new one, Shipwrecked: Brace for Impact, plus a new walk-through show, Gale’s Requiem, and a staged “séance” called Scary Mary’s Dark Séance. The ship’s own events page lists Dark Harbor room packages for overnight guests, a Monday-night “Spookeasy” through October 19, daily paranormal tours and Monday film screenings ending with The Shining on October 19.

Two of Dark Harbor’s mazes draw on the ship’s best-known legends. One is set around the first-class swimming pool and the story of “Scary Mary,” a girl said to have drowned there. Hoodline notes, citing Crescenta Valley Weekly, that Cunard’s records contain no such drowning. Another uses stateroom B340, which the ship markets as its most haunted cabin. It reopened to overnight guests in 2024 after decades out of use. The city of Long Beach has owned the liner since 1967 and took back direct control in 2021 after its private leaseholders failed; Hoodline reports the city has since spent more than $20 million on repairs to the hull and bilge.

The Stanley Hotel, Estes Park

The Stanley’s October calendar mixes ghost talk with parties. Paranormal investigator Amy Bruni brings her “Walking with Ghosts” event to the hotel on October 15, a talk on serial killers by criminologist Scott Bonn on October 17 is already sold out, the Shining Ball follows on October 24, and the band DeVotchKa plays on October 30 and 31.

The hotel opened in 1909. Its fame as a haunted hotel comes largely from Stephen King, who stayed there in 1974 while living in Boulder; the visit fed into his 1977 novel The Shining. Wikipedia notes that the details of King’s stay, including the famous Room 217, come mainly from King’s own retellings, which differ. The hotel is also changing. The Denver Gazette reported in August that a $60 million expansion, including a horror-film museum curated by Blumhouse Productions, is running ahead of schedule and could open in early 2028.

The skeptical view

None of these venues claims to prove that ghosts exist, and they don’t need to. Their Halloween seasons are professional theater, with actors, fog machines and sound design that would make almost any old building feel strange. The legends they draw on vary a lot. Some come from documented deaths and hard lives; some, like the Queen Mary’s drowned girl, have no support in the records. A haunted reputation is also very good for ticket sales. Visitors who want the history as well as the scares should come back in daylight. A prison built to test solitary confinement, a liner that carried troops in the Second World War and a grand hotel that inspired a classic novel have real stories to tell, and those stories explain why the legends attached themselves to these buildings in the first place.