4 Halloween Cities for Families

Signs of Halloween are everywhere in October, but some places put on a show worth traveling for. Lavish spooky decorations, costume parades, kids’ activities, haunted houses, ghost tours and a lot of lighted Jack-o-lanterns include fun for everyone in the family. These places are especially famous for Halloween celebrations.

Home of the infamous Salem Witch Trials, Salem, Massachusetts, is New England’s Halloween capital. Salem Haunted Happenings fills the entire month of October with family-friendly events, costume balls, ghost tours, haunted houses, live music, a Grand Parade, artisan vendors and chilling theater shows. And there’s Salem Witch Museum to put all this in the context of the 1692 witch hysteria.

When visiting Sleepy Hollow, New York, in late October, watch out for The Headless Horseman. The setting for Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow keeps the story alive with his frequent appearances. Gothic mansion tours (one is octagonal), haunted hayrides, dramatic versions of the classic story, and a Halloween night market with fortune telling and spooky entertainment celebrate Halloween throughout the month. A highlight is The Great Jack O’Lantern Blazewith more than 7,000 hand-carved, illuminated pumpkins set among the 18^th-century buildings of Van Cortlandt Manor.

As you might expect from the city of Mardi Gras, Halloween is a grand spectacle in New Orleans, with over-the-top costumes and streets filled with zombies, witches, skeletons, ghosts and vampires. Stop in a costume shop and join the continuous parade on Frenchmen Street. Take a ghost tour through the French Quarter or through the city’s famed cemeteries full of above-ground tombs, but the real scene is in the streets.

Each weekend in October, St. Helens, Oregon, becomes Halloweentown in tribute to the Disney movie of the same name that filmed here in 1998. Family-friendly activities include a haunted house that’s spooky but without gore or live monsters, and the “Nightmare on 4th Street” train ride through a street lined by homes and yards with elaborate Halloween decorations. Don’t forget to go on a self-guided tour through the city’s most haunted places and locations from the original Halloweentown movie.