There is a difference between a scare attraction and a haunted place. One is built to frighten you; the other simply has several centuries of unpleasant history and does not need a fog machine.
These are real places with real reputations, all of which you can visit — and several of which run Halloween events listed in our directory.
Crumlin Road Gaol, Belfast
A Victorian prison that held inmates until 1996, which is recent enough that people who worked there are still around to tell you about it. Executions took place on site, and the tunnel connecting the gaol to the courthouse opposite is the part most visitors remember.
It needs no set dressing, which is precisely why its Halloween programme works. It runs both acted scare events and paranormal investigation nights — see the listing.
Margam Castle, Port Talbot
A Tudor-Gothic mansion in a country park with a long-standing reputation, and the setting for Scream Time each October. The 1km trail runs through the grounds and the darker corners around the castle.
The park is open year-round and free to walk in daylight, which is the honest way to see the building.
The Edinburgh vaults and closes
Edinburgh's Old Town is built on top of itself, and the spaces underneath — the South Bridge vaults, the closes sealed during outbreaks of plague — are among the most consistently reported haunted sites in Britain.
Several operators run underground tours. The Edinburgh Dungeon is the theatrical version — actors, sets and jump scares — while the historical tours are quieter and, for most people, considerably more unsettling.
Beamish, County Durham
Not a haunted house exactly, but an open-air museum of period streets, a pit village and a colliery — real buildings, moved and reassembled. Walking through a genuinely old place in the dark does something no purpose-built attraction manages.
It opens as The Un-living Museum of the North for three nights only — 27, 29 and 31 October. They sell out.
Kentwell Hall, Suffolk
A moated Tudor manor which, for four weeks each October, becomes Scaresville — an entire estate turned into a haunted village with around 250 actors.
Worth visiting in daylight too. Tudor houses are strange buildings, and Kentwell is unusually intact.
The York snickelways
York claims to be among the most haunted cities in Europe, and whatever you make of that, the medieval street plan does the atmospheric work by itself — the narrow snickelways, the Shambles, the Minster at night.
The York Dungeon covers the city's grimmer history theatrically from 11 October to 2 November. Ghost walks run most evenings year-round, and York's are among the better ones in the country.
London's plague pits and burial grounds
The capital is built over its dead in a way that becomes obvious once you start looking — Crossbones Graveyard in Southwark, Bunhill Fields, the various plague pits under stations and car parks.
Halloween-season ghost walks cover the City, Southwark and Whitechapel. The London Dungeon is the theatrical alternative.
A word on ghost hunts
Paranormal investigation nights have become a substantial industry, and quality varies enormously. Some are run by people with a genuine interest in the building's history; others are equipment-hire operations with a lot of unexplained beeping.
If you are booking one, ask what the building actually is and whether anyone on the night can tell you its history. A good venue is interesting whether or not anything happens — and something usually does not.
The honest appeal of all of these places is not that they are haunted. It is that they are old, dark, and full of documented human misery, and standing in one at night is a genuinely strange experience that no purpose-built maze quite reproduces.
If you want the purpose-built version too, that is what the directory is for.