The American season is longer than anywhere else on earth. Halloween Horror Nights Orlando opens on 28 August and runs 48 nights. By the time most countries are thinking about Halloween, Florida has been doing it for a month.
Here is what is worth the trip, drawn from our full US directory.
The theme park giants
Halloween Horror Nights Orlando — 28 August to 1 November. The biggest scare event in the world, in its 35th year. Haunted houses built to film-production standards, scare zones between them, and the park running after dark. It sells out; October Saturdays are punishing. Express passes are expensive and close to essential on a peak night.
Knott's Scary Farm — 17 September to 31 October, 26 nights. The original, running since 1973, and still among the best. Two new mazes for 2026. The Ghost Town scare zones are the reason regulars return — the fog gets thick enough that you cannot see what is reaching for you.
Halloween Horror Nights Hollywood — 3 September to 1 November. The West Coast edition has something Orlando does not: the Terror Tram, which takes the backlot tour and turns it into a walk through the sets after dark.
The buildings that need no help
Halloween Nights at Eastern State Penitentiary — Philadelphia. A genuine abandoned ten-acre prison, operational from 1829 to 1971. Five haunted houses with Hollywood-standard effects, 200+ performers a night, plus historic tours and themed bars. You can take a serious tour of the cellblocks and then be chased through them.
Cutting Edge — Fort Worth. A hundred-year-old abandoned meat packing plant, and a former Guinness record holder for the world's longest walk-through haunt. It takes close to an hour. The original industrial machinery is part of the set.
The craft haunts
The 13th Gate — Baton Rouge. Widely considered the most detailed haunted house in America: underground caves, a full swamp sequence, a crematorium, a cemetery. If you visit one non-theme-park haunt in the US, most people in the industry would point you here.
Netherworld — Stone Mountain, Georgia. Creature design and animatronics on a level nothing else attempts. Over a hundred actors a night.
The Dent Schoolhouse — Cincinnati. A real nineteenth-century schoolhouse. Every classroom and corridor is a fully dressed environment, and the legend about the janitor is told well enough that people repeat it as fact.
The Darkness — St Louis, and Nashville Nightmare, which has grown into one of the largest scream parks in the South.
Best value
Howl-O-Scream at Busch Gardens Williamsburg is the outlier among the five Howl-O-Scream parks: the event is included with regular park admission rather than sold as a separate hard ticket. Tampa, Orlando and San Diego all charge separately.
The one that breaks the calendar
Universal Horror Unleashed at Area15 in Las Vegas is open year-round. Universal took the Horror Nights formula and made it permanent. Everything else here happens in autumn; this does not.
Booking
American haunts price by date, and the difference between a September weeknight and the Saturday before Halloween is enormous in both cost and queue length. Go early in the season if you can.
Always confirm dates with the organiser — everything above reflects our records as published. Start with the directory or the map.