Beacon Hill, Boston
What’s not to love about an urban, easy-to-reach, exclusive community of historic homes on a New England autumn evening? Welcome to Beacon Hill, where Boston’s upper class can be counted upon to hand out a largess of exceptional goodies to match the aesthetic of the neighborhood. Little witches may still feel a tad nervous walking the cobblestone streets in Massachusetts, given the commonwealth’s infamous history not far away in Salem. This area also spawned Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown,” among other esoteric tales of wayward Puritans, so something feels right about dressing up in disguise and wandering the labyrinthine streets in an attempt to preserve our souls for another year.
Everyone should spend one Halloween in New Orleans, where the raised cemeteries, Spanish moss and antebellum architecture combine with voodoo and Creole culture to haunt a summer’s day, let alone Oct. 31. The challenge isn’t so much finding hauntings but locating a place to lay your head that isn’t infused with spirits. Guests at the Magnolia Mansion, an inn that doesn’t allow children, often see and hear the wee ones in the halls and have reported pint-sized handprints in the bathrooms. But one doesn’t have to book a room to get spooked here; locals say that the niece of the original plantation owner in the Garden District, who drowned on the premises, still roams the streets.
You won’t see any ghouls in Churchill, but you may encounter white "ghosts" of another variety: polar bears. Children are restricted from dressing in white sheets here, as volunteers monitor the streets to make sure they’re free of the world’s largest land predator. Coming as it does during the peak of polar-bear season, Oct. 31 brings a Halloween Patrol that includes the volunteer fire department and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The whole town shows up to celebrate another “ghost”-free Halloween at the Seaport Hotel, leaving the specter of one more creepy walk home among the 770- to 1,500-pound bears.
A city that is best-known for its cemetery deserves mention on Halloween. Tours through Bonaventure Cemetery — the setting for one of the best-selling books of all time, "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" — are especially thought- and fear-provoking on the last day of October. While plenty of cities offer ghost tours, Savannah drives a little further by taking passengers in an actual hearse to view the haunted historical homes of the city. Trick-or-treaters of all ages fill River Street with the same enthusiasm that the town’s founders once filled in the cemeteries upon which they constructed their homes, making Savannah the most haunted city in America.
Every town seems to have a holiday lights parade these days, but no other area celebrates Halloween quite like Upper Canada Village, a heritage park that displays more than 4,000 carved pumpkins during October in an event called Pumpkinferno. Lead designer Liam Mills works with a 13-member creative team to cast everything from a Burning Man pumpkin sculpture to a 20-pumpkin life-size crocodile that sounds big until you see the 50-foot dragon composed of 200 pumpkins. Kids will find a Tent O’ Treats outside the entrance to satisfy the sweet tooth, while adults can dine on various themed snacks such as Brains and Bones poutine or even enjoy a sit-down meal. With Pumpkinferno and the excellent Fort Fright at Fort Henry, Halloween in Kingston will give any visitor a start.
It’s hard to imagine much frightful about Hawaii, until you visit the Polynesian Cultural Center’s Haunted Lagoon. There’s no escaping the 45-minute canoe ride while hearing tales of the La’ie Lady’s endless search for her lost son or her murdered husband. No skimpy bite-size candy here; the trick-or-treating tide rushes into the Kuliouou-Kalani Iki neighborhood, where most houses hand out large chocolate bars. Several other areas, including Kaimuki and Kapahulu, remain determined to claim the best Halloween habitat in Honolulu.
Historical neighborhoods in the South have an edge in feeling spooky, but it really helps if your signature accommodation, the Gratz Park Inn, is in a building that once contained a morgue. The Gratz Park Historic District began when the Transylvania Seminary purchased much of the area in 1793 for its Lexington campus. The district today contains 16 historic buildings and homes, including the officially haunted Hunt-Morgan House. Lexington’s best-known accommodation of apparitions remains the Leestown Division of the Lexington VA Medical Center. Not surprisingly, the Transylvania University campus is also overwrought with the “troubled” dead.
Nottingham Avenue, St. Louis
True, the Smashing Pumpkins are playing St. Louis in October, but you’ll find squash of the unsmashed variety on Trick or Treat Street come the 31st. Part of a total community movement, the residents of the 5300 block of Nottingham Avenue continue to grow their spooky spectacle, with visitor estimates now reaching the thousands. St. Louis also presents a darker side at the Darkness Haunted House, a two-story building that is considered one of the best haunted houses in the country. Check out the caverns beneath the old Lemp Brewery for a more authentic scare.
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