There’s more to Halloween than scary movies and haunted houses. (There’s also more to October than Halloween.) Here’s my guide to this season’s creepiest treats.
Parades
The big night kicks off at 7 with the 52nd annual Village Halloween Parade, which starts at Canal Street and Sixth Avenue and travels north to 15th Street. It is free to watch, but costumes are required to march. (Spectrum News NY1 broadcasts the festivities beginning at 8 p.m.) The official after-party is the Vampire Ball, an adults-only, indoor-outdoor festival that rages until 5 a.m. in Industry City, Brooklyn.
For family fun in the hours less friendly to vampires, check out the 40th Annual Bronx Halloween Parade (Oct. 25).
Hauntings
The story goes like this: Something evil descended on a former Halloween pop-up store at the mall, and those brave or stupid enough to walk through its doors discover that “the nightmare inside is hungry.” That’s the terror on tap at Nightmare in Nassau, a haunted experience at the Samanea New York mall in Westbury, N.Y. (Sept. 26-Nov. 2). Select nights feature toned-down frights for children and fraidy-cat adults.
Other spots where you can scare your pants off include the Schmitts Farm Haunt and Haunted Corn Trail in Melville, N.Y. (Oct. 3-Nov. 1), and Blood Manor, a 10,000-square-foot, not-for-the-squeamish attraction in Lower Manhattan (Oct. 3-Nov. 8).
Kids
For the youngsters — and the skittish — gentler shocks can be had everywhere, all month. Two animated films that you can stream or see free at local libraries are “Monsters, Inc.,” on Disney + or at the Mariners Harbor Library on Staten Island (Oct. 4) and the Riverside Library in Manhattan (Oct. 27); and “The Addams Family,” on Amazon Prime and showing at the Park Slope Library in Brooklyn on Oct. 24.
When the tricking-or-treating ends on Halloween night, take your little cowboys and ballerinas to Lincoln Center, where the American Ballet Theater presents a program featuring Agnes de Mille’s “Rodeo” and the pas de deux from Frederick Ashton’s “Rhapsody.” Costumes are welcome.
Other family events include BAMBoo!, the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s block party on Halloween afternoon, and the Bronx Zoo’s Harvest Glow (through Oct. 31), featuring a jack-o’-lantern trail and live pumpkin carvings.
D.I.Y.
Don’t want to break the bank on a costume? Drop by the Halloween mask printing workshop at Poster House on Oct. 17, led by the prolific poster artist Mike King, the subject of “Copy/Paste/Print/Repeat,” a career-spanning retrospective there through Nov. 2.
Music
The director John Carpenter is synonymous with horror movies thanks to “Halloween” and other canonical contributions he has made to the genre. But he’s also an accomplished composer and musician, having written and performed scores for many of his fearsome films. On Oct. 9 and 10, he brings his sinister synth to the Knockdown Center in Maspeth, Queens.
The sounds of Halloween also abound on Oct. 17 when one of the granddads of death metal bands, Cannibal Corpse, unleashes its bloodcurdling growls and jackhammer drums at the Paramount Theater in Huntington, N.Y.
Film
For its 10th anniversary, the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival (Oct. 16-25) returns to the Nitehawk Cinema in Williamsburg, where it opens with Tina Romero’s queer horror-comedy “Queens of the Dead.” At the nearby Radegast Hall & Biergarten on Oct. 20, the festival’s Final Exam Trivia tests your expertise in movie slashers and psychos.
Scary movies sound even more so when the score is live and in your face. Some options: The Brooklyn Chamber Orchestra accompanies “Nosferatu” (the 1922 silent one) at Plymouth Church in Brooklyn Heights (Oct. 25); the New York Philharmonic takes on “Psycho” at David Geffen Hall (Oct. 30-Nov. 1); Curiosity Cabinet, a chamber music collective, backgrounds silent film adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe stories at the Morgan Library & Museum (Oct. 30); and D.J. 2-Tone Jones pairs an original soundtrack with the Wesley Snipes vampire thriller “Blade” at Lincoln Center on Halloween night.
Theater
If going out on Halloween sounds like a nightmare, stay home and stream Theater in Quarantine’s “Phantom of the Opera,” inspired by the 1925 silent film (Oct. 23-Nov. 3). The piece broadcasts live from mini-stages within an East Village apartment, as multiple cameras provide behind-the-scenes access.
Some spooky theatrical works you can see in or around Midtown include “Exorcistic: The Rock Musical,” an “Exorcist” satire at Asylum NYC (through Oct. 31); “Drunk Dracula,” a boozy, bloodsucker comedy at the Ruby Theater (through Nov. 2); “Bat Boy the Musical,” a revival of the B movie-inspired show at City Center (Oct. 29-Nov. 9); and “The Devil & Billy Markham,” a performance of Shel Silverstein’s epic (and not-for-kids) poem, at the Chain Theater (Oct. 30-Nov. 1).
‘Time Warp’ Time
In celebration of the 50th anniversary of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” live shadow casts perform with the film as a backdrop at Coney Island USA in Brooklyn (Oct. 25) and City Winery in Chelsea (Oct. 29-30). As part of a national tour, Nell Campbell, who played Columbia, appears for a showing at the Patchogue Theater for the Performing Arts on Long Island (Oct. 30).
Books
On Oct. 7, the librarian and critic Becky Siegel Spratford celebrates her new anthology, “Why I Love Horror: Essays on Horror Literature,” with a panel discussion featuring a who’s who of horror writers, including Clay McLeod Chapman, Rachel Harrison, Grady Hendrix and Victor LaValle, at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library in Midtown.
Art
Horror and science fiction are genre blood brothers. The Drawing Center in Soho taps into that macabre kinship in “Voice of Space,” a survey of contemporary and historical works that examine U.F.O.s and paranormal phenomena. The show opens on Oct. 17.
Beyond City Limits
New York’s Hudson Valley gets my vote for a kid-friendly, Halloween-themed weekend getaway. I recommend the annual Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze in Croton-on-Hudson, which lights up the 18th-century Van Cortlandt Manor with over 7,000 hand-carved, illuminated pumpkins (through Nov. 16). Also check out “The Spirits of Sleepy Hollow Country,” a magic and storytelling show from the illusionists Mark Clearview and Nick Wallace, at Philipsburg Manor in Sleepy Hollow (Oct. 3-Nov. 1).
Around the Town
Throughout October, Purefinder New York offers walking tours that explore the city’s scandalous and treacherous lore, like Death in New York, with stories of epidemics, executions and other macabre happenings in neighborhoods such as Battery Park and Chinatown.
Discover Brooklyn’s ghastly history on one of Madame Morbid’s Trolley Tours. You’ll hear grim tales and may even glimpse the headless ghost who is said to walk the Brooklyn Bridge. For $1,650, splurge on a private tour with tarot readings.
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