A Guide to the Ghastly & Ghoulish

So you think that your Halloween is already going to be pretty scary, aye? You have your boxes of creepy crawling rubber spiders and startling skeleton bones, your hair-raising uneasiness of masked and sickly bodies limping through an intensifying global pandemic, your spook-takular peril in the red dawn of irreparable environmental catastrophe, your dreadful horror of fiendishly fear-crusted detention camps, your trembling alarm for Big Brother’s skin-crawling crackdowns on freedom of speech, your teeth-chattering trepidation for spooky systemic corruption, your dire distress for a frightfully fatal racist political machine, your haunting disgust for jerk-o’-lantern Trump and his wicked goons, and your absolute anguish in the dismal death of beloved beacons of light John Lewis and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

You think barbarity, panic, and unnerving abhorrence already play enough of a theme in your 2020 Halloween, huh? Well, you’re probably right. But, if you’re looking for a way to top it off with something that instills a less disturbing sort of existential fear, this list is for you. These locales for all things lowering and lurid are open and taking precautions for your 2020 Halloween. The first three features are far-out-of-town, fear-filled destinations, while the list that follows offers a mix of local and travel-worthy terror. Go get your rocks off. Mi directorio es su directorio.

Click images for direct link.

Your stomach will drop long before your mine shaft elevator does. Colorado Springs’ Haunted Mines offer a genuinely unique open air fear expedition as the omniscient designers take advantage of the authentic cold and creep of Colorado’s stoney, dark tunnels that wind below the Earth like catacombs keeping souls in the night. They were unsettling long before the Western Museum of Mining and Industry tried to make them so. (Mine walkers were already stalked by pervasive recollections of documentaries about Black Lung and severe awareness that sun-loving human bodies don’t belong under the weight of the crust, not to mention bats spotted outside of their usual cute, wrapped-in-a-blanket-sweetened spotlights on Instagram.) Since the purveyor of fear itself, Hell Scream Entertainment, bought the attraction-in-need some years ago, however, it has amplified all of those little stressors to create one colossal, sweaty, adrenaline-filled yikes spot.

Taking its unsuspecting paid customers-seeking-a-terror-induced-laxative deep into the bowels of the Earth starting this past September 26th, the Haunted Mines will continue to terrify all the way through November 1st. Tickets are available starting at $22 for entrance Sunday through Thursday. Price options range to $56 for VIP admission to both the Haunted Mines and neighboring Hell Scream Haunted House on weekdays and weekends. Feel your knees give as you wobble your way across shifting floors and through shifting feelings of suspicion and skittering flight. Get lost physically and emotionally in the maddening maze. Experience your neck hairs tingle and lift as a silent watcher eyes you from a quiet corner. Check out the Haunted Mines. (If that’s your thing.)

This is my jam. Granted, haunts that take place in the tide of free-flowing air are certainly safer health-wise than those enclosed by four walls, but is there anything safer than a scare inside of your own car? And have you ever even heard of this sort of creative take on pant-shitting yourself from Halloween fear before? I haven’t, and I like it. Drive to Denver to experience the City of the Dead, and once you get there, stay in your car. It’s a devilishly daring drive-in experience: the monstrous dead will appear at your window at a most startling time as you watch original media with additional creepy clips on a forty foot screen. Standard tickets are $39.99 per car, which is about par for the course if you’re bringing along a partner in petrification. Backseat passes for passengers beyond the two person limit pay an additional $9.99 each. VIP tickets are $59.99 per car if you’d like to invest in a spot in the front three rows. Reserve ahead of time for this haunt. Each person in every car seeking a chthonic encounter must have their own seat and seat belt (so no lap sitting, you hooligans), and groups must limit their size to eight per

Would you like to be enchanted this Halloween? Interested in avoiding the acting students and artificial terror? Are you a lover of the great outdoors and the ravenous life within it? Of course you are; you’re reading this. That’s the first thing I learned about Coloradans: you love the outdoors. (The most recent thing I learned about Colorado is that the life-giving TV show Community takes place here. That’s something that ought to bring you joy.) Anyway, my Coloradan reader, you, the innately charmed by wildlife, deeply appreciate its fascinating coexistence with structured, industrial human society, its perfect symbiosis with its natural counterparts, its strength, its power, at times its elegance, and the novelty of seeing it live life entirely outside of you. So you’d love this.

From 4 to 6 pm on October 31st at the Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center, expert wolf-lovers will give you meat-filled pumpkins which you can then thrust into the hungry jaws of a sharp-eyed wolf and subsequently watch as that wolf devours it. Is that not quintessentially cool? You get to place yourself in a Jack London novel for ten minutes of your life. Tickets are $40 for folks over the age of 12 and $20 for youngins. Your voyage into a sanctuary of white fangs includes a bonfire and refreshments as well as a wealth of information about our lupine loves. Check it out this Halloween. It is your destiny.

The Wretched Wild: Festering Farms, Wailing Woods, & Mortifying Mines

Haunted Field of Screams

10451 McKay Road, Thornton, CO 80233

https://hauntedfieldofscreams.com/

Haunted Forest

11033 Monarch Blvd., Highlands Ranch, CO 80130

https://rb.gy/4ts2oo

Haunted Mines

3910 Palmer Park Blvd, Colorado Springs, CO 80909

https://hauntedmines.org/

RRBz Haunted Maze

17553 White Marble Drive, Monument, CO 80132

https://rb.gy/dghgb5

Scorched Earth Haunted Farm

8310 Blue Gill Drive, Peyton, CO 80831

https://www.scorchedearthhaunt.com/

Scream Acres at Fritzler Corn Maze

20861 County Road 33, La Salle, CO 80645

https://www.fritzlerfarmpark.com/scream-acres

Terror in the Corn

6728 County Road 3 ¼, Erie, CO 80516

https://terrorinthecorn.com/

The option to go off by your own damn self

Take a hike! (On one of these haunted trails)

https://www.outtherecolorado.com/adventures/7-haunted-hikes-in-colorado/article_26a7b8a8-751b-5454-b975-0be912cdcf46.html

Hadean Haunted Houses & Macabre Mansions

Aftermath Haunted House

575 Ash St, Cañon City, CO 81212

https://rb.gy/umhjx0 / https://www.haunts.com/timeline391

Dark Side of the Abbey

2951 US-50, Cañon City, CO 81212

https://darksideoftheabbey.com

Hellscream Haunted House

3021 North Hancock Ave, Colorado Springs, CO 80907

https://hellscreamhaunt.com/

The 13th Floor Haunted House

3400 East 52nd Avenue, Denver, CO 80216

https://www.13thfloorhauntedhouse.com/

The Frightmare Compound

10798 Yukon Street, Westminster, CO 80021

https://www.thefrightmarecompound.com/

The Mindbender Haunted House

915 College Avenue, Arriba, CO 80804

https://www.facebook.com/TheMindbenderHauntedHouse

The Reinke Brothers Haunted Mansion

5663 S. Prince Street, Littleton, CO 80120

https://www.reinkebrothers.com/

Victorian Horrors

(Spooky storytelling in cursed chambers)

Molly Brown House Museum, 1340 Pennsylvania St, Denver, CO 80203

https://mollybrown.org/victorian-horrors/

Blood-Curdling Combination Indoor-Outdoor Cribs

Haunted Junkyard

6530 Brighton Blvd, Commerce City, CO 80022

http://hauntedjunkyardco.com/

Fright Acres

(Haunted mausoleum, motel, and forest, and town streets)

11321 Dransfeldt Road, Parker, CO 80134

https://frightacres.com/

Treacherous & Terrifying Tours

Denver Ghost Tour Pub Crawl

(Sip in spirits and ghost stories on a tour through Denver’s most unsettling sites)

Celtic on Market, 1400 Market St, Denver, CO 80202

https://nightlyspirits.com/denver-tours/

Dean’s Aspen DarkSide & Cemetery Tours

(Meander through either the streets of Aspen or its cemetery as you learn of ghosts, murder, & mayhem)

320 E Hyman Ave, Aspen, CO 81611

https://www.aspenwalkingtours.com/tours/darkside-tour/

“Ghost Stories of Old Manitou” Walking Tour

(Heritage Center-led tours of Manitou Springs’ petrifying past)

Manitou Springs Heritage Center, 517 Manitou Avenue, Manitou Springs, CO 80829 United

https://www.manitouspringsheritagecenter.org/event/ghost/

Haunted Denver Food Tour

(Munch your way through Denver’s eeriest epicurean eateries—bone appetite!)

Tivoli Brewing Company Taphouse, 900 Auraria Pkwy Ste 240, Denver, CO 80204

https://nightlyspirits.com/haunted-denver-food-tours/

The Dark Side of Denver Ghost Tours

(A tour through haunted buildings, ghostly tunnels, and the dark paths of history)

1701 Wynkoop Street, Denver, CO 80202

https://darksideofdenver.com/denver-ghost-tours/dark-side-denver-ghost-tours/

Of Another Variety Entirely

Boulder Escape Room

By Mystery Box ltd. 1966 13th Street #LL60, Boulder, Colorado 80302

https://www.boulderescaperoom.com/

City of the Dead

(“Drive-in haunted house” featuring original multimedia on a 40” screen with characters come to life)

3400 E. 52nd Ave., Denver, CO 80216

https://www.cityofthedeadhaunt.com/?utm_source=Haunts.com&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=HauntedHouseMedia

Di?a de los Muertos Exhibition & Virtual Celebration

(This Longmont Museum exhibition features Colorado artist Tony Ortega; The celebration features singing, folk dance, mariachi, and poetry by community leader Laura Soto, among other things.)

400 Quail Rd, Longmont, CO 80501

https://www.longmontcolorado.gov/departments/departments-e-m/museum/education/day-of-the-dead

Di?a de los Muertos Exhibit at the Firehouse Art Center

(Features art, dance, an auction, and an address from Grupo Azteca Tlahuitzcalli.)

667 4th Ave Longmont, CO 80501

https://firehouseart.org/catrinaball/

Enchanted Nightmare at American Legion Post 119

(Interactive Dinner with Variety Show)

Circle 119: home of American Legion Post 119, 850 N St Vrain Ave, Estes Park, CO 80517

https://esteslegion.org/special-events

Howl-O-ween with Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center

(Pass out meat filled pumpkins to wolves. This is real. Join the pack.)