The Scariest Places To Visit In All 50 States

Meow Wolf’s House of Eternal Return
Santa Fe

When the guy who created Game of Thrones puts a trippy, neon-filled, psychedelic art installation in an old 20,000-square-foot bowling alley, that’s the spot you wanna spend Halloween. Though it might not be like, zombies-and-werewolves terrifying, this immersive funhouse relays the story of a suburban family that’s been hit with a break in the space-time continuum; visitors navigate a series of wormholes that transport them into “alternate dimensions.” As an added bonus on Halloween, Meow Wolf will host trick-or-treating through the various wormholes, where kids 12 and under can get candy from intra-dimensional strangers until 8pm. Tickets are $14. — M.M.

New York

United States Military Academy
West Point

If the Tudor-style architecture and all-around dismal creepiness of this campus doesn’t give you the heebie-jeebies, then the school’s verifiable ghost sightings will. Back in 1972, it was reported that cadets saw a ghost in an antiquated school uniform, roaming around Room 4714 — a room no longer in use. Other ghost stories have made their way into the school’s colloquial chatter, most notably the ghost of former superintendent Colonel Thayer’s Irish maid, Molly, who haunts the basement of Quarters 100, tousling the bedcovers in an otherwise orderly room, and borrowing and moving guests’ possessions. — A.S.

North Carolina

The Biltmore Estate
Asheville

The largest private residence in the entire country is, of course, housing some ghosties up in those 135,280 square feet. The former vacation home of George Washington Vanderbilt II is now considered one of the most haunted places in North Carolina. George himself has been spotted chilling in the library, and his late wife Edith wanders around calling out his name. There’s also a headless orange cat roaming the gardens, echoes of laughter and splashing water in the empty pool, and disembodied voices heard throughout the 250 rooms. A day pass to visit the grounds starts at $40, with overnight options available. — K.P.

North Dakota

The Haunted Fort
Bismarck-Mandan

When you suffer one of the most famous military defeats in US history, there’s only one thing to do: Go back home and brood about it, even after you’re dead. That’s one possible explanation for the paranormal activity around the Custer House — of Last Stand fame — at Ft. Abraham Lincoln. Staffers typically won’t even go in after dark, thanks to reports of strange voices and footsteps. But during weekends in October, it serves as the finest haunted attraction in North Dakota. Visitors start at the house, where monsters and ghosts pop out from every corner, and move through a granary of creepy clowns, barracks filled with zombies, and a pitch-black hallway where only a rope is there to guide you. It runs through the end of October; tickets are $15 on Fridays and $18 on Saturdays. — M.M.

Ohio

Ohio State Reformatory
Mansfield

This massive stone castle looks like hell disguised as Hogwarts, a majestically spired campus that housed over 200,000 inmates over its history from 1896-1990. A tour through here on a normal day is grim, but during scare season it transforms into the biggest prison-based haunted attraction in America: Escape From Blood Prison. The cells and hallways are filled with undead inmates and faucets dripping blood, turning the already creepy reformatory into a bona fide nightmare. It runs Thursday-Sunday from October 12 to November 5, and costs $20 and up. — M.M.

Oklahoma

Hex House
Tulsa

This intense immersive haunted attraction is based on a disturbing true story from the 1940s when a woman named Carolann Smith forced two young women to live in her unheated basement, act as her servant, and follow a form of occult religion she had created. Smith’s brick house became a popular Halloween destination in Tulsa until it was torn down in the 1970s. Now, Hex House takes the story and runs with it, with hair-raising special effects designed to put you in an altered hypnotic mindset. It runs for 15 nights from September 30 to October 31, mostly weekends and Halloween. Admission starts at $25. — M.M.

Oregon

Timberline Lodge
Mt. Hood

Though the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado is the infamous inspiration for Stephen King’s The Shining (see above), Stanley Kubrick’s movie adaptation used this family-friendly ski resort in Mt. Hood as the exterior of the terrifying Overlook Hotel. For fans of the macabre, a night spent in Room 217 definitely belongs on your bucket list (even though the movie depicted a nonexistent room 237, at the hotelier’s request). There’s no murderous hedge maze or elevators filled with blood, but anyone who’s ever seen those twin girls in their nightmares will be scared silly here. Or at the very least get a good “Heeeeeeeeere’s Johnny!” selfie at the special setup in the lobby.— M.M.

Pennsylvania

Eastern State Penitentiary
Philadelphia
Known locally as ESP (already a creepy touch), the 1829 prison intended to value reform over punishment, at a time when Puritanical America was embracing the penitent foundation of the penitentiary. Instead, this became a real house of horrors and the testing location for a number of “reform” techniques that included paranoia-inducing “panopticon” oversight, now synonymous with a constant threat of surveillance. The mix of weird science, gigantic brutal architecture, and famous inmates like Al Capone and bank robber Willie Sutton serves as a perfect staging ground for the nighttime haunted tours. — B.W.

Rhode Island

Fortress of Nightmares
Newport

Historic Fort Adams — and the deep tunnels that wind underneath it — becomes one of the most realistically scary haunted attractions in New England for six days in October. Wandering through dark, zombie-filled tunnels is usually enough to keep you scared until Thanksgiving, but this year ups the ante by adding a virtual-reality component. The new attraction, Paranormal360, synchronizes 24 VR headsets to put you inside an eight-minute horror movie, with real-life effects to enhance the experience. It’ll cost you extra, though general admission runs only $5-15, depending which of the last three weekends in October you go. — M.M.

South Carolina

Daufuskie Island
The southern barrier islands

This little island near Hilton Head bills itself as “the island with no bridge,” which is charming by day and downright panic-inducing by night. Once the sun goes down, the roads become a dark maze through a towering forest of pines, oaks, and spooky spanish moss — and no bridge means no escape. The screech of cicadas deafens you, and each turn you make on your golf cart (the only vehicles allowed on the island) feels like it could lead you into a corner of the swamp from which you’ll never return. Daufuskie does naturally what swamp-themed haunted houses around the country try to recreate. Minus the zombies. Hopefully. — M.M.