Haunt the streets and public squares of Houston this Halloween. Bright and cheery, and glum and gloomy, dark days festivals and family-friendly events are all over town. Zip from the Museum District to Sugar Land, hunting and gathering for adventure and candy, and find the scene for you this season.
1. It's Halloween on the Bayou!
Imagine you’re standing on a rolling green lawn, with a stately plantation-style house proudly standing before you. The ancient stone steps are draped with a carpet of grass under your feet, and smooth white columns gracefully lift a roof deck over the broad stone porch. You’re at an art gallery, it’s Halloween, and everything is spooky in the dark.
This is the marvelous Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens, part of the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. As if the estate didn’t have enough mood on the outside, inside you’ll find wall after wall of classic and modern paintings, exquisite sculptures, and local aficionados sipping wine in the grandeur of it all. Except it’s Halloween, and everybody is dressed as their favorite ghoul, which makes a lively contrast with the swirling beauty of the Texas Colonial surroundings.
The museum spent this Halloween hosting Sip & Stroll at Bayou Bend. This Halloween event in Houston draws adults 21 and over for live music from local bands, storytelling, and lively magic performances. Getting into the spirit of the season, visitors can opt into a super-spooky audio walking tour that will thrill, chill, and fill you with awe. Fair warning: the courtyard at Bayou Bend has a marble statue of a seated woman that’s a million times spookier at night, so try not to get too creeped out.
Location: Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens
Date: To be announced for 2024
Website: Activities at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts
2. Boo on the Boardwalk
All year round, the Kemah Boardwalk welcomes families to the Houston waterfront. Here, you have food, free entertainment, and thundering roller coasters. The boardwalk perches on its own little peninsula just across the lake from NASA’s Mission Control. Even on hot days, a cool mist off of the water helps keep the hot Texas sun bearable.
The boardwalk stays fun all year round. We love the fall decorations and the seasonal food treats (helllloooo, pumpkin spice!), but there’s nothing like the October chill that drops over the place as All Hallows’ Eve gets ever closer and things get gloomy on the Boardwalk.
Every weekend in October, the park hosts Boo on the Boardwalk, an all-ages and totes family-friendly spooktacular that’s a convenient 20 minutes or so from downtown Houston. Take the spouse and kids, dress up like spooky ghosts, and get your fill of kid-safe trick-or-treating, creepy crafts classes, and a costume contest that’s open to all ages. Daily events include Freaky Fridays, Spooky Saturdays, and Scary Sundays. Each offers a thumping live musical performance and discount rides for those who like their thrills on wheels.
Attendance is free.
Location: Kemah Boardwalk
Date: To be announced for 2024
Website: Boo on the Boardwalk
3. Zoo Boo
The Houston Zoo is one of the local gems that makes this beautiful city the magical place it is for families with kids. On normal days, a stroll over the zoo’s 55-acre property is a self-guided tour that sees you and the kids marveling at the underground aquarium, the African Forest, and an elephant habitat where Tess’ daughter Tupelo might surprise you with a spray of water from her trunk if you get too close to the fence.
In October, there’s a chill in the air, and there’s a rise in your hair, as the creepiest of the two-, four-, and six-legged animals come out at night to put on an absolute extravaganza for visitors. For 2 wonderful weeks leading up to Halloween, the zoo takes on a new life, as orange and black bunting swirls over every surface and costumed kids bounce around the tour path taking in the wonder of it all.
The zoo keeps up a lively schedule of events during the festivities. You can try your best to scare passersby with the most terrifying pumpkin you can paint. Take pride of place in the costume parade, if the ghosts and goblins don’t scare you out of the park. And of course, make new friends with the animals (especially the bats) during creepy, crawly animal encounters.
Location: Houston Zoo
Date: To be announced for 2024
Website: Houston Zoo – calendar of events
4. ArBOOretum Family Fall Festival
Guys and ghouls alike can keep themselves properly spooked at the ArBOOretum Family Fall Festival this year, which draws in families from far and wide for live animals, pumpkin decorating, and a trick-or-treating trail that’s positively macabre. Visitors can thrill to the nightmarish nature hike, hoot with the educational live owl show, and explore the depths of All Hallows’ at kid-friendly Halloween activities held at stations all over the nature center.
Let your imagination run wild with the amazing facts you'll hear from the singsong voices of the tour guides, from the amazing truth about our earth's natural balance to the details of photosynthesis. Dash from one exhibit to another, point and laugh at the fun decorations of strategically placed skeletons, and feel yourself becoming a kid again, as the arboretum's educational program meshes artistry with the holiday themed extravaganza.
Free for Arboretum members and children under 3.
Location: Houston Arboretum & Nature Center
Date: To be announced for 2024
Website: ArBOOretum Family Fall Festival
5. Halloween Monster Mayhem
Monsters and magic mix with science, invention, and technology at the Children’s Museum of Houston this Halloween. Delighted children shriek with shock and laugh with learning at endless educational and scary interactive exhibits. The museum becomes a monster house as it slips between teaching and fun at learning stations in the 3-plus toddlers’ playrooms. Older goblins will adore haunting the Matter Factory and the Math Mission, home to monster-themed events and costume contests. Tour the interactive exhibits in this haunted house and discover new frontiers with the wide-eyed wonder of a delighted child just coming awake in this amazing universe.
Science is a teacher to us all. We sit in awe before the majesty of what we've learned, and we celebrate the fire of knowledge through ECHO, a tribute to wisdom set in a swirling melody of color, invention, and the empathy of a girl's heart. Share an evening with us as we explore evolution and the sweet, delicate balance between people, animals, and the numinous natural world we all share.
Location: Children's Museum of Houston
Date: To be announced for 2024
Website: Children’s Museum Houston events
6. Pumpkin Patch Fall Festival — October weekends
We adore the scary season, but October isn’t all garish ghosts and spooky skeletons. We revel in the harvest time, when there’s a chill in the air and every day is sweater weather. Children crunch around in the dry leaf litter, while the fields lie low and your breath leaves trails behind you with every step.
Revel in the season this year at Old Time Christmas Tree Farm, where we’re all getting together for a pumpkin patch adventure. Rattle down the dusty trail on a hayride, pick pumpkins for the obligatory carving and/or Thanksgiving pies, and rejoice in the warm welcome of your neighbors at the farm.
Location: Old Time Christmas Tree Farm
Date: To be announced for 2024
Website: Fall Family Fun
7. Scream on the Green
Discovery Green sets a feast of fellowship and fun for the whole family this year. Present yourself and the kids you’ve brought with you to the costume contest, with on-site registration that makes it easy and fun to get a ribbon for being the spookiest of them all.
Location: Discovery Green
Date: To be announced for 2024
Website: Scream on the Green
Dare to Be Dazzled!
Adventure awaits in Houston with high-energy Cirque du Soleil shows. Dive into a world of acrobatics and wonder.
8. Halloween Town
When the weather turns and the leaves start to fall, the once-quaint and brightly lit market at Sugar Land Town Square transforms. Ordinarily a place for fitness meetups and family outings, the square grows dark and grim. Spirits stir in the shadows. You can feel the chill run up your spine as the forces of family-friendly darkness gather all around you.
Soon you'll be trick-or-treating with the happy laughing children, trying on fun costumes, and cheering for live entertainment. This is Halloween Town, a fall festival of laughter and screams in Sugar Land’s Constellation Field, which is about 15 minutes southwest of downtown Houston.
Vibe to live music and chill on the lawn. Shop at the festively festooned merchants’ booths. Join the festival, bring the children, and lay down a lifetime of fun Halloween memories for the entire family.
The event is free for all.
Location: Sugar Land Town Square
Date: To be announced for 2024
Website: Sugar Land Town Square events
9. Miss Ivy’s Spooktacular Halloween Party
The sun has set, and you’re in the gloaming. The magnolias all around you are silhouetted against the cloudy moonlit sky. Somewhere in the distance, a wolf howls. Are you in danger? You’re touring the Victorian Colonial Moore House, the grand plantation-style mansion with a dark and haunted past. As the gloom closes around you this spooky season, the rest of your tour group pops out of the chapel yard and bounces off together to explore the latest family-friendly horrors on this guided tour.
Welcome to Miss Ivy’s Spooktacular Halloween Party in Houston, held at Miss Ivy’s at the Fort Bend Museum late in October. Come in your favorite costume and be ready for ghost tours, trick-or-treating, and lively craft events. Oh, and did we mention there’s a costume contest? It’s one of the most thrilling events of the year, so don’t be afraid to go all out. You and your family are drawn together as you daub the canvas for fall-themed paintings, listen to seasonal music performances, and savor the free candy for all comers at this one-of-a-kind costume party.
Attendance is free with regular admission at the Fort Bend Museum.
Location: 410 S. 5th Street, Richmond, Texas.
Date: To be announced for 2024
Website: Events infos on Fort Bend Musem Website.
10. Montrose Crawl
If the Montrose Crawl is your style, then you might also enjoy the vibrant music festivals in Houston. Slip into your favorite costume, shut off the lights, and lock your doors because you’ll be out and about with a lively group of like-minded rabble-rousers. It’s part bar crawl, part party with a one-of-a-kind spooky twist. You’ll make the thrilling journey from Wild to Roswell’s Saloon, stop by Boondocks and tip back the shots at Pistolero’s with laughter and scares along the way. Prepare for one wild night.
Location: To be announced for 2024
Date: To be announced for 2024
Website: Montrose Crawl
Unmasking the Magic: Houston's Halloween Extravaganza!
Halloween is a special time in Houston, offering a unique twist to the things to do in Houston. The leaves don't turn like they do back east, and the night air kisses your skin with a warmer mist than the typical October in Alaska.
Here, families hold their kids by the hand and come together for Halloween parties in Houston to laugh and shriek with the best that the holiday can scare us with.
We are part of this city-sized family, celebrating not just Halloween but also the Christmas events in Houston. We welcome our friends, old and new, through the veil and into a theater silent with the gasps of thousands of astounded onlookers.