Seattle is a city that was basically built for Halloween. Maybe it’s all the rain and gloom we’re used to or the incredibly dark history, from the Great Seattle Fire of 1889 that devastated an entire neighborhood, to its unfortunate reputation as home to some notorious criminals. Either way, if you visit during the month of October, prepare for all the spooky vibes!

You will find everything from spooky pub crawls to haunted houses and even a massive Halloween themed music festival! Seattle truly goes all out, and in my opinion, it’s one of the best cities to spend Halloween.

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Things to do for Halloween in Seattle

Attend a Huge Halloween Beer Festival

Great Pumpkin Beer Festival

📍 Address: Elysian Capitol Hill Brewery, 1221 E Pike St
🗓️ Dates: October 3rd, 2026, 4pm to 10pm (tickets on sale August 5th)

The Great Pumpkin Beer Festival is Elysian Brewing’s pumpkin beer bash. It takes place at the brewery’s original Capitol Hill pub for its 22nd year on October 3rd, 2026.

You will find more than 60 pumpkin and fall harvest beers, a giant pumpkin cracked open and tapped like a keg, live music, food trucks, and a costume contest. It runs from 4pm to 10pm, and it is 21 and over.

One thing to note: when I went, the festival was still at Seattle Center, and it has since moved back to the Capitol Hill brewery where it started. So the vibe may be different. Everything below is from the Seattle Center years.

I had the best time at this one. I went alone, mainly because it sold out so quickly that I didn’t get a chance to tell anyone, so first things first, get those tickets early. Second, prepare to drink a lot. Many of the beers are festival exclusive and won’t be sold in stores, so try as many as you can without getting carried out of the festival grounds.

When you enter, you get an adorable goblet with a jack o lantern face painted on the front, plus drink tokens to start. I ate a ton beforehand hoping I wouldn’t get drunk quickly, and my plan failed spectacularly. Good thing there are food trucks all over the site. I ended up with mac n cheese dumplings and some amazing Texas BBQ.

In the evening they cut open a giant pumpkin, filled it with beer, and passed it out to the crowd while live bands played. For some reason people were holding giant corn husks, so since I wanted to fit in, I grabbed one too and danced the night away. So much fun.

Great Pumpkin Beer Festival goblet with a jack o lantern face beside the festival's giant illuminated pumpkin at dusk

Take a Spooky Pub Crawl

These are the two pub crawls I would do in October, though only one of them is on Halloween. The first is a self-guided crawl across downtown Seattle, with hundreds of attendees and an afterparty. The second is a ghost tour through Pike Place Market that runs year round, stopping at three haunted bars for drinks and stories.

Crawl With Us

📍 Address: Check in at The Chapel Lounge, 213 1st Ave S
🗓️ Dates: October 31st, 2026, 4pm to 10pm

This Halloween Bar Crawl runs from 4pm to 10pm on October 31st, and your ticket gets you into every bar on the route. At check-in you get a map and a badge with vouchers for two to three free drinks or shots, redeemable at specific bars. After those, you are paying, but crawlers get discounted specials all night. There is also a DJ afterparty.

I have done a few of these themed crawls, and they are always a lot of fun. Unlike most pub crawls where a guide walks you from bar to bar, this one is self-guided. Once you check in at the first bar, you are free to hit whatever bars you want, as long as they are on the crawl map.

Four costumed pub crawlers in hippie, nun, and luchador outfits posing at The Chapel Lounge during the Seattle Halloween bar crawl

I did this one alone and met some great people, so if you happen to be riding solo, you can still have a blast. When I went, there were nine bars on the map, including a couple of dance spots, though the lineup changes annually.

Seattle Booze and Boos Tour

📍 Address: Meets at the Taproom at Pike Place, 1525 1st Ave #16
🗓️ Dates: Most evenings, year round

The Booze and Boos tour is a guided ghost walk through Pike Place Market that stops at three historic bars along the way. It runs two to two and a half hours with a costumed guide. Drinks are not included in the ticket.

This one takes place around Pike Place Market, which happens to be one of Seattle’s most haunted neighborhoods, with several spooky bars clustered together. If you want to see the market in daylight too, I have a whole guide to Pike Place Market food tours.

We met our costumed guide at the taproom to start. You spend around 30 to 45 minutes at each stop, which gives you just enough time to grab a drink and listen to all the creepy stories.

Ghost tour group listening to a costumed guide beside the Gum Wall in Post Alley at night during the Seattle Booze and Boos tour

The route doesn’t follow the exact same path every night, so the specific bars can vary. The tour usually finishes at Kells, a pub built inside a former mortuary, which I cover further down this list.

Get Spooked at a Haunted House

Georgetown Morgue

📍 Address: 5000 E Marginal Way S, Seattle, WA 98134
🗓️ Dates: September 25th to November 7th, 2026

Georgetown Morgue is Seattle’s most notorious haunted house, built inside a building that really did operate as a mortuary and crematorium. Two things to know before you go: costumes are not allowed, and it is not appropriate for young kids. There is a VIP pass if you would rather not wait in the regular line, which can get long.

The attraction leans hard on a story about a 1968 massacre, when two armed men allegedly forced the entire staff into the crematorium chamber during an evening meeting. There were no survivors and no suspects.

But no records of that crime exist. The backstory appears to have been created for the haunted house. Knowing that did not make it any less unsettling to walk through.

It is very well done. Wear your running shoes because you may need them. It was terrifying.

Haunted house actor in a bloodstained sitting room holding an axe at Georgetown Morgue in Seattle

Nile Nightmares Haunted House

📍 Address: 6601 244th St SW, Mountlake Terrace, WA 98043
🗓️ Dates: Fridays and Saturdays, October 2nd to 31st, 2026, 7pm to 11pm

Nile Nightmares runs out of the Nile Shrine Golf Course, about a 30-minute drive north of Seattle, and the Shriners have been putting it on since 2010 as a fundraiser. There are four indoor haunts plus outdoor scenes and mazes. Instead of standing in line, you check in and get a text when your group is up, so you can spend the wait wandering the food trucks, escape games, and bar they set up outside. Parking is free.

This one was a bit more low-key than Georgetown, but still scary. When I went, there was no text system yet, so we stood in line, and I ended up befriending a couple because, well, I was alone. The actors kept us entertained the whole time.

If you are bringing kids, they run a Not-So-Scary daytime event on Saturday, October 17th, 2026, from 11am to 3pm. Same house with all the lights on, but no live actors, and there is candy at every entrance.

Butcher character in a blood-splattered apron holding a cleaver beside a hanging pig head at Nile Nightmares in Mountlake Terrace

Frighthouse Station

📍 Address: 626 E 25th St, Tacoma, WA 98421
🗓️ Dates: Wednesdays through Saturdays, October 1st to 31st, 2026, from 7pm

Frighthouse Station is Tacoma’s largest haunted attraction, set in the basement of Freighthouse Square, a former rail freight depot near the Tacoma Dome that now operates as a marketplace. There are more than 30 rooms, and it takes about 45 minutes to walk through. The basement supposedly served as a temporary morgue during World War Two, though I have never seen that confirmed anywhere official.

The house theme changes yearly. The year I went, it was ocean-themed, and in 2024 they did one about nightmares cycling through different TV channels.

It is intense and not for the faint of heart. You squeeze through tight corridors and navigate pitch black sections, strobe lights, and fog machines. They also run toned-down family nights if you want the experience without completely traumatizing your kids.

Ghostly face appearing inside an empty picture frame in a blue-lit room at Frighthouse Station in Tacoma

Dance the Night Away at a Halloween Music Festival

BOO Seattle

📍 Address: WAMU Theater, 800 Occidental Ave S, Seattle, WA 98134
🗓️ Dates: October 30th and 31st, 2026

BOO Seattle is a two-night Halloween electronic music festival at WAMU Theater, and each year it gets built around a different theme. The 2026 edition returns to the Haunted Mansion concept, with more than 45 artists spread across three stages: the Grand Hall for the headliners, the Bassment for bass and dubstep, and the Corridor for house and techno. You have to be 18 or older to get in, and VIP is 21 and over.

I went a few years ago and had so much fun. There were multiple stages pumping out house, dubstep, and trap music, and the stage setups were wild.

Two performers in red and black harlequin costumes posing beside carnival rides at BOO Seattle inside WAMU Theater

They also bring in carnival-style rides, and there are loads of treats to keep your energy going, including signature cocktails and a candy making machine.

BOO is put on by the same company behind Electric Daisy Carnival, so you know it’s going to be good.

Crowd with hands raised under green and red laser beams in front of a giant LED wall at BOO Seattle

Listen to Some Hauntingly Beautiful Music Surrounded by Candlelight

Halloween Candlelight Concerts

📍 Address: Venues rotate, with recent Halloween programs at the Arctic Club Hotel, 700 3rd Ave
🗓️ Dates: Select dates through October

Candlelight concerts are hour-long performances by a local string quartet, held in dark, atmospheric venues lit by thousands of flameless candles.

They run year round with rotating themes, and every October the programs turn to horror scores and Halloween classics. Doors open 45 minutes early and close right before the show starts.

The venues are chosen for their acoustics. Recent Halloween programs have been held at the Arctic Club Hotel, a 1916 landmark with terra cotta walrus heads lining the third floor and a stained-glass dome ceiling inside. It may be the perfect place to listen to spooky Halloween music.

Programs change year to year, but expect scores you will recognize. Past Halloween sets have included Ghostbusters and the theme from The Exorcist, and there is usually a separate program built around classic horror films like The Shining, The Conjuring, and Friday the 13th.

String quartet performing on a stage surrounded by thousands of flameless candles and pumpkins at a Halloween Candlelight concert in Seattle

Get in the Halloween Spirit at a Burlesque Show

Every fall, Can Can Culinary Cabaret puts on Seattle’s spookiest burlesque shows, usually with two productions running at once. This Is Halloween is their long-running Nightmare Before Christmas parody, staged downtown at the Triple Door. Zombie Cheerleaders From Hell runs at their own theater in Pike Place Market. Both are dinner shows.

This Is Halloween

📍 Address: The Triple Door, 216 Union St, Seattle, WA 98101
🗓️ Dates: October 15th to 31st, 2026

This Is Halloween is a sexy and scandalous take on The Nightmare Before Christmas, staged as a dinner show with live orchestral music and video projections. It is rated PG-13, the 9pm shows are 21 and over, and the Sunday 5pm shows are all ages.

All ages means anyone can get in, not that the content changes, and the venue notes those shows still include partial states of undress and adult language.

The show follows Jack Skellington on his mission to figure out what Christmas is really about, even if that means kidnapping Santa along the way.

You will see an array of sexy dancers, some stripping, but I do not want to give too much away. It was fantastic, and everyone in the audience had a great time. My gut hurt from laughing so much.

Performer dressed as Jack Skellington in a pinstripe suit surrounded by caped dancers under a full moon backdrop at This Is Halloween in Seattle

Zombie Cheerleaders From Hell

📍 Address: Can Can Culinary Cabaret, 95 Pine St, Seattle, WA 98101
🗓️ Dates: September 17th to November 1st, 2026

Zombie Cheerleaders From Hell is the Can Can’s fall 2026 production at their Pike Place Market theater, a returning cult favorite built on 80s horror kitsch. Expect letterman jackets, acid wash, leg warmers, and an original soundtrack, served alongside seasonal food and spooky cocktails.

I have not seen this particular show, but I have been to their Halloween shows before and have never had a bad night there. The ones I have seen had live music and some very cool visuals, and the performers pull the audience in, so prepare to dance, sing, and chant the night away.

It is an intimate theater, only about 120 seats. The food is delicious and sourced from vendors in the market. You can add a dining package to your ticket or order a la carte.

Drink Ghoulish Cocktails at a Spooky Bar

A few Seattle bars go all out for Halloween. These are my favorite Halloween pop-ups that I go back to every year!

Spooky Little Halloween Bar at the Edgewater

📍 Address: The Edgewater Hotel, 2411 Alaskan Way, Pier 67, Seattle, WA 98121
🗓️ Dates: October 1st to November 1st, 2026, daily from 5pm to 11pm

The Edgewater runs a Halloween pop-up bar in their lobby with seasonal cocktails, small plates, and decorations everywhere. They take reservations through Resy, which I would recommend

The drinks I had were the Corpse Reviver No. Blue and a bright-green Creepy Crawlers Martini garnished with gummy worms. I also got the cheese fondue, served in an acorn squash with pretzel bread and delivered in a coffin.

Fondue served in an acorn squash inside a coffin box, cobweb decorations, a green cocktail with gummy candies, and a skeleton wall at the Spooky Little Halloween Bar at the Edgewater Hotel Seattle

I walked in without a reservation, and the wait was very long, even arriving 30 minutes after opening. Book ahead or get there right when they open.

One more thing to know: there are standing-only tables by the bar, and smaller groups often get put there. If you want a proper table, make sure you let them know.

Nightmare on Wall Street at Navy Strength

📍 Address: 2505 2nd Ave, Suite 102, Seattle, WA 98121
🗓️ Dates: Late September through early November

Navy Strength is a tiki bar in Belltown that transforms itself into Nightmare on Wall Street every fall, and 2026 marks its tenth year. The cocktail menu is built around horror films, the soundtracks are playing, and the staff dress up.

They open extra nights during the pop-up, so check their schedule before you go rather than assuming the usual hours.

Tiki bar interior draped in cobwebs and hanging fabric with colored pendant lights during Nightmare on Wall Street at Navy Strength in Seattle

The menu changes every year. Past menus have included Telekinetic Energy, a Carrie tribute with aged rum and cherry that arrives on fire, and Family Secrets, a Hereditary homage with bourbon and spiced cranberry. Recent years have pulled from Silence of the Lambs, The Exorcist, Mandy, and Candyman. They also use unique ingredients like candy corn orgeat.

Halloween cocktail served in a red plastic cup with crushed ice, fresh mint, and a toasted marshmallow garnish at Navy Strength in Seattle
Flaming Halloween cocktail with a cinnamon-dusted rim and a charred lime shell set alight at Navy Strength in Seattle

Black Lagoon at Rob Roy

📍 Address: 2332 2nd Ave, Seattle, WA 98121
🗓️ Dates: Late September through early November, 4pm to 2am daily

Black Lagoon is a Halloween pop-up that takes over cocktail bars in more than 30 cities every October, and Rob Roy has been its Seattle home since 2023. Two bartenders started it in New Orleans in 2019, and it has since picked up awards and spread as far as London and Paris.

This is such a fun one. They deck the place out with dungeon-like decorations, giant spiders crawling on the walls, and hands hanging in the windows. The menu runs about eight drinks with names like Hellfire Fizz, Siren’s Song, Hex Appeal, and Nightmare Fuel, plus non-alcoholic options. A lot of them come in fun mugs, like the Siren’s Song in its skeleton mermaid.

Siren's Song cocktail served in a ceramic skeletal mermaid mug garnished with mint at the Black Lagoon Halloween pop-up at Rob Roy in Seattle

Fair warning, it can get pretty packed, and they do not take reservations.

If you are in town in December instead, the same bar becomes a Christmas pop-up called Miracle on 2nd, which I cover in my guide to Christmas in Seattle.

Tour or See a Show at Seattle’s Oldest and Most Haunted Theater

Moore Theatre

📍 Address: 1932 2nd Ave, Seattle, WA 98101
🗓️ Dates: Shows year round, free tours the second Saturday of every month

The Moore opened in December 1907 and is Seattle’s oldest working theater, built by developer James A. Moore and designed by E.W. Houghton. It is also the building most often called the most haunted in the city. You can see a show here or take a free guided tour.

The haunted reputation starts with the ground it sits on. The Moore was built over the site of Seattle’s first cemetery, but what’s strange is that nobody has ever died here, so where do all the ghost stories come from?

Moore Theatre lobby with chandelier and marble arches, the auditorium and red curtain, a painted mural, and the exterior marquee in Seattle

One popular story involves a single chair on the balcony that smells like cigar smoke. Staff have cleaned it and reupholstered it, and the smell keeps coming back. It’s said that James Moore continues to sit there, except that can’t be true because he died broke in a San Francisco hotel in 1929.

Then there is the séance. In the 1970s, the owners walked in one night and found staff holding a séance in the auditorium. They fired everyone on the spot, which meant the séance was never properly closed. Ghost tour guides will tell you that this left a door open that nobody has managed to shut since.

Painted portrait mural, faded Moore Hotel signage on brick, terracotta facade detail, and a historic photo of the Moore Hotel street scene in Seattle

The theater’s longtime manager has been there since the mid-90s and says he has heard plenty but has never seen anything. His best story is being alone in the basement one morning and hearing footsteps cross the stage above him. He went up twice, found nobody, and the third time just said out loud that whoever it was should stop playing with him. It stopped.

Other reports include singing, applause from an empty house, and shadowy figures crossing the aisles. SyFy’s Ghost Hunters came out in 2007 and could not substantiate any of it with their equipment.

Moore Theatre auditorium seating and balcony, the basement bar, stained glass windows with a gilded statue, and the stage viewed from above

Catch a show and see if you feel a spooky presence, or take the free tour, which runs the second Saturday of every month from 10am to noon. You meet at the main entrance on the corner of 2nd and Virginia; it lasts about two hours, and volunteers walk you through the lobby, the stage, and the backstage areas. It is free, but you do need to reserve a spot.

Learn About Seattle’s Darker History on a True Crime Tour

Private Eye on Seattle Tours

📍 Address: Departs from Lake Union Piers parking lot, 809 Fairview Pl N
🗓️ Dates: Year round by reservation, daytime

Seattle’s dark history goes well beyond Ted Bundy and Gary Ridgway, and although you will hear plenty about these notorious killers, there is a lot more to uncover.

Private Eye on Seattle runs two true crime routes, one through Queen Anne and one through Capitol Hill, and I have done both.

A former private investigator named Windsor Olson started the company in 1997. Jake Jacobson came on in 2001 and eventually took over, and she still runs every tour herself. She knows these cases in detail, and her storytelling will have you gripping your seat.

As well as murders, you will also hear about arsons, burglaries, and cases nobody has ever solved to this day.

Each tour runs about two and a half hours in a van, with stops along the way where you get out and look around. They leave from the Lake Union Piers parking lot; you need to reserve ahead, and nobody under 12 is allowed.

Queen Anne True Crime Tour

Queen Anne is one of my favorite areas in Seattle. It sits on the tallest hill in the city and takes its name from the ornate Victorian homes built along its slopes in the 1890s. Most tourists never make it up there, but not surprisingly, many murders have also taken place here.

One stop is a stately home on Bigelow Avenue North with a view over the whole city, where a legal secretary named Geneva MacDonald was killed with a hatchet in 1990.

From there the tour drops down into Pioneer Square and the Chinatown International District, and that was the most haunting spot for me. Thirteen people were killed at the Wah Mee Club in Maynard Alley in 1983, and it is still the deadliest mass murder in Washington state history.

The club sat padlocked for 30 years afterward, until a fire tore through the building on Christmas Eve 2013. The Louisa Hotel stands there now, rebuilt as affordable housing.

The Historic Chinatown Gate over South King Street in Seattle's Chinatown International District

Capitol Hill True Crime Tour

This one covers Seattle’s music history alongside the crime. It runs through Capitol Hill, Madrona, and Madison Park and finishes near the Lake Union houseboats.

One stop is Kurt Cobain’s former home in Denny-Blaine, though there is not much left to see. The greenhouse where he died was torn down in 1997, and the house itself is privately owned. Fans go to Viretta Park next door instead, where one of the benches has become an unofficial memorial.

Shingled house with a gothic arched dormer window surrounded by dense greenery in Seattle's Denny-Blaine neighborhood

Other stops include the neighborhood where Jimi Hendrix grew up, Bruce Lee’s grave at Lake View Cemetery, and Ted Bundy’s old stomping grounds. You will also hear about the Goldmark family, four of whom were murdered on Christmas Eve in 1985.

Take a Scenic Fall Train Ride

Snoqualmie Halloween Train

📍 Address: Snoqualmie Depot, 38625 SE King St, or North Bend Depot, 205 E McClellan St
🗓️ Dates: October 10, 11, 17, 18, 24, 25, and 31, 2026

The Northwest Railway Museum runs a fall-decorated train through the upper Snoqualmie Valley every October, about a 45 minute drive east of Seattle. The ride is just shy of two hours round trip with a half-hour stop partway through, and costumes are encouraged.

You board at either the Snoqualmie Depot or the North Bend Depot and ride west along 5.5 miles of the original 1889 Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railway line. You will pause at the top of Snoqualmie Falls for a view over the river valley. If you want to see the falls properly, I have a whole guide to Snoqualmie Falls tours from Seattle.

Orange Northwest Railway Museum locomotive pulling a vintage green passenger coach on the Snoqualmie Valley Railroad

Halfway through, the train stops for 30 minutes at the Railway History Campus. They had plenty of events going on, including cider-pressing demonstrations, apple coring, crafts, live music, historic toys, and free hot cider.

Your ticket also covers the Train Shed Exhibit Hall, and you can drive back later the same day and get in free if you want more time.

A few practical things. Parking is free at both depots; they ask you to arrive 30 minutes before departure, and there are no restrooms on the train. It runs rain or shine, and there are no refunds unless the train does not run.

This is one of my favorite fall activities in the area. The foliage alone is worth it.

Snoqualmie Falls seen from the crest with golden autumn maples among the evergreens along the gorge

Catch Classic Horror Films on the Big Screen

Scarecrowber

📍 Address: SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave N, Seattle, WA 98109
🗓️ Dates: October 14th, 21st, and 28th, 2026

Every October, the Seattle International Film Festival teams up with Scarecrow Video on a horror series called Scarecrowber.

Scarecrow is a Seattle video store that runs as a nonprofit, keeping one of the largest movie collections in the world available to rent, including thousands of films you can’t stream anywhere. Half of every ticket goes toward keeping that collection going.

Do not expect the usual Halloween lineup. Recent years have brought Spanish, Japanese, Italian, and Czech horror from the 1960s and 70s, plus cult oddities and the occasional classic. Scarecrow staff introduce each screening, and in 2025 they had Ken Jennings on the bill to read Poe before one of the films.

Keep in mind this is smaller than it used to be. When it ran at the Egyptian Theatre on Capitol Hill the lineup was around 16 films. SIFF gave up that lease in 2025, and the series moved to Uptown showing about five films instead.

Drink at an Immersive Halloween Cocktail Party

Haunted Soirée: HauntOberfest

📍 Address: Rainier Chapter House, 800 E Roy St, Seattle, WA 98102
🗓️ Dates: October 2nd to November 1st, 2026

Haunted Soirée is an adults-only immersive Halloween party held inside a historic Capitol Hill mansion, with a changing theme every year.

The theme in 2026 is HauntOberfest, a haunted Bavarian beer hall with an oompah band, craft drinks, live performances, and a cast of characters performing a story that unfolds as you move through the rooms. It runs two hours and is 21 and over. You must bring a valid ID.

The Rainier Chapter House, where the event is located, is a replica of Mount Vernon, and the Daughters of the American Revolution chapter that owns it has reported furniture moving among other creepy hauntings.

Performer in a spiked headdress and pearls singing beside a piano under red and blue lighting at Haunted Soirée in Seattle

It runs like a scavenger hunt, with riddles to solve and clues to find. You move through the mansion at your own pace, and every room reveals another piece of the story, which this year draws on German folk magic and a 1928 murder case involving a book of spells.

Characters pull you into it as you go. There is no strict dress code, but almost everyone dresses up in costume alongside cocktail attire.

Every ticket includes at least one drink, and the higher tiers add a second, bigger pour and a souvenir German dimple glass to take home. Snacks and extra drinks are available for purchase. The lounge opens 30 minutes before your session, and it ends on time, so arrive early. Parking is limited, so I would recommend a rideshare.

Exterior of the Rainier Chapter House in Seattle, the Mount Vernon replica mansion where Haunted Soirée is held, with guests lined up at the gate
Cocktail served with a syringe of dark red liqueur at Haunted Soirée in Seattle

See a Hilarious Halloween Inspired Improv Show

Unexpected Productions

📍 Address: Market Theater, 1428 Post Alley, Seattle, WA 98101
🗓️ Dates: Three Halloween shows running throughout October

Unexpected Productions is Seattle’s oldest improv theater, tucked into Post Alley right next to the Gum Wall in Pike Place Market. Every October they run three Halloween shows. They ask the crowd for words or ideas tied to a theme and build the whole thing around whatever they get, so no two nights are the same.

Poe Unexpected

🗓️ Dates: Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30pm through October

This one has been running for over a decade and is the one to pick if you are new to improv. The premise is that lost tales have been found in Edgar Allan Poe’s attic, stories he never told and never will. An actor dressed as Poe asks the audience for ideas, then the cast makes up scenes in his style as they go.

Improv performers acting out a gothic scene by lantern light at Unexpected Productions in Pike Place Market Seattle

Rocky Horror Improv Show

🗓️ Dates: October 3rd, 10th, 17th, 23rd, 24th, and 30th at 11:30pm, plus Halloween at 9:30pm

A campy musical horror parody with original songs made up on the spot. It only runs a handful of late nights, so plan around it.

Night of the Living Theater

🗓️ Dates: Sundays, October 4th to 25th at 7:30pm

An improvised zombie apocalypse where the audience helps decide who survives. This is their Sunday show.

Dine With Ghosts at a Haunted Restaurant

Kells Irish Restaurant and Pub

📍 Address: 1916 Post Alley, Seattle, WA 98101

Kells is an Irish pub in the basement of the Butterworth Building near Pike Place Market, and many people will tell you it is the most haunted spot in Seattle.

The building went up in 1903 as the city’s first purpose-built mortuary, and it has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1971. The McAleese family opened the pub down here in 1983.

This mortuary had the first elevator on the West Coast designed to move bodies between floors, along with coffin showrooms, embalming rooms, a chapel, and fireproof vaults where bodies could be stored indefinitely for families.

Exterior of Kells Irish Restaurant and Pub in Post Alley Seattle with outdoor tables and umbrellas under the blue Kells sign

The operation had a reputation. Patrick McAleese, who owns the building now, has said flatly that Butterworth and Sons were never licensed and paid people a few dollars a head to collect bodies off the streets.

The mortuary also turns up in one of Washington’s grimmest true crime cases. Linda Hazzard was a self-styled doctor who starved patients to death at her sanitarium in Olalla, and she was eventually convicted for it. The bodies of her victims passed through this building.

One Butterworth employee pleaded guilty to illegally removing the body of a victim named Claire Williamson from the sanitarium. The press at the time also reported rumors that the mortuary had cremated her and swapped in a healthier-looking corpse, which would have hidden how emaciated she was.

As for the ghosts, the famous one is Charlie, an older man in a derby hat who shows up in a mirror on the wood-paneled wall around the corner from the bar. People see him smiling from the top corner, turn around, and find nobody there.

Interior rooms at Kells Irish Pub in Seattle showing the wood-paneled dining room, the bar with Irish flags, and the long basement bar

The other regular is a little girl in a red dress, usually seen at the top of a set of stairs. She is said to be playful with children who come in during the day. Plenty of people connect her to the 1918 flu pandemic, when countless children came through this building.

Then there is the everyday stuff. Glasses slide off tables and shatter, handprints appear on clean windows, and the pub’s longtime manager says the smell of formaldehyde still surfaces now and then.

Ghost Adventures filmed an episode here in season four after the owners invited them in, hoping they might move the spirits along.

Kells is a great spot near Pike Place Market to grab a drink and a bite. I have not had any spooky experiences myself, but that is not to say you will not.

Irish food and cocktails at Kells Seattle including a sausage roll in gravy, two cream cocktails, and boxty potato pancakes

Merchants Cafe and Saloon

📍 Address: 109 Yesler Way, Seattle, WA 98104

Merchants opened in 1890, and was rebuilt in brick after the Great Seattle Fire burned down the wooden building that stood here. It bills itself as Seattle’s oldest restaurant.

Over the years the upstairs has been a hotel, a boarding house, and a brothel, and the saloon itself doubled as a bank for miners heading north, taking gold as payment for five-cent drinks.

The brothel ran under the cover of hiring women as seamstresses. Clients picked who they wanted from portraits hanging around the bar, and some of those portraits are still on the walls.

Exterior of Merchants Cafe in Pioneer Square Seattle with its lit marquee sign and Seattle's Oldest Restaurant lettering

The ghosts reside downstairs for the most part.

Two children are said to have died in a fire in the underground bar in 1938, and staff report small shadowy figures and the sound of kids laughing.

The lead bartender told a local news crew about coming in one morning to the lower bar, which had been padlocked overnight, and finding everything tipped over.

There is also a man with a badly damaged face who turns up in different parts of the building and reports of a woman’s voice in the basement restrooms. Glasses move, faucets turn themselves on, and wine bottles rearrange themselves behind the bar.

The staff keep a binder behind the bar full of photos and handwritten accounts going back decades.

Pioneer Square was the roughest part of town back then, full of gold prospectors, loggers, and sailors passing through on their way to Alaska, and the neighborhood saw plenty of violence.

If you are wanting a beer while exploring the area, this is a fantastic place to come, and they have live music on weekends.

The Pine Box

📍 Address: 1600 Melrose Ave, Seattle, WA 98122

The Pine Box has one of the best backstories of any bar in Seattle. The building opened in March 1923 as the Butterworth family’s Capitol Hill mortuary, an expansion of the operation they had been running down at Pike Place in what is now Kells.

From World War Two onward, Butterworth’s became the funeral home for Seattle’s Chinese and Japanese communities. A former employee told the Seattle Times that was two-thirds of their business for 60 years.

The Pine Box in Seattle showing the former Butterworth Mortuary exterior, a cauldron cocktail, the chapel dining room from above, and a pizza

On July 30th, 1973, Bruce Lee’s funeral took place in what is now the main dining room. Steve McQueen and James Coburn were among the pallbearers.

The bar opened in the old chapel in 2012, and the rest of the building has been closed ever since. The owners kept a lot of the original fittings. The benches and booths are chapel pews, and the tabletops were built from cabinets that stored funeral supplies in the basement.

They run more than 30 rotating taps and a full cocktail list. They serve pizza, which is just okay.

It is walk-in only, 21 and over; the patio is open year-round, and dogs are welcome.

Tall cocktail served in a glass mug with lime, crushed ice, and a paper umbrella at The Pine Box in Seattle
Dining room at The Pine Box in Seattle with dark green wallpaper, framed art, and a long communal table

Il Bistro

📍 Address: 93 Pike St, Suite A, Seattle, WA 98101

Il Bistro is tucked below Pike Place Market on the lane that runs down to the Gum Wall, and it’s easy to walk past if you aren’t looking for it.

The place feels haunted before you know anything about it. The ceilings are low, the lighting is dim, and the whole room feels old.

The stories center on a ghost said to live in a mirror in the dining room, who reportedly turns up as a smear in photographs. There is also a woman who drifts in through the closed front door and heads straight down the hall toward the bathroom. Staff describe others as playful, appearing behind customers to startle them, or just irritating, knocking glasses and plates onto the floor.

The building went up in 1900 and the space has been through a lot. In the 1950s it was Sadie’s Café, a Chinese-American restaurant where a young Gary Locke helped his parents out before going on to become governor of Washington. After that it was a longshoreman’s tavern, then a subterranean dive bar in the 1970s.

Il Bistro in Seattle showing the candlelit dining room, an espresso martini on the marble bar, a plate of pasta, and the red-lit bar

Il Bistro has been here since 1975 and claims to be the first real Italian restaurant in Seattle, still cooking from their founding chef’s recipes. They open at 5pm every day and run late, until 2am.

The food and cocktails are excellent and worth a visit.

Stay in a Haunted Airbnb

Historic Merchants Apartment

📍 Address: Above Merchants Cafe, Pioneer Square, Seattle

As I mentioned above, Merchants Cafe is Seattle’s oldest restaurant and one of its most haunted buildings. The upstairs rooms operated as a brothel in the early 1900s and have since been converted into apartments you can book.

Back when Seattle was a rough frontier town full of miners and lumberjacks, the owner of what was then the Merchant’s Exchange Saloon saw an opportunity. He brought women to Seattle, listed them discreetly as seamstresses, and housed them upstairs.

Framed portraits of those women hung at the back of the saloon, and that collection worked as the menu. A man pointed to whoever he wanted to hem his trousers, paid the proprietor, and headed up the stairs.

The apartment sleeps two and has a kitchen, a washer and dryer, and lockbox entry, and you are walking distance from Pike Place Market, the waterfront, and the stadiums.

If you want somewhere unusual to sleep for a couple of nights, this is it.

Tour Seattle’s Underground City

Seattle Underground Tours

📍 Address: Pioneer Square, Seattle

The Seattle Underground is a network of old sidewalks, storefronts, and passageways buried beneath Pioneer Square, and it exists because the city burned down.

On June 6th, 1889, a pot of glue overheated in a basement cabinet shop. A worker threw water on it, which thinned the turpentine soaking the floor and spread the flames instead of putting them out. By the next morning roughly 100 acres of downtown were gone, along with the entire business district.

When the city rebuilt, it raised the streets a full story, and the original ground floors ended up underneath. You can tour them today on guided walks that run daily and take about an hour.

Underground passageway in Seattle's Pioneer Square with wooden support beams, exposed brick walls, and old signage leaning against the wall

The city sat so low that flooding and sewage backups were constant, and the fire gave everyone a clean slate to deal with it. The sidewalks you would be walking on today lined up with what used to be the second floors of the buildings.

On the tour you walk through the old passageways, plus abandoned toilets, sewing machines, and whatever else got left behind. Look up, and you will see the glass skylights, giving the underground light needed to see.

Amber and white glass sidewalk skylights seen from below in the Seattle Underground

Now for the ghost stories! The two haunted hotspots are the old bank and a former brothel called the Oriental Hotel.

The most reported spirit is Edward, a bank teller shot at his cage during one of Pioneer Square’s shootouts, and a woman is said to have been killed behind the bank vault. People also report seeing sex workers in the tunnels, and plenty of tourists claim to have caught something in a photo.

Rusted sink and toilet left behind in the Seattle Underground beneath Pioneer Square

A couple of companies run tours. Bill Speidel’s is the original, started in the 1960s by a journalist trying to stop Pioneer Square from being demolished. Theirs runs 75 minutes on the hour and leaves from Doc Maynard’s Public House. Beneath the Streets is a newer company and also a great option.

BOOK A SEATTLE UNDERGROUND TOUR

Do the Time Warp at a Screening of Rocky Horror Picture Show

Rocky Horror Picture Show Original Cast Spooktacular

📍 Address: The 5th Avenue Theatre, 1308 5th Ave, Seattle, WA 98101
🗓️ Dates: Thursday, October 15th, 2026, doors at 6:30pm

Rocky Horror Picture Show is a classic and honestly the perfect movie to watch during spooky season. This screening will be shown at the 5th Avenue Theater. Along with the movie playing, there will be a cast of performers who will act out every scene.

You will get a chance to yell out lines of the movie, assuming you have seen it many, many times before. There is also a costume contest, so come dressed as your favorite character. This year, Patricia Quinn, the original Magenta, will be making an appearance. VIP tickets get you a photo with her and an autograph.

I went a couple of years ago, and it was wild, chaotic, and so much fun.

Doors open at 6:30 and the show starts at 7:30. They do not let anyone in after 7pm, so get there early!

Rocky Horror Picture Show screening with costumed audience members at a Seattle theatre

Stay with Ghostly Friends at a Haunted Hotel

Hotel Ändra

📍 Address: 2000 4th Ave, Seattle, WA 98121

Hotel Ändra is a 123-room boutique hotel in downtown Seattle, on the corner of 4th and Virginia, about six minutes from Pike Place Market.

It opened in 1926 as the Claremont Hotel. Back then the ninth floor was long-term apartments that housed musicians, and these guys would play jazz until the early hours. Guests today still report hearing jazz up there, along with loud voices, clinking glasses, and what sounds like a fight breaking out.

Hotel Ändra in downtown Seattle

There is also a woman in 1930s clothing who shows up in guests’ rooms and then disappears. Ghost tour guides say she is a hotel worker who fell to her death from an upper floor in the 1960s, though I cannot find a record of that anywhere.

The lobby gets its share too. Guests and staff have watched a paperweight lift off a glass table and crash back down.

The building has had many lives. After the Claremont years, the military used it from 1945 to 1947 as a transfer station for the Women’s Army Corps. It became a boutique hotel in the 1970s, took the name Ändra, Swedish for “change,” in 2004, and finished a full renovation in September 2021. It has been a member of Historic Hotels of America since 2023.

It is pet friendly, there are two restaurants on site, and the Space Needle is a 13 minute walk away.

BOOK HOTEL ÄNDRA

The Mayflower Park Hotel

📍 Address: 405 Olive Way, Seattle, WA 98101

The Mayflower Park is the oldest continuously operating hotel in downtown Seattle, open since July 1927 and a block from Westlake Center. It started life as the Bergonian, built by the same man who built Hotel Ändra. He named it after himself and The Oregonian newspaper, which he liked. It went up in six months with 240 rooms.

What is strange about the hauntings here is that the hotel has no grim history to pin them on. No fires or scandals that I could find, but it’s become home to a few ghostly residents anyway.

Entrance to the Mayflower Park Hotel in downtown Seattle with its arched awning and green hotel flag

One ghostly resident is an older man who lived on the sixth floor. Guests see him moving between rooms, and plenty report that feeling of being watched while they are trying to sleep. He is most often linked to Room 1120. There have been incidents of guests booking that room and asking to switch rooms partway through the night.

There is another ghost who is known as a prankster. Things go missing and turn up in random spots. The story that gets repeated is a housekeeper who lost a mop bucket and found it on the floor below where he had been working.

Lobby of the Mayflower Park Hotel in Seattle with a crystal chandelier, antique screen, and seating area

If you want the full experience, request Room 1120 when you book.

BOOK THE MAYFLOWER PARK HOTEL

Hotel Sorrento

📍 Address: 900 Madison St, Seattle, WA 98104

Hotel Sorrento is a 76-room boutique hotel on First Hill and a designated Seattle landmark. It opened in 1909, built by a clothing merchant named Samuel Rosenberg who had made money outfitting gold rush prospectors and expected the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition to fill the city with tourists.

It did not go well. The hotel lost money almost immediately, and by 1910 Rosenberg had traded it away for a 240-acre orchard in Oregon.

The architect, Harlan Thomas, went all in on an Italian theme, which is where the name comes from. The fireplace in the Fireside Room is covered in tiles showing an Italian villa. And he put Seattle’s first rooftop restaurant on the top floor, big enough to seat 300, with the ceiling copied from the Pantheon in Rome.

Now for the ghost, and this one is strange. People say the hotel is haunted by Alice B. Toklas. She was Gertrude Stein’s partner, a fixture of the Paris avant-garde, and the name behind the hashish fudge recipe in her cookbook that everyone remembers as the pot brownie.

She moved to Seattle in the 1890s to study music at the University of Washington, and her family lived on the block where the hotel now stands. But they left before it was built, and she died in Paris in 1967. She did come back to Seattle occasionally to give piano concerts, so it is possible she performed here, but she never lived here and probably never stayed.

Nobody can explain why she picked this place.

Room 408 on the fourth floor is where people most often report her, usually as a figure in white or black drifting along the hallway. Drinks move on their own around the hotel, lights flicker, and a sous chef once heard piano music coming from the Penthouse Suite when nobody was staying in it.

The hotel threw a dinner in her honor in 2018 using recipes from her cookbook, and the bar named a drink after her.

It’s worth saying that plenty of people stay in 408 and nothing happens. One travel writer booked it specifically to test the stories, and reported the room felt warm and ordinary.

BOOK HOTEL SORRENTO

The Arctic Club

📍 Address: 700 3rd Ave, Seattle, WA 98104

In 1897, news that gold had been found in the Klondike sent tens of thousands of men north, and nearly all of them passed through Seattle on the way. Most found nothing. A small number came back rich, and in 1908 a group of them founded the Arctic Club, a members’ club for men with money and stories from Alaska.

For the first seven years they rented rooms in the Morrison Hotel at Third and Jefferson. By 1915 they had outgrown it, and club member James Moses put up the money for a purpose-built headquarters at Third and Cherry.

It was finished in 1916, and it was the first building in Seattle to use terracotta panels over a steel frame, and the first to use colored terracotta at all.

Inside there were card rooms, billiard rooms, a library, a barbershop, a bowling alley, a roof garden, tea rooms set aside for members’ wives, and the domed dining room still known as the Northern Lights Dome Room. The club dissolved in 1971. The building joined the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 and became a hotel in 2008.

The Polar Bar at the Arctic Club Hotel in Seattle with wood paneling, a long bar, and backlit glass panels

The hauntings here trace back to one day in 1936. Marion Zioncheck, who represented Washington’s first district in Congress, kept his campaign office on the fifth floor. He was 35, had been student body president at the University of Washington, and had arrived in Seattle from Poland as a small boy.

He was also unwell. Newspapers at the time wrote about periods of elation and depression, and his last months were difficult and very public. On August 7th, 1936, he died by suicide in that fifth-floor office. His note talked about wanting to fix an economic system he thought was unfair.

Guests say the fifth floor still feels off, and the elevator has a habit of stopping there on its own.

Front desk at the Arctic Club Hotel in Seattle with walls of framed portraits of original club members

The rest of the stories belong to the old members. The third and fifth floors get the most reports, mostly voices in the halls and the smell of cigars in rooms. Down at the Polar Bar, staff hear whispers and glasses clinking.

It operates as a DoubleTree now, but they have kept the dome room and the bar.

BOOK THE ARCTIC CLUB

Learn About Seattle’s Haunted History on a Ghost Tour

Seattle Terrors Ghost Tour

📍 Meeting point: Outside the Four Seasons Hotel, 99 Union St, by the Ferris wheel
🗓️ Dates: Nightly at 8pm, rain or shine

This is the one to pick if you want to feel unsettled. It runs an hour and covers about a mile on foot through downtown, Pike Place Market, and Post Alley, with stories going back to the 1850s that will send shivers down your spine.

Your guide carries a lantern and wears a black shirt. You will hear about the market’s darker history and hear stories of the many people who reportedly have haunted the city for decades.

Spooktacular Ghost Tour

📍 Meeting point: Pike Place Market area
🗓️ Dates: Daily, with private tours from 1pm to 9pm

If you want a ghost tour you can bring kids on without traumatizing them for life, this is the one. It runs 90 minutes and covers about a mile, almost all of it inside Pike Place Market, which is a good place to take kids anyway.

Your guide turns up in costume, which the kiddos love!

They also do private tours if you want to book them for just your family or a birthday party, and the start time is flexible anywhere from the early afternoon to late evening.

Explore the Most Haunted Places in Seattle

The Cadillac Hotel

📍 Address: 168 S Jackson St, Seattle, WA 98104

The Cadillac Hotel opened in 1890 as a cheap place for working men to sleep. Loggers, fishermen, railroad crews, and shipyard workers: 25 cents a night. The ground floor had a saloon, a drugstore, and a cheap restaurant.

It is now a free museum, and people still report hearing strange noises upstairs.

Vintage green and cream Cadillac Hotel neon sign mounted on the brick facade in Pioneer Square Seattle

People can hear a woman and a child crying, usually at night. Nobody knows who they were and the connection they had to the hotel. Staff and visitors also report footsteps in empty hallways, voices, and shadows in the upstairs windows, you know, typical ghostly shenanigans.

Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park museum inside the Cadillac Hotel, showing a recreated outfitting store, an Alaska Steamship ticket window, gallery exhibits, and the hotel's neon sign over Jackson Street

The hotel floors closed at the end of the 1960s when new city fire codes required sprinkler systems that they couldn’t afford. The upper floors sat empty for 30 years.

Then the Nisqually Earthquake hit in 2001, and left the Cadillac, one of the worst damaged buildings in Pioneer Square, but Historic Seattle stepped in with a preservation plan.

It reopened in 2005 as the Seattle unit of Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, which makes this building the smallest national park in Washington. Admission is free, and it is worth an hour if you like history.

Pike Place Market

📍 Address: 85 Pike St, Seattle, WA 98101

Most people come to Pike Place for the fish throwing, but did you know it is also one of the most haunted places in the city? And it starts with someone who lived here way before there was a market.

Kikisoblu was the eldest daughter of Chief Seattle, the Duwamish and Suquamish leader the city is named after. Settlers called her Princess Angeline. When the 1855 Treaty of Point Elliott ordered the Duwamish out of the city, she refused to go. She stayed in a waterfront cabin on Western Avenue between Pike and Pine for the rest of her life, taking in laundry and weaving baskets to sell.

The Public Market Center neon sign and clock lit up at dusk over the entrance to Pike Place Market in Seattle

She died on May 31st, 1896 in her eighties, and the city gave her a funeral and buried her in a canoe-shaped coffin at Lake View Cemetery. The market went up a decade later, more or less on top of where she had lived.

People report seeing a small, hunched woman moving slowly through the market, sometimes with baskets, most often on the lower level near an old wooden column where the temperature is said to drop.

Neon Lower Floor arrow sign and Market Grill seafood sign above crowds inside Pike Place Market

Another ghostly resident of the market is Frank Goodwin, one of the men who built the market in 1907. Visitors near the restrooms and stairwells describe a tall older man who introduces himself as Frank, asks how he can help, and is gone before they answer. He is said to only turn up for people who look lost.

His nephew Arthur ran the market for over 20 years and kept an office upstairs. That room is the Goodwin Library now, and people report a figure watching the market from its window, occasionally holding a golf club.

Fishmonger tossing a fish behind the counter at Pike Place Fish Co in Seattle

Grand Army of the Republic Cemetery

📍 Address: 1200 E Howe St, Seattle, WA 98102

This is probably the most overlooked haunted spot in Seattle. It is a 2.3 acre plot on Capitol Hill, tucked just north of Lake View Cemetery, and it holds 526 graves of Union veterans of the Civil War and their wives.

It was founded in 1895, on land donated by Huldah and David Kaufman, two of the city’s first Jewish settlers. Thousands of Union veterans had come west after the war, and this is where a lot of them were buried.

A few of the graves are worth looking out for. Frank Bois won the Medal of Honor for his actions aboard the USS Cincinnati at Vicksburg. Soldiers of the US Colored Troops are buried here too, as is a man who survived Andersonville, the Confederate prison camp where thousands of Union prisoners died of starvation and disease.

The cemetery has picked up a reputation over the years. People report hearing shouting and voices on the grounds and seeing figures in Union uniforms. The area around the Andersonville grave is where visitors most often describe the temperature dropping.

It’s open daily from 4am to 11:30pm, and it’s free.

Martha Washington Park

📍 Address: 6612 57th Ave S, Seattle, WA 98118

During the day this is an ordinary lakeside park. Families, dogs, people on the shoreline. Almost nobody there knows what used to be on the site.

From 1921 until 1971 this was the Martha Washington School for Girls, a residential reform school run first by the Seattle School District and later by the state. The girls sent here were labeled delinquent, which in practice often meant they had run away from violent homes, or were pregnant, or were poor at a time when poverty was treated as a character defect. Once they arrived, very few people on the outside were checking on them.

The buildings sat empty after it closed and were demolished in 1989. The entrance arch survived and now stands at Green Lake Park. A madrona tree on the grounds is still there, along with the remains of a hollow staircase that led up to it, built by the judge who owned the property before the school.

There are a lot of ghost stories about this park, and most of them are not true. Online you will find a murdered student, a satanic cult, and a desecrated burial ground, none of which show up in the historical record. People do report footsteps, crying, the feeling of being watched near the old tree, and a girl in white among the trees at dusk.

Whether or not you believe any of that, something did happen here to a lot of children, but nobody knows what.

Where to Stay in Seattle

Book accommodation in Seattle by searching for hotels below!

I recommend staying downtown or on Capitol Hill.  Downtown puts you walking distance from Pike Place, Pioneer Square, and the waterfront, and the light rail runs straight there from the airport. Capitol Hill is better if nightlife is important to you, but Seattle is super easy to get around, but stick to those areas if you want to be close to all the action.

Halloween in Seattle: FAQS

What’s the weather typically like in October?

October in Seattle is mild and gets wetter as the month goes on. Daytime highs run from around 65°F (18°C) in early October down to about 55°F (13°C) by Halloween, with nighttime lows between 45 and 50°F (7-10°C).

October is when Seattle’s rainy season starts, though it is not as relentless as visitors expect. The city gets around 3.5 to 4 inches of rain across the month, but spread over 13 to 16 days, so it is mostly drizzle. You will still get about seven hours of daylight sun on an average day.

Bring a waterproof jacket and an umbrella just in case, and layers for the evening.

How many days Should I plan for a Halloween trip to Seattle?

Most of what is on this list runs all month, so you have flexibility on when to come. The exceptions are the one-night events like the bar crawl and the Rocky Horror screening, so check those dates first if either is a priority.

Three or four days over a weekend is perfect since that is when most events run. Two days is enough, but stay longer if you’d like to take a day trip for the Snoqualmie Halloween Train or the haunted houses out in Tacoma and Mountlake Terrace.

How far in advance should I book Halloween activities?

It depends on the event, and several of these sell out well ahead.

Book as soon as tickets go on sale for the Great Pumpkin Beer Festival, the Snoqualmie Halloween Train, the Can Can burlesque shows, and Haunted Soirée.

The beer festival and the train both release in August, the Can Can theater only seats about 120, and Haunted Soirée runs on timed sessions with limited spots, so those dates disappear fast. The Halloween bar crawl and BOO Seattle also go early.

How do I get around Seattle?

Public transportation is the best way to get around, and Seattle has a solid network compared to most West Coast cities.

Light Rail – The Link 1 Line runs from Sea-Tac Airport through downtown and north to Lynnwood, hitting Capitol Hill, the University District, and Northgate along the way. Trains come every 8 to 15 minutes, and it takes about 40 minutes from the airport to Westlake downtown. Adult fare is a flat $3.

Buses – King County Metro covers the neighborhoods the train does not reach, including Fremont, Ballard, and Georgetown. Adult fare is also a flat $3.

Getting an ORCA card – This is the regional transit card and it works on buses, the light rail, the streetcar, and the ferries. The easiest way to get one is from a vending machine at any light rail station, including the one at the airport. The card itself costs $3 on top of whatever you load onto it, and the machines take cash, Visa, and Mastercard. There is also a $6 regional day pass if you plan to make a lot of trips in one day.

You do not strictly need one. Every light rail station has a ticket machine, buses take exact change since drivers cannot give any back, and you can now tap a contactless credit card or your phone at the readers instead. But the ORCA saves you fumbling for change and handles transfers automatically. Kids 18 and under ride free either way.

Apps to download – Get myORCA to load money onto your card and check your balance. Transit GO Ticket lets you buy single tickets on your phone if you skip the card. For figuring out which bus to take and when it is actually coming, OneBusAway is what locals use, though Google Maps works fine for routing.

One thing to plan around on Halloween: the light rail stops running at 1am most nights and midnight on Sundays. After that, you will need to get an Uber or Lyft.

Seattle is also very walkable, especially downtown. You can walk to Capitol Hill in about 20 minutes, and Pioneer Square is very close.

If you are deciding between cities, I also have posts on Halloween in New Orleans and Halloween in Dublin.

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0 things to do for Halloween in Seattle, featuring a candlelit string quartet concert and a cheese fondue served in a coffin box
20 things to do for Halloween in Seattle, featuring an abandoned sink and toilet in the Seattle Underground and the vintage Cadillac Hotel neon sign
20 things to do for Halloween in Seattle, featuring a Jack Skellington burlesque performance and an underground passageway in the Underground
20 things to do for Halloween in Seattle, featuring a skeleton wall at a Halloween pop-up bar and a laser-lit crowd at BOO Seattle

Travel Resources

First off, if you want to browse all my favorite travel resources, check out my Travel Resources page.

Trip Planning: I have put together the ultimate trip planning guide that will walk you through everything you need to know to plan your perfect trip.

Book your Flight: Check out Momondo! They are my go to for booking flights. Airfarewatchdog is also a favorite of mine. I get notified by email every time there is a good deal from my local airport. WayAway is also a good option. They list mistake fares so many times, you can get an international ticket for as little as $300!

Book your Transportation: Busbud is usually where I check first. They check hundreds of different transportation companies all over the world and find you the best bus deal. Flixbus is one of my favorite cheap options for Europe. The buses generally aren’t too bad, and they go to most countries around Europe. It’s the perfect option for short distances. Train travel is my favorite mode of transportation, and I always use Rail Europe to book my tickets. If you need a transfer from the airport or if you are going somewhere where transport is limited (like a festival in the middle of nowhere or even a day trip) Welcome Pickups is a great option. I have used them on multiple occasions, and you can book a ride 5 hours in advance!

Book your Accommodation: My number one is Booking. If you book enough hotels from them, you can get huge discounts and perks like free breakfast and room upgrade. On a budget and looking for cheap accommodation? Hostelworld is my preferred site to book cheap and reliable hostels. Hotwire has a fun mystery to it. It’s a great site to use for last-minute bookings. They don’t actually tell you the name of the hotel when you are browsing. You will just get the area of the city it’s in, the price, and how many stars it has. I love the surprise aspect of it! Traveling to Asia? Agoda is the best accommodation booking site! If you are traveling with a big group, Vrbo is a good option. They have a huge selection of vacation rentals. Hotellook allows you to compare hotel prices around the world, so you can find the best deal!

Book your Travel Insurance: Getting travel insurance is such a crucial part of preparing for a trip. You never know what could happen, and why take the risk? Before I travel anywhere, I always book my insurance through Visitors Coverage.

Book your Activities: Now, you have planned all the logistics, time to think about what you will do once you get to your destination! These are a few of my favorite trip planning sites. I always use Get Your Guide and Viator when I am looking for tours. If you are traveling to Asia, Klook is widely used to book activities. Go City sells tickets to top attractions for up to 65% off. Eat With allows you to book dinners or cooking classes with local families. If you enjoy self-guided walking tours, We Go Trip has audio guides you can download. Big Bus Tours offers open-top sightseeing tours.

Store Your Luggage: Do you have a long layover or a late flight and need to store your luggage? Radical Storage has got you covered.

Get an eSim: Airlalo has been an amazing way for me to stay connected on the road. They have eSims in 200 countries and set up is super easy.