Beyond Trick-or-Treating: Fun Family Activities for Halloween Season

(StatePoint) Trick-or-treating may be the standard Halloween tradition for most American families, but the holiday has branched out extensively over the last decade.

Today, Americans spend over one billion dollars visiting Halloween-themed attractions. Where are they going, and what are the best activities for your family? The experts at Hauntworld.com are offering some spooky answers in this ultimate fall to-do list.

Farm Fun
Many farms offer tons of fall activities ideal for families with young children, including picking the perfect carving pumpkin, finding your way out of a corn maze and drinking homemade apple cider. Other fun activities include pony rides, hay mazes, non-spooky hayrides, petting zoos and even shooting pumpkin cannons.

Ghost Tours
Ghost hunting television shows have really increased the popularity in finding haunts and eerie tours. Learn more about your local area’s spooky history by taking family or out of town guests to haunted mansions, cemeteries, prisons and more.

Zombie Runs
What could be scarier than a 5K run? One with zombies of course! Zombie runs are a good time for the whole family, providing a fun reason to get kids and teens moving, using obstacle courses, contests, prizes and more as incentives.

Haunted Hayrides
Hayrides can be as sophisticated as a Hollywood movie, complete with fog machines and lights. Some have even adopted new twists. For example, on a zombie paintball hayride, guests go on a high adrenaline adventure, hunting and shooting zombies with paintballs. Haunted hayrides make guests and especially smaller kids feel safe as they ride in groups.

Home Haunts
Americans are now decorating their yards and homes into spooky graveyards with high tech lights, animations and more. Some homeowners take it further by also decorating their home’s interiors and creating mazes in the garage or backyard. Finding a spooky home haunt or neighborhood near you can be a great Halloween activity to do if you’re on a budget. For tips and tricks on haunting your own house, visit www.hauntedhousesupplies.com.

Escape Rooms
Escape rooms offer an immersive and interactive experience like none other. These Halloween-themed attractions involve working together to solve puzzles and riddles in order to escape a room in under an hour.

Haunted Houses
Haunted houses come in all shapes and sizes, ranging from three-dimensional black light attractions to haunted trails to major scream parks. Haunted houses also change regularly, so it may be very different from visit to visit. Today, most haunted attractions don’t rely as much on blood and guts as they do on interactive special effects, sophisticated costumes, story lines and computer-generated imagery. To celebrate the scary side of Halloween, get the family together for an unforgettable night filled with fun and screams.

To find America’s scariest haunted houses, trickiest corn mazes, spookiest zombie runs and every pumpkin patch, ghost tour and escape room near you, you can review a comprehensive directory of these attractions at www.Hauntworld.com.

While tradition never gets old, novel Halloween activities provide different thrills than a standard trick-or-treat trip around the block.