The Haunting House

Why would anyone pay money to be chased by a chainsaw or sit through a movie designed to ruin their sleep? It turns out your brain has some very good reasons. Your Body on Fear When something jumps out at you, a small region deep in your brain called the amygdala sounds the alarm before you've even had time to think. Your body flips into fight-or-flight mode: adrenaline surges, your heart pounds, your breathing quickens and your senses sharpen. For a few seconds, you are as a

Haunted attractions are built to scare you. These places didn't need the help. Each one comes with a real history, a pile of ghost stories, and doors you can walk through yourself. Check current tour schedules before you go, since many sell out in October. No. 1: Eastern State Penitentiary (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania). Opened in 1829 and closed in 1971, this crumbling fortress pioneered solitary confinement. Its long, decaying cellblocks are as eerie at noon as they are at mi

Two weeks until Halloween, and there's more horror available right now than any one person can watch. Here's our shortlist, sorted by where you'll find it. New on Streaming This Month Hokum (Hulu). Missed it in theaters? Damian McCarthy's witch-in-a-hotel shocker, one of our picks for the scariest movie of the year, is streaming on Hulu this month. Evil Dead Burn (HBO Max). The brutal new Deadite chapter landed on HBO Max on October 2. V/H/S/Mixtape (Shudder). The found foota

New horror is great, but every scare on screen today owes something to the classics. If you're building a Halloween marathon or just want to know where modern horror came from, start here. Lights off, phone down. No. 1: Psycho (1960). Alfred Hitchcock killed off his star halfway through and made a generation afraid of the shower. Still the blueprint for the modern thriller. No. 2: Night of the Living Dead (1968). George A. Romero's low-budget masterpiece invented the modern z

2026 has been a monster year for horror. YouTubers became box office headliners, liminal spaces became the scariest place on screen, and a few veteran directors reminded everyone why we fell in love with the genre. Here are the 13 films we'd put at the top of your watchlist. No. 1: Hokum. Damian McCarthy, who made the slow-burn shocker Oddity, delivers what may be the scariest movie of the year. Adam Scott plays a novelist trapped in a remote Irish hotel with a witch, and the

Every October, thousands of haunts across the country flip on the fog machines. Only a handful are worth a road trip. This year's national rankings are in, and we've rounded up the attractions that fear seekers are voting for, plus a few legends that belong on every bucket list. The 2026 USA TODAY 10Best Winners Each year, a panel of haunt experts nominates 20 attractions and readers vote on the final ten, judging actors, sets, special effects and value for money. Here's how

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