Spooky Season Is Here: Tickets Now on Sale for Halloween Nights at Eastern State Penitentiary

Spooky Season Is Here: Tickets Now on Sale for Halloween Nights at Eastern State Penitentiary

Tickets are now available for Halloween Nights at Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site, an immersive Halloween event featuring five haunted houses, historic tours, themed bars and lounges, and live performances across the site’s 10-acre historic prison grounds. The event features custom sets, props and special effects makeup, along with original soundtracks and hundreds of performers each night. Tickets are available at easternstate.org/halloween

Halloween Nights began as a fundraising effort to help preserve Eastern State Penitentiary, a National Historic Landmark. The site originally opened in 1829 as the world’s first penitentiary and closed in 1971, remaining abandoned for more than 20 years. By the early 1990s, the building faced potential demolition. To help fund stabilization and preservation work, organizers launched a modest Halloween attraction in 1991. Over the following decades, that event grew into Terror Behind the Walls before evolving into today’s Halloween Nights, a large-scale festival that draws visitors from around the world.

According to organizers, 100% of proceeds from Halloween Nights go back to Eastern State Penitentiary’s nonprofit operations. Ticket sales fund the site’s historic preservation, national education initiatives, and workforce development programs, including its Returning Citizens Fellowship and Preservation Trades Center. Many of the food, drink and vendor partners at the event also participate in fair-chance hiring practices, providing living-wage employment to individuals with lived experience of incarceration.

Organizers describe Halloween Nights as one of the country’s leading Halloween attractions, while also using the event to encourage broader conversations about the criminal justice system among the tens of thousands of visitors it draws each fall.

After Dark VIP Admission

New for 2026, After Dark VIP Admission is available exclusively online and includes all attractions and areas available with General Admission, along with several added features:

• VIP Flashlight Tour — A 40-minute, guide-led flashlight walking tour through the cellblocks, including areas not typically open to the public. The tour covers the history of Eastern State Penitentiary, including its early system of solitary confinement and its influence on modern prisons, as well as the site’s history of Halloween fundraising.
• Front-of-the-Line Festival Access — Following the flashlight tour, guests are escorted to the front of the line for entry into the rest of the Halloween Nights festival.
• Quick Pass — Priority access to haunted attractions, bypassing General Admission lines.
• The Speakeasy at Al Capone’s Cell — A complimentary beer, wine, cider or soft drink at the event’s speakeasy-themed lounge, which features live lounge singers.