Best Haunted Houses in New Hampshire 2026: Confirmed Dates and What's Still Unannounced

Every "best haunted houses in New Hampshire" page you'll find today lists five attractions with confident dates next to them. Most of those dates are from last year.

Here's the actual state of play, checked against each venue's own website on September 8, 2026: three major New Hampshire haunts have published full 2026 calendars, and one large name — Haunted Overload — still has not.

When this page was first written at the end of July there was exactly one. The other two both had schedules published somewhere other than the page about them. Spooky World's twenty-three nights were inside a booking widget its homepage never linked a date from. Screeemfest's sixteen were on Canobie's hours calendar, which labels September 26 "Screeemfest Opening Day!" while the Screeemfest page itself still says only that it will reopen in the fall. Neither venue announced anything. We found both by looking somewhere other than the obvious page.

The state of the 2026 season

What’s left of the season

4 venues here run a multi-night season this autumn. The last of them closes Nov 7.

2 finish on Halloween night itself, which is the pattern most people assume.

One closes before Halloween — rather than on it, which is the half of a season nobody publishes: Ghosts on the Banke after Oct 24.

One runs past Halloween: Fright Kingdom to Nov 7.

Counted from the published calendars on this page, not from last year’s.

Fright Kingdom, Nashua — the one you can plan around

12 Simon Street, Nashua. The only major New Hampshire haunt with a full calendar published, and it's a long one.

It opened Friday, September 25 and runs weekends through Saturday, October 31 — with Sundays added from October 9 onward. They also run In the Dark on November 6–7 and Fright Before Xmas across two December weekends, which makes this effectively a three-season operation.

Tickets are $41.00 online, all fees included. At the box office it's $45, cash only — they don't take cards at the door. It's timed entry in half-hour slots, they say it sells out, and there are no group, VIP, or Fright Pass discounts this year. Buy ahead, and note that your ticket time is your arrival time, not your entry time.

Spooky World, Litchfield — the season nobody announced

New England's largest haunted attraction, and in 2026 its 35th season: a hayride, five walk-through haunts including the newly added Possessed, and a midway, at 454 Charles Bancroft Highway with free parking.

Twenty-three nights, September 18 to Halloween. It opened September 18–20, runs September 25–26, then every Friday, Saturday and Sunday in October, with Columbus Day Monday added and Thursdays from October 15. It stops on the 31st — no November dates.

It is priced by the night: $41.99 Thursdays and Columbus Day, $44.99 Sundays, $51.99 Fridays, $56.99 Saturdays, with VIP running $67.99 to $86.99 on the same curve. Two nights break that pattern and both are bargains — opening weekend is buy-one-get-one, about $26 a head on the Friday, and September 25–26 are 35th Anniversary nights at a flat $35. Those are the two cheapest ways into the biggest haunt in the region.

The reason nobody else lists these dates is that the venue never published them as text. The homepage announced the season and the fifth haunt back in the summer and then went quiet; the calendar lived inside the ShowPass widget behind the "get tickets" button the whole time. Full detail on our Spooky World page.

It's Spooky World now — the Nightmare New England name and web address still point here, and older roundups list them as two separate attractions.

Screeemfest at Canobie Lake, Salem — open, 14 nights to Halloween

Six haunted houses inside a working amusement park, so the rides, live shows and family areas run alongside the scares. That makes it the one New Hampshire haunt a mixed-age group can do together.

The September 26 opening weekend is cancelled. Canobie's banner reads "Screeemfest Postponed to 10/2 - Park Closed 9/26 & 9/27", and its hours calendar marks both days closed for weather.

Open now, October 2 to Halloween, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays — fourteen nights, with the park on evening hours: 5pm–11pm Fridays, 3pm–11pm Saturdays, 1pm–9pm most Sundays. No Columbus Day Monday, unlike most of the region.

Pricing is still unpublished, and neither the dates nor the postponement were on the Screeemfest page. Both are on Canobie's hours calendar — full detail on our Screeemfest page.

No costumes or makeup permitted. This catches families out every year.

The one that hasn't announced

Haunted Overload, Lee. At DeMeritt Hill Farm on Route 155, and the best-looking haunt in the state by a distance — an outdoor walk through the woods past hand-built sets, some of the monsters north of thirty feet, most of it made by founder Eric Lowther. Its website is built entirely from frames and returns no readable content at all, so we could verify nothing beyond the location. Check their social channels; that's where this one announces.

If you need something confirmed and family-friendly

Ghosts on the Banke at Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth has locked its dates: October 16–17 and October 23–24, arrival at 5pm or 6pm, ending at 8pm. $17 public, $16 early bird, $8.50 or free for members. It's designed for ages 4 to 8 and the museum calls it "spooky, not scary."

It's the opposite end of the spectrum from Fright Kingdom, and for a household with small children it's the only confirmed New Hampshire Halloween booking on this page. Full detail is on our Portsmouth guide.

How to use this page

Check back. We'll update this as venues announce, and re-stamp the verification date at the top when we do. That date is the entire point — it tells you how much to trust the table.

Book Fright Kingdom now if you want a specific night. Timed slots plus a stated tendency to sell out is not a combination that rewards waiting.

If you want the biggest night out for the least money, it is Spooky World's 35th Anniversary pair on September 25–26, a flat $35 — the cheapest single ticket at the largest attraction in the region. Its buy-one-get-one opening weekend has already run.

Don't trust an October date you can't trace to the venue. If a page quotes you dates for Haunted Overload today, ask yourself where it got them. Its site is a frameset that returns no readable content and its tickets page refuses even a real browser, so we could not get them, and we tried.

If you spot an announcement before we do, tell us and we'll verify and update.

If you're building a weekend around this, the haunted hotels list includes Three Chimneys Inn in Durham — ten minutes from Haunted Overload, and a building that has been standing since 1649.

The Haunted Almanac

We check all 50 New England haunted attractions against their own websites, every week. 26 have published 2026 dates so far. Last sweep: October 8.

The ones that matter never announce. Spooky World published twenty-three nights and put them nowhere but its ticket widget; Scary Acres rebuilt its whole site in nine days without a word. We find those and send them to you. Free, and one click gets you out.

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