What are the 2026 dates for Phantom Fall Fest?

Weekends from September 19 to November 1, 2026, published by Lake Compounce on the event's own page and confirmed on August 3, 2026. September 19 falls on a Saturday and November 1 on a Sunday, which is consistent with a genuine 2026 weekend calendar rather than a prior year's dates left in place.

Is Phantom Fall Fest the same thing as the Haunted Graveyard?

Yes. Lake Compounce's Halloween event ran for years as the Haunted Graveyard and has been rebranded Phantom Fall Fest. The old /haunted-graveyard page now returns a 404, which is why pages still linking to it are pointing at a URL the park deleted.

How much does it cost?

The park had not published a 2026 admission price on the event page as of August 3, 2026. The event is included with park admission historically, but we are not stating a figure we have not read at source.

Lake Compounce in Bristol, Connecticut — among the oldest continuously operating amusement parks in the United States. The Halloween event runs inside the working park, so rides and family areas operate alongside the haunts.

Lake Compounce Halloween 2026: Phantom Fall Fest Dates

Lake Compounce runs Phantom Fall Fest on nine weekends, September 19 to November 1, 2026 — confirmed on the park's own site. It was the Haunted Graveyard until the rename, which is why the roundups still quoting it are quoting a deleted URL.

This page used to say we could not check this attraction at all. That was true for three days, and it was wrong for an interesting reason.

Lake Compounce's Halloween event has been renamed. What ran for years as the Haunted Graveyard is now Phantom Fall Fest, and the old page — the one every Connecticut roundup still links to — returns a 404.

The 2026 dates

Weekends, September 19 through November 1, 2026. Published by the park on the event's own page and confirmed on August 3.

That is a nine-weekend season, which makes it one of the longest-running Halloween events in New England and the earliest Connecticut opener we have confirmed.

We check these against the calendar rather than trusting them: September 19, 2026 is a Saturday and November 1 is a Sunday. A weekends season that starts on a Saturday and ends on a Sunday is internally consistent. When a venue leaves last year's dates up — which is the single most common failure in this category — the weekdays stop matching, and that is how you catch it.

The Maize at Sherman Farm is the worked example in both directions. Through early August its site showed dates that fell on Fridays and Saturdays — 2025's weekends, not this year's. On August 17 it published a new calendar whose dates land on Saturdays and Sundays in 2026. Same test, opposite verdict, five minutes of checking either way.

Why the rename matters more than it sounds

A venue changing its name is the quietest way for a whole category of pages to go stale at once.

Nobody notices, because the old name still returns results — it just returns other people's pages, which are themselves citing the old name. The park moved on; the internet did not. Search "Haunted Graveyard Lake Compounce 2026" today and you will get confident dates and prices from sites pointing at a URL that no longer exists.

This is the same mechanism that turned Nightmare New England into Spooky World and Outpost 34 into the Burial Hill Motel. It is why our records carry a formerNames field at all.

What we got wrong, briefly

Our first pass recorded this attraction as unverifiable, on the grounds that the park's site blocked automated access. That was half right and half lazy.

The park's site does reject plain automated requests. But the deeper problem was that we were requesting a page that had been deleted, and a 404 from a site that also blocks bots is easy to misread as a block. Opening the park's own site properly — as a visitor would — turned up the renamed event in about a minute.

The rule we work to is that an unverified fact gets omitted or flagged, never invented. That rule held: we published nothing false. But "we could not check it" is a claim too, and it deserved one more attempt before we made it.

What we still cannot tell you

Pricing. The park had not published a 2026 admission figure on the event page when we checked. Historically the event is included with park admission, and that is very likely still true — but "very likely" is not a number, and this site does not print numbers it has not read.

Any roundup quoting you an exact 2026 Phantom Fall Fest ticket price today did not get it from the park.

Practical notes

It is inside a working amusement park. Rides and family areas run alongside the haunts, the same arrangement as Canobie Lake's Screeemfest in New Hampshire — which, as of August 3, still says only "2026 information coming soon."

Nine weekends is a lot of runway. The last two October weekends are the crush everywhere in New England. A late-September or early-October visit to a season this long is the easiest crowd-avoidance available in Connecticut.

For the rest of the state, our Connecticut roundup covers Trail of Terror in Wallingford and Fright Haven in Stratford. Phantom Fall Fest is now the first Connecticut attraction in our records with a confirmed full 2026 calendar.

The Haunted Almanac

We check all 50 New England haunted attractions against their own websites, every week. 25 have published 2026 dates so far. Last sweep: September 15.

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.