With Halloween on Sunday, the entire weekend is fair game to celebrate with friends and soon-to-be friends. Whether you plan to dress up and party down or get scared senseless and laugh in fright at a local haunted trail — or both — there’s no shortage of Halloween fun this weekend.
Parties
Many bars and clubs in the D.C. metro area are having some type of spirited Halloween shindig this weekend, so it will be hard to go wrong. Among the highlights is the Nightmare on M Street (lindypromo.com), a West End pub crawl from 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. Saturday featuring more than a dozen bars. $20 gets you drink specials at participating establishments. Also Saturday, two area promoters — Party DC and HiBall Events — combine to present the Fright Night Monster Bash (partydc.com) from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. at the State Theatre in Falls Church. The party features a number of bands and a costume contest, and costs $15. While the Hard Rock Cafe in D.C. is usually best left to the tourists, this Saturday at 9 p.m. the establishment is home to the Graveyard Jam (thingstododc.com), featuring live music, dancing, a costume contest and more, for $20 (subject to increase). In Arlington, Caribbean Breeze hosts Nightmare in the Caribbean (lastcallent.com) from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. Friday. Enjoy live music and a costume contest for $10. Down the street at the Clarendon Ballroom, also Friday, is DC101 Elliot in the Morning’s Halloween Bash (dc101.com). Doors at 5 p.m., music starts at 8 p.m., tickets are $15 before 10 p.m. and $20 after 10 p.m., and there’s a $3,000 costume contest.
Haunted houses
Depending on how far you want to drive to get the demons scared out of you, there are plenty of haunted houses and trails in the region. If you don’t want to spend more time in your car than you do at the site, there’s fortunately a number of options approximately 30 miles or so from downtown D.C. Most if not all are not for the faint on heart, and tickets range from $10 to $25. Visit the Web sites for details (note: Many of the Web sites are a blast to navigate).
In Maryland, there’s Markoff’s Haunted Harbor (markoffshauntedharbor.com) at National Harbor, the Patuxent Research Lab (baysox.com) in Bowie, Field of Screams (screams.org) in Olney, Spooky Hallow (valleymillhalloween.com) in Darnesville and Bennett’s Curse (bennettscurse.com ) in Jessup. Virginia highlights include Fields of Fear (coxfarms.com) in Centreville, Halloween Woods (halloweenwoods.com) in Sterling, Clifton Haunted Trail (cliftonhauntedtrail.com) in Clifton, and Virginia Scaregrounds (virginiascaregrounds.com) in Leesburg.
Other spooky fun
You don’t have to go to a bar, club or haunted trail for Halloween fun. Fright Fest is back again at Six Flags (sixflags.com/america), the Crime & Punishment Museum offers Fright at the Museum (crimemuseum.org), and the Night of the Living Zoo returns to the National Zoo (nationalzoo.si.edu) Friday.
