HHN & Fright Fest open this weekend

Remember when the Knotts Berry Farm Halloween Haunt was the outlier – starting a week or so before the beginning of October? Those days are long gone, now that all the major Halloween attractions in Los Angeles launch in September; in fact, Knotts Scary Farm lags behind the competition, since it will not open until next week, on Thursday, September 21. Meanwhile, both Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood and the Six Flags Magic Mountain Fright Fest open this weekend: the former on Friday, the latter on Saturday. (For less scary Halloween entertainment, Disneyland Halloween Time also opens on Friday. Apparently slowed down by massive head winds, the Queen Mary doesn’t drop anchor in Dark Harbor until Thursday, September 28.)

This means that, like last year, high-profile Halloween events extend halfway into the month of September. Since Hollywood Gothique began chronicling the horror scene in Los Angeles back in 2004, we have remarked upon the perpetually increasing length of the Halloween season. Now the question is: Have we reached the limit, or will the rest of September eventually be engulfed as well? Come to think of it, The It Experience in Hollywood began providing a Halloween-type haunted walk-through back in August, drawing huge crowds willing to wait up to five hours for a chance to encounter Pennywise. So perhaps the dam has already cracked, and we will see Halloween haunts showing up even earlier in 2018.

Here’s hoping!