Halloween in the Bay Area is not one night. It runs from the first pumpkin stands on Highway 92 in late September through Día de los Muertos in the first days of November, spread across nine counties that each do it differently. The weather helps: late October here is often the clearest, warmest stretch of the year, which is why so much of the season happens outdoors.
Pumpkin season starts on the coast
The Highway 92 corridor between Half Moon Bay and San Mateo is the center of it. Farm stands open through late September and stay busy until the pumpkins run out, and the Half Moon Bay Art & Pumpkin Festival in mid-October brings the whole coast to a standstill.
A word on traffic: 92 backs up badly on October weekends, sometimes for an hour or more each way. Go early, go on a weekday if you can, or come over Highway 1 from the north instead.
For people who want to be frightened
The Bay Area's scare attractions are genuinely intense — these are not hayrides. Pirates of Emerson at the Alameda County Fairgrounds in Pleasanton and Fear Overload, which has moved to Newpark Mall in Newark, are built for teenagers and adults, with actors who follow you. Pirates recommends 13 and up and requires anyone under 16 to come with an adult; Fear Overload says plainly that it is not for children 12 and under. The Winchester Mystery House in San Jose runs Festival Fright Nights from mid-September, more atmospheric than frightening in its daytime tours, but the house does the work on its own after dark.
For families
Some Bay Area neighborhoods have trick-or-treating traditions that go back decades and draw people from across the region. Neighborhoods like Piedmont Avenue in Oakland, Belvedere in Marin, Presidio Heights in San Francisco.
Piedmont Avenue Pumpkin Patch & Haunted House
4414 Piedmont Ave, Oakland
A quirky Halloween shop with a pumpkin patch out back and a haunted house behind that — an Oakland neighborhood tradition since 1996. I walked the haunted house twice: lights on (a good first haunted house for kids) and lights off (better for teens).
One change to know about: Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo has dropped Fright Fest this year and replaced it with Tricks and Treats, a daytime family event. If you go looking for the old evening version, it isn't there.
Daytime alternatives: the California Academy of Sciences and the Exploratorium both run Halloween programming for younger kids, indoors and on a predictable schedule.
Halloween night itself
The Castro street party has not been an official city event since 2006, and there is still no sanctioned street celebration in its place — people who show up expecting one are usually disappointed. What happens instead is bars, clubs, and private parties across the city.
Before you go
Most of the big attractions sell timed tickets and the good slots go weeks out. Parking at the pumpkin farms and the haunted houses is the hard part of the evening — BART and Caltrain reach more of this than people assume, and on Halloween night itself they are the better choice.
Día de los Muertos in the Mission, on November 1st and 2nd, is a different thing entirely: a procession and altars along 24th Street, rooted in the neighborhood's own communities. It is not a Halloween event and it is worth treating as its own occasion.
