Related: Ghost Bar Honolulu 2026 | Haunted Plantation 2026 | Safe Trick-or-Treating in Hawaiʻi (for the keiki)
Halloween on Oʻahu belongs to the grown-ups too. Once the trick-or-treat bags are put away, the island turns into a month-long costume party.
Think haunted houses in old plantation villages and pop-up bars dripping with fake blood. Add ghost stories told by people who grew up hearing them, and you have a pretty great October.
We went out to Ghost Bar at Ala Moana last night, and it reminded us how much there is to do this year for grown-ups. So we pulled it all together in one place: the scares, the bars, the parties, and what Waikīkī is like on Halloween night.
Everything below was checked against the organizer’s own pages or recent local coverage in mid-October 2026. Dates and ticket prices move fast this time of year, so tap through before you lock in plans.
Halloween 2026 on Oʻahu at a Glance
Here is the short version if you are planning around the calendar. The haunted houses run on select nights, so check your dates first and build the rest of the week around them.
This week (Oct 19 to 25): Ghost Bar is open every night, and Dead Letter Office runs Wednesday through Sunday. Trial of Fears picks back up Thursday, Oct 22.
Lopaka Kapanui tells ghost stories at the Honolulu Museum of Art on Friday, Oct 23. Haunted Plantation is open Oct 23, 24 and 25.
Halloween weekend (Oct 29 to Nov 1): Trial of Fears runs every night through Nov 1, and Haunted Plantation is open Oct 30 and 31. Saturday, Oct 31 is the big party night across Waikīkī.
Pick your scares first, then fill in the rest.
Haunted Houses on Oʻahu
Haunted Plantation (Waipahu)
📍 Hawaiʻi’s Plantation Village, 94-695 Waipahu St, Waipahu, HI 96797
If you only do one scary thing this October, make it this one. Haunted Plantation is in its 21st year, and this year’s chapter is called Apparitions.
The whole thing takes place outdoors at Hawaiʻi’s Plantation Village, a museum of old plantation-era homes. In the daytime it is a sweet history lesson about the families who worked the sugar fields. At night, with fog rolling between the houses and somebody breathing behind you, it is a completely different place.
After Sunday, Oct 18, the nights left are Oct 23, 24, 25, 30 and 31. Gates open at 6 p.m., the first groups head in around 7 p.m., and gates close at 10:30 p.m. (9 p.m. on Halloween).
Tickets start at $20 plus a reservation fee on HauntPay. Each ticket has an arrival window, and late arrivals are not let in, so give yourself extra time for Farrington Highway traffic.
It is not recommended for kids under 13, and the path is not wheelchair accessible. Wear closed-toe shoes. This is a walk through grass and gravel in the dark, and your new slippers will not survive it.
We broke down every detail, including parking and the cash-only ticket booth, in our full Haunted Plantation 2026 guide.
Trial of Fears (Kakaʻako)
📍 1050 Queen St, Suite 100, Honolulu, HI 96814
Trial of Fears is what happens when an escape room and a haunted house have a baby. This year’s theme is Island Quarantine. Your group is trapped inside a lab during an outbreak, and you solve puzzles to get out while actors make that as hard as possible.
Entry slots start at 7 p.m., and after Sunday, Oct 18, the remaining dates are Oct 22 to 25 and Oct 29 to Nov 1. General admission is $38 and an express pass is $46 on the official Trial of Fears site.
The official FAQ sets the minimum age at 10, though the ticketing page lists 13 and up, so check before you bring a younger teen. Expect fog, strobes, darkness and some salty language, so read the warnings page if anyone in your group is pregnant or has a heart condition.
Parking is the sneaky part. Watch the signs. Do not pull into the neighboring retail lots, because they tow, and nothing ends a fun scare faster than a real one at the impound lot.
Something Gentler for the Kids
Bringing younger keiki along? Hauntopia in Kailua rates itself a 2 out of 10 on the scare scale and is built for ages 3 to 12. It runs Oct 23 to 25 and Oct 28 to 31.
Our trick-or-treating guide and pumpkin patch roundup cover the rest of the family side of the holiday.
Halloween Pop-Up Bars
Ghost Bar (Ala Moana Center)
📍 Ala Moana Center, Street Level 1, Ewa Wing, 1450 Ala Moana Blvd, Honolulu, HI 96814
Ghost Bar is back from Oct 16 to 31, open daily from 6 p.m. to midnight, and it is 21+ all night. It comes from 17A Productions, the same crew that runs Haunted Plantation, so the decor is a lot more committed than a few cobwebs and a plastic skeleton.
This year’s theme is creepy dolls and killer clowns. We worked our way through the Arachnid, the Witches’ Brew, the Killer Clown and Fangs. Then we split the Blood Punch Cauldron, which tastes like POG that got invited to a much better party.
There is no food. Eat somewhere in the mall first. Our full Ghost Bar review has last year’s prices and our tips for avoiding the weekend crush.
Dead Letter Office at Yours Truly (Downtown)
📍 AC Hotel by Marriott Honolulu, 1111 Bishop St, Honolulu, HI 96813
Downtown’s Halloween speakeasy is hidden inside Yours Truly at the AC Hotel. You find it by looking for a wall of mailboxes, and most of the drinks get delivered through them.
It runs Oct 8 to 31, Wednesday through Sunday, opening at 5 p.m. Seats are tight. It holds about 16 to 20 people, so book through OpenTable instead of rolling the dice at the door.
Cocktails run about $17 to $20, and the snacks lean into the theme: hurricane fries served in a coffin and smoked ʻahi dip in a cauldron. It is a quieter, date-night kind of spooky compared with Ghost Bar.
Ghost Stories and Ghost Tours
Haunted houses are about jump scares. Hawaiʻi’s ghost stories are something else, and they hit different when the person telling them grew up hearing them from their tūtū.
Locals call that feeling chicken skin. The stories mix Hawaiian moʻolelo with obake tales brought over by Japanese, Chinese, Filipino and Portuguese plantation families. That blend is what makes island ghost stories feel like nowhere else.
Lopaka Kapanui: Chicken Skin Ghost Stories
Lopaka Kapanui is the storyteller most people on the island think of first. He performs Chicken Skin Ghost Stories at the Honolulu Museum of Art’s Doris Duke Theatre on Friday, Oct 23, at 7 p.m. Tickets are $20 for adults and $15 for youth.
He treats these stories as cultural history rather than quick scares, and he usually opens and closes with a chant. Go in with that respect and you will walk out with goosebumps and a much better understanding of the island.
Walking Ghost Tours
Kapanui’s company, Mysteries of Hawaiʻi, runs 90-minute walking tours most nights of the week at 7 p.m. The Waikīkī Night Marchers ghost tour meets at the Kapiʻolani Park bandstand on Sundays and Wednesdays, and the downtown tours meet at the King Kamehameha statue.
The walking is easy, mostly paved sidewalk, and the official price is $40 a person. Some stories are not meant for kids under 12, so use your judgment with younger keiki.
Want something shorter and later at night? The one-hour Honolulu Haunts ghost walk starts at the same Kamehameha statue, covers about a mile (1.6 km) of downtown, and is open to all ages.
We compared every tour, plus the haunted places worth visiting and the ones to leave alone, in our full Oʻahu ghost tours guide.
Halloween Night Parties (Saturday, Oct 31)
Halloween lands on a Saturday this year, so expect every bar in Waikīkī to go all in. These are the bigger ticketed parties we could confirm. All three are 21+, so bring a real photo ID, even if your costume involves a full face of zombie makeup.
Rocky Horror Hulaween at Hula’s
📍 Hula’s Bar & Lei Stand, 2nd floor of the Waikiki Grand Hotel, 134 Kapahulu Ave, Honolulu, HI 96815
Hula’s throws a Rocky Horror themed party that goes late, with doors closing at 2 a.m. and the party running until 4 a.m. General admission is $15 on the Hula’s event page.
The costume contest starts at midnight with more than $2,000 in cash and prizes, including categories for Rocky Horror costumes and for everything else. You have to be in the room by midnight to compete, so do not get stuck in the elevator line.
Tiki’s Grill & Bar
📍 Tiki’s Grill & Bar, 2570 Kalākaua Ave, Honolulu, HI 96815
Tiki’s does a beachfront Halloween party starting at 8 p.m., with a live band followed by a DJ. Tickets run about $25 in presale and $40 at the door, and dinner guests with a reservation get in for less.
Halloween at the Hyatt
📍 Hyatt Regency Waikiki Beach Resort and Spa, enter at 2411 Koa Ave
The Hyatt’s party runs from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. with a costume contest and $35 general admission at the door. Leave the prop sword at home. Fake weapons are not allowed, and there is no re-entry once you leave.
Bar Crawls
Would you rather keep moving? Several Halloween bar crawls run around Honolulu on Oct 24, Oct 29 and Oct 31, including the Crawl With Us Honolulu Halloween crawl. Check what each ticket includes before you buy, since the stops and drink deals vary by crawl.
What Waikīkī Is Like on Halloween Night
Even without a ticket, Kalākaua Avenue is the show, and walking the costume strip is our favorite free thing to do on Halloween. We wrote a full Halloween in Waikīkī guide for it.
Here is the short version. On a big year, thousands of people in costume walk both sides of the street, and it turns into an informal parade of people-watching that runs well past midnight.
Honolulu police staff up heavily for it, with officers on foot, on bikes and on ATVs. The city puts up barriers to stop jaywalking and adds extra lighting at busy corners, so cross only at the lights and follow the officers’ directions.
Beach parks like Kapiʻolani Park and Queen’s Beach close at midnight, and police enforce it. Plan on the party staying on the sidewalk and inside the bars.
Leave the car at the hotel if you can. Waikīkī parking is hard on a normal Saturday. On Halloween night it is a horror movie of its own.
Walk, take TheBus, or set your rideshare pickup a block off Kalākaua so your driver does not get swallowed by the crowd.
More Spooky Season Ideas for Grown-Ups
The Honolulu Zoo’s Octo-Bear-Fest on Saturday, Oct 24 mixes costumes and trunk-or-treat for the kids with a beer garden for the 21+ crowd. Adult tickets are $20, and the brew package is $45.
Hawaiʻi Opera Theatre is staging The Shining at the Blaisdell Concert Hall on Friday, Oct 30 and Sunday, Nov 1, with tickets starting around $35. An opera about a haunted hotel might be the classiest scare on the island this year.
The Honolulu Museum of Art also screens The Rocky Horror Picture Show with a live cast on Halloween night. It is 18+ and tickets are $25, a fun middle ground if the Hula’s party sounds like too late a night.
Night Marchers and Obake: The Stories Behind the Scares
You will hear two words a lot this month. The first is huakaʻi pō, the Night Marchers.
In Hawaiian tradition, they are processions of ancestral spirits: chiefs, warriors and priests walking at night to sacred places. People say you hear drums and the conch shell before you see the torches.
The old advice is to get out of their path. If you cannot, lie face down and do not look. These are ancestors, not movie monsters, and that is how local storytellers talk about them.
The second word is obake. It started as a Japanese word for a shape-shifting spirit, and on these islands it became everybody’s word for anything that gives you chicken skin.
Ask any kamaʻāina about obake and you will get a story. Usually it involves an auntie, a dark road, and a car that would not start.
A Spooky Night Out: Our Sample Plan
Want the full experience in one night? Here is how we would stack it on a Friday.
Start with an early dinner at Ala Moana around 5:30 p.m., then walk over to Ghost Bar when the doors open at 6 p.m. One cocktail, a few photos with the killer clowns, and you are warmed up.
Head west to Waipahu for a 7:30 p.m. Haunted Plantation slot. The drive is about 25 minutes without traffic, which on a Friday is a big if, so leave a cushion.
Finish back in town with a nightcap at Dead Letter Office downtown. It is quiet, it is moody, and after an hour of screaming in a cane field, that is exactly what you want.
Tips for Halloween on Oʻahu
Book the haunted houses first. Do it today. Haunted Plantation and Trial of Fears both sell timed tickets, and the final weekend goes fast. Everything else on this list is easier to fit around them.
Think about your costume in island terms. Nights still sit in the mid-70s°F (about 24°C), so a full fur suit or a rubber mask will turn into a sauna by the second bar. Pick something you can breathe in.
Bring ID everywhere. Most of the bars and parties here are 21+, and a few of them, like the Hyatt party, want a physical government-issued ID, not a photo on your phone.
Respect the real places behind the stories. The Pali, the Night Marchers and many of the island’s best-known ghost stories are tied to sacred sites, burial grounds and private homes. Enjoy them on a guided tour or in a theater, and do not go wandering onto closed land looking for a scare.
More from Wanderlustyle
Ghost Bar Honolulu 2026: The Halloween Pop-Up Bar at Ala Moana
Haunted Plantation 2026: Dates, Tickets and What to Expect
October Events on Oʻahu (2026)
Hawaiʻi Pumpkin Patches 2026
Nuʻuanu Pali Lookout
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