Scare attractions: Halloween things to do near Manchester and Liverpool

Farmageddon is the big one. Every year it’s a sellout, welcoming thousands of willing lambs to the slaughter. There are enough fright actors here to keep every repertory company in the North busy. The interactive scare event consists of five scare mazes as well as a zombie shoot ‘em up warzone. Turns out you don’t finish off the undead with a machete to the brain, but a paintball gun. Who knew?

Farm of Terror takes you on a shuttlebus from Morrisons car park in Bacup to an award-winning fright night. The USP of this particular scare attraction is you can decide just how terrified you want to be. Enter with a glo-stick and the nightmarish actors will prey on you but respect your personal space. Enter without, and it’s a no-holds-barred experience – you have been warned.

Journey to Hell at Blackpool Pleasure Beach is a mixture of live action horror thrills, scare mazes and terrifying rides – all as part of a series of gruesome scare zones.

Once an orphanage and later an asylum, the derelict Newsham Park Hospital has been attracting ghost hunters and urban explorers for years. The  atmosphere in its maze of abandoned wards and crumbling corridors is enough to make most people turn around and leg it straight back home – and that was even before it was made into Newsham Scream Park.

Every year Scare City takes over the abandoned Camelot theme park for a completely immersive Halloween scare event and every year it wins industry prizes for being at the top of its gruesome game. The setting is eerily atmospheric. Hardened fear junkies follow a trail past rusting rollercoasters and the like. It’s dark, misty and populated by a crew of creeps and demons, a mash-up of special effects and real-life actors.

Spooky World comes in three strengths of spookiness. There’s Fun by Day which is all smiling pumpkins and friendly ghosts for small children. Then, there’s Spooky at Night for age ten and over which is basically a diluted version of the main event: Scary at Night. Not for the faint-hearted.