Next level horror: Halloween things to do near Manchester and Liverpool

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

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.

Scare City takes over the abandoned Camelot theme park for a completely immersive Halloween scare event.

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.

Theatre of Screams is the interactive Halloween experience on a budget. It’s also the indoor option for those of you who don’t like to spend October nights trudging around a muddy field in the cold and the driving rain.

DNA VR is a virtual reality arcade with three different gameplay options. You can communicate with your friends through the VR headsets as you play and it’s all private. You play with your friends, not some randoms. Everything is overseen by your own VR wizard so you don’t succumb to the zombie apocalypse too quickly.

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.