Blenheim Palace, the Unesco World Heritage Site and birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill, is set to host its sixth annual Halloween trail from Thursday until November 1. The stately home and grounds in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, will be taken over by ghosts, ghouls, foul creatures and the undead for the event.
The trail features 134 gravestones, 24 coffins, 118 spiders, 100 crows and 72 skeletons. Around 10,000 thrillseekers are expected to walk the near mile-long, after-dark route, which includes spooky lighting, sounds and live-scare actors.
Actors and attractions
Esther McCormick, 28, will be dressed as a pumpkin-headed scarecrow. She said: “In previous years I’ve been a weird Stranger Things-like monster with one long tentacle, another a haunted highwayman, and another a fortune-teller, reading people’s palms by the side of the road.”
McCormick added that everyone is welcome, from ages 0 to 99. “We tone down the jump scares for the little ones who come while it’s still light, then dial up the fear factor when the night sets in. It’s a lot of fun, people do jump out of their skin.”
Frights will tap into many phobias. A gigantic spider puppet will emerge from a 20m-long web tunnel, and there will be a ghostly pirate’s wreck, Dracula’s lair, vampire hunters and spine-chilling catacombs.
Planning and popularity
Simon Smalley, senior content producer at Culture Creative, said: “We have interactive neon coffins for visitors to take selfies in. There’s a sentence I never thought I’d say! It’s gorgeously ghoulish and fantastic fun. And don’t miss the monster disco, a high-energy finale featuring mirror balls and lights for the whole family to dance under.”
Planning for the trail, which took 15 people 10 days to build and has 500 lighting fixtures, took a year. Smalley said: “It’s about how we can make things bigger, better, louder, scarier. Next year the spider might be 50ft tall.”
Rebecca Jenkins, 52, runs Rusticus, which provided the seven actors and puppeteers for the event. She said: “There’s such an appetite for Halloween. You might assume that summer sees the biggest crowds, but it’s actually October half-term where we are the busiest.”
“People want to be fully immersed. So we’re finding more and more that the whole family might come dressed up. They’re the star of their own Halloween – not just watching from afar.” A recent survey shows 36% of shoppers plan to celebrate this year, up from 27% in 2025.
Tickets for Halloween at Blenheim Palace cost £19 for adults and £13 for children, available at tickets.blenheimpalace.com.
