Halloween 2026: ghost movies, true stories, Houdini at 100

Saturday, October 31, 2026. A hundred years ago to the day, Harry Houdini died in a Detroit hospital, and tonight people will sit at tables in New York, Michigan and Illinois, waiting for him again. Thirty-four years ago, also on a Saturday, BBC1 broadcast a ghost hunt that only pretended to be live. Below: the séances, a film for tonight, the real cases behind the films, and a doll you can stand in front of.

October 31, 2026: a hundred years since Houdini

Houdini died on October 31, 1926, at Grace Hospital in Detroit, aged 52. He and his wife, Bess, had agreed on a coded message, “Rosabelle, believe.” The only medium who delivered it, Arthur Ford, in 1929, used a code already printed in a biography the year before.

The centenary sittings, as confirmed by September 30, 2026:

New York. Houdini’s former house at 278 West 113th Street holds three sittings of 13 guests, at 1:26, 6:30 and 9:30 pm.
Marshall, Michigan. The American Museum of Magic, which has held one every year since 1978; time not announced.
Alton, Illinois. The American Oddities Museum at 10 pm, organized by Troy Taylor’s American Hauntings.
Salem, Massachusetts. The Peabody Essex Museum marks the night in its “Harry Houdini in Salem” season with a magic show and a curator talk.
The Official Houdini Séance, run by Bill Radner, had not announced a place by the end of September.

The full table, and the ghost photograph Houdini had made of himself, are in Houdini’s last escape: 100 years of séances.

Tonight’s film

The pick. Hokum, on Hulu since October 10, or The Shining (1980) while HBO Max still has it. Fifteen more, each with its platform, are in ghost movies to watch this Halloween.
Hunting Matthew Nichols reaches Shudder on October 31. It plays as a true-crime documentary about two boys lost on Vancouver Island on Halloween 2001, but the boys and their town are invented.
Ghostwatch (1992) went out on BBC1 on October 31, 1992, a scripted drama presented as a live investigation. Since 2010, fans have played it at the original broadcast time every Halloween; it streams in the US on Shudder and AMC+. What viewers saw, and what followed.
Other Mommy has been in US theaters since October 9. It is not a true story; it grew from one remark a child made at bedtime.

The true cases behind the films

Behind most of the famous ones there is a real family, a real address and a real year. What there almost never is, is a record that shows what the film shows.

The Conjuring (2013). The Perron family moved into a farmhouse in Harrisville, Rhode Island, in January 1971, and Ed and Lorraine Warren came to visit. What the family said and what the film added.
The Conjuring 2 (2016). The Hodgson family at 284 Green Street, Enfield, from 1977 into 1979, and Janet’s later admission that a small share was faked. The Enfield poltergeist.
The Entity (1982). Doris Bither in Culver City in 1974, visited by two researchers from UCLA’s parapsychology lab. What the 1974 investigation recorded.

Ten films, nine built on a claimed case and one that never claimed anything, are set side by side in ghost movies based on true stories.

The photograph and the frame

The Backrooms. The file is Dsc00161.jpg, and its camera clock reads June 12, 2002. It shows an emptied former furniture store in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, being turned into a hobby shop’s race track. Nothing paranormal was ever reported there. How volunteers traced the original Backrooms photo.
Case of the day. One ghost photograph a day, the same for everyone, opening at midnight UTC. Decide what made it, then read the tells. One new case every day until the end of November: open today’s case file.

In the room itself

Annabelle is not the porcelain doll of the films. She is a cloth Raggedy Ann, on show since August 27, 2026, at the Haunted Warren Museum, 259 Essex Street, Salem. Phones and cameras are not allowed, and the gallery has a second path for anyone who would rather bypass her. Booking runs to November 8; the museum says she stays until Christmas.

The doll is real. The story around her rests on the Warrens’ word, first found in print in a review of their lecture in 1979. What the record shows about Annabelle.

So on the night, in the same town, a rag doll sits behind glass, and at the Peabody Essex Museum someone talks about a man who sat through séances for years and never heard a message that held. In New York, at 9:30, the last sitting of the day begins in the house where he lived.