31 Days of Halloween
By Dale · 1 October 2026
This October, The Darkives is marking Halloween with its biggest month-long location feature yet: 31 haunted locations, released across 31 days in the countdown to Halloween.
31 Days of Halloween: TheDarkives.org Begins a Month-Long Journey into Britain’s Haunted Places
Throughout October, TheDarkives.org will add a new haunted or unexplained location to its growing archive every day, creating a paranormal equivalent of an Advent calendar — only instead of counting down to Christmas, we’re counting down to Halloween.
From abandoned prisons and ancient castles to isolated churches, historic inns, battlefields and places associated with some of Britain's most enduring supernatural stories, each day will uncover somewhere different.
And we're starting behind bars.
Day One: Peterhead Prison
The first location joining the Halloween collection is Peterhead Prison in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.
Opened in 1888, the former prison became one of the most notorious penal institutions in Scotland. Its extraordinary history encompasses Victorian hard labour, dangerous prisoners, riots and the dramatic 1987 hostage crisis that ended with the SAS storming the prison.
Since closing in 2013 and subsequently reopening as Peterhead Prison Museum, another side of the building's story has attracted attention.
Visitors and paranormal investigators have reported unexplained footsteps, voices and whispering, shadow-like figures, sudden cold areas and other strange experiences within its surviving cells and corridors.
It makes Peterhead a fitting place to begin our journey.
31 Locations. 31 Days.
Peterhead is only number one.
Every day between 1 October and Halloween on 31 October, another location will be added to The Darkives.
Some will be famous.
Others will be places that even dedicated followers of Britain's paranormal history may never have encountered.
The aim isn't simply to produce another list of "Britain's most haunted places." Each location added to TheDarkives.org is treated as an individual case.
We look at the history of the site, the events that shaped it, the folklore surrounding it and, crucially, what people actually claim to have experienced there.
That distinction matters.
The internet is full of paranormal stories that have gradually changed through repetition. A vague story becomes a named ghost. An unexplained death becomes a murder. Before long, an invented Victorian tragedy is being repeated across dozens of websites as historical fact.
That's not what we're interested in doing.
Where something is documented history, we'll treat it as history.
Where something belongs to folklore, we'll call it folklore.
Where witnesses have reported something unexplained, we'll describe what has been reported without pretending that the experience proves what caused it.
And where a spectacular story cannot be substantiated, we're not going to invent the missing pieces just because it makes a location sound more frightening.
The real stories are usually interesting enough.
More Than Ghosts
TheDarkives.org has never been solely about traditional ghosts.
As the month progresses, our Halloween journey will explore the wider spectrum of strange experiences associated with Britain's landscape.
That can mean apparitions and haunted buildings, but it can also include ancient folklore, cryptid encounters, unexplained lights, UFO and UAP reports, strange sounds, time anomalies and other experiences that don't fit comfortably into conventional categories.
Some locations have centuries of supernatural tradition behind them.
Others have acquired their reputations remarkably recently.
And occasionally we'll encounter somewhere with an intimidating reputation where the historical evidence tells a very different story.
All of it belongs in the archive.
Building a Map of the Unexplained
The 31 Days of Halloween project also forms part of the wider purpose behind The Darkives: creating an expanding record of locations associated with paranormal history, folklore and unexplained phenomena.
Rather than allowing these stories to disappear into forgotten books, local memories, old newspaper reports and scattered websites, we're bringing locations together into a single searchable archive.
Every new location makes that map a little larger.
By Halloween night, 31 more places will have joined it.
Peterhead Prison opens the doors on 1st October.
Tomorrow, we move somewhere new.
And we'll keep going every day until Halloween.
31 days.
31 locations.
31 journeys into the unexplained.
Welcome to TheDarkives.org: 31 Days of Halloween.
Day One — Peterhead Prison
Day Two — Hazlebadge Hall
Daye Three — Hinton Ampner
Day Four — Langenhoe Church
Day Five — Clapham Wood
Day Six — Dechmont Woods
Day Seven — Minsden Chapel
Day Eight — St Nicholas Church
Day Nine — The Devil's Arrows
Day Ten — Bettiscombe Manor
Day Eleven — 39 De Grey Street
Day 12 — Ardross Castle
