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🎃 Let’s get ready for Halloween | Morning Newsletter

Bars, pumpkins, frights.

People picking pumpkins at Shady Brook Farm in Yardley last October. The farm offers pumpkin picking, a corn maze, and wagon rides among other activities and entertainment.
People picking pumpkins at Shady Brook Farm in Yardley last October. The farm offers pumpkin picking, a corn maze, and wagon rides among other activities and entertainment.Read moreHEATHER KHALIFA / Staff Photographer

    The Morning Newsletter

    Start your day with the Philly news you need and the stories you want all in one easy-to-read newsletter

Another sunny day with highs in the 60s and a clear night sky, perfect for viewing the full “Hunter’s Moon.”

For our special Halloween edition, we partake in Halloween frights and delights.

In today’s newsletter:

👻 Frightful: Our list of haunted Halloween attractions in the Philly area features above-average scariness. To the immersive shenanigans!

🥧 Filling: We also have pumpkin food if you like the simpler seasonal pleasures.

🥃 Fun: If you’d like to feel a little bit like an adult around animatronic things, we have a list of Halloween events and bars.

If you see this 🔑 in today’s newsletter, that means we’re highlighting our exclusive journalism. You need to be a subscriber to read these stories.

— Ashley Hoffman (@_AshleyHoffman, morningnewsletter@inquirer.com)

This month, we can all graduate from screams inside our heads about the news to real screams at haunted encounters.

A reporter by the name of Henry Savage — and boy does this guy live up to his name — can tell you what to expect at each haunted attraction that made our cut. Many of these are replete with mind-boggling technology and impressively high production value.

Halloween highlights: There’s the old: renowned Eastern State Penitentiary, which has been tormenting people with this attraction for 25 years. And the new: a South Philly warehouse for The Basement of the Fright Factory, where you’ll encounter “a ghoul-infested nightmare.” Creamy Acres Farm does wholesome family fun by day until the frightening figures with chainsaws take over. And the Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho-inspired house of horrors at the Bates Motel might just be the most conceptual of the batch.

To the full haunted Halloween attraction list.

What you should know during spooky season

🎞️ You can actually tour Friday the 13th’s Camp Crystal Lake, which is an active Boy Scout camp in N.J.

🧙‍♀️ Hira Qureshi is your guide to Halloween boo-zy and spooky events in Philly and where to party with spirits and witchy brews around the city

🍺 She also has a roundup of where to find delicious pumpkin treats, beer, coffee and even ice cream like an artisan pumpkin s’mores pop.

🩸Here’s a taste of Nightmare Before Tinsel. The Halloween bar has zombiefied Gritty and the Phanatic, and has “blood bag” cocktail slinging bartenders. The “Apo” (apocalypse) never looked so fun.

❓Pop Quiz❓

Which farm that we told you about in this week’s newsletter has the monster slide?

A) Linvilla Orchards

B) Froehlich’s Farm & Garden Center

C) None Such Farm & Market

D) Wild Willy’s Ween Warehouse

Find out if you remember the answer.

🧩 Unscramble the Anagram 🧩

The night before Oct. 31 in this region. It’s not Devil’s Night, Trick Night or Cabbage Night.

CHIMING FETISH

We’ll select a reader at random to shout out here. Send us your own original anagram to unscramble if you’d like. Email us if you know the answer.

Photo of the Day

🎶 For today’s Sunday track, we’re listening to “I put a spell on you. Because you’re mine.” 🎶

👋🏽 Have a happy Halloween season. Today I’m enjoying the Eagles game at home. I’ve been baking lots of Halloween treats and making Halloween treat bags filled with slimes, stickers, and all the candy. What’s your favorite Halloween treat?