Museums at Night 2015: Spooks and shocks from around the UK

This article originally appeared on Culture24.

The first ever Halloween Museums at Night is almost here. Where will you go? Click on the links to find out more about our spooky highlights

London
As one of the only galleries on the globe with its own mausoleum, Dulwich Picture Gallery holds a distinctly Halloweenish edge. There’s a mysterious fourth coffin at this South London idyll, and the only way to find out who it was for is to pay it a visit.

New exhibition The Amazing World of MC Escher, art-making with Anita Chowdry’s Iron Genie and prizes for the best costumes based around Harry Potter, which will be showing on a big screen in the gallery, are also a few of the evening’s highlights.

Charles II and Samuel Pepys once visited the 16th century Lauderdale House, but this month organisers there are hoping to welcome ghosts, witches, werewolves and sprites for magical mystery trails on which masks and fancy dress are all-but requisites.

It’s not the only horrifying trail in the city: Vestry House, constructed as a workhouse almost 300 years ago, sets the scene for a murder mystery trail with activities for childrens, cocktails for grown-ups and, uniquely, a patisserie.

No such treats for curators at Greenwich’s National Maritime Museum, who will be wobbling gingerly along a gang plank having witnessed tales of death and destruction about explorers suffering madness, cannibalism and more. Here lies the tale of a letter discovered on a frozen body, the log books of a doomed voyage, dead men’s medals and shipwrecks during World War I, discussed by curators of art and naval history.

A White Lady roams Sutton House - a Grade II-listed Tudor mansion - accompanied by her paranormal friends on a night of horror plots by firelight. Storyteller Sarah Deco, meanwhile, is at the Brent Museum and Archives, telling scare stories from around the world.

North West
Fear can bring out the dancer in anyone. Magic and horror combine for a haunted silent disco at Warrington Museum and Art Gallery, while those abstaining from the floor could find themselves embroiled in an eerie silent boogie, taking a tour of the collection under the guidance of costumed characters or enjoying a face full of paint.

More often than not, Museums at Night is a good excuse for a tour – at Tullie House, ghost tours of the resident collections are complemented by creepy crafts, and the trail gets wings at Manchester Museum, where a bat tour features flapping beauties from the collection, all explained by a local bat expert.

Families should love the dungeon-themed finger banquet at the Beacon Museum, created for little ones and featuring puppet tales from Old Mother Hubbard and Toby the Dog.

North East
Live taxidermy is weirdly compelling enough, you might think, without taking place in a Hitchcock-esque setting, frittered with shutter-inspired haunted photo booths offering the chance to take selfies. There’s a costume competition catwalk manned by models at Ampersand Inventions, as well as skilled workshops, creative cocktails, freaky funfair games and a Clockwork Orange milk bar.

Not to be outdone, fellow Newcastle night owls the Centre for Life are also brandishing the cocktail glasses, as well as inviting everyone onto a dance floor inside the science centre – cue zombie laser tagging, sci-fi make-up, motion rides, catacombs and short horror films.

Lincolnshire
Paranormal investigation equipment is perhaps not something you’d associate with Skegness or a village church farm. Running at Britain’s only open air farming museum in the Lincolnshire town, Secret Hauntings are on the hunt for wraiths – and you can join them in a search running until 2am.

There could also be a few spirits lurking at St Neots Museum, housed in a former law court and police station which contained prisoner cell blocks until a century ago. That means there are plenty of stories to be told on specially tailored tours, along with goody bags and lantern making.

More creativity – “madness”, as the organisers indeed term it – takes place at 20-21 in Scunthorpe, formerly the home of b-movie themed nights and a boxing ring for Museums at Night. This time, they’re hosting free pumpkin carving, leading up to a parade of vegetable-shaped heads.

Colour and the carnivalesque are on the minds of Grimsby Library’s team, who are planning a night based around the Day of the Dead – the flamboyant Mexican festival honouring the lives of those passed in kaleidoscopic style. And there’s a theatrical twist (courtesy of Scunthorpe Little Theatre Club) at the North Lincolnshire Museum’s pirate-themed night, where a treasure trail will plant creepy crawlies among the dark galleries and teach kids how to speak like a swashbuckler.

South West
Where better for Halloween than the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic? A themed candlelight display around the wise woman’s cottage has a wizards and witches dress code. Brunel's ss Great Britain runs them close for shadowy atmospherics, cramming its cabins with performers from Bristol’s Old Vic theatre for a nightmare to remember, inspired by the great ship’s history.

If there’s a strong element of make believe aboard the Brunel, the Helston Museum could shock and awe with real-life material. Although the museum was founded in 1949, its building was originally the town’s market house in 1837, with separate buildings for dairy and meat. Many of its objects, according to curators, have tragic and mysterious pasts ready to be exhumed by psychic tours around the chilly galleries.

In Exeter, the Royal Albert Memorial Museum – dab hands at spectacular events – are bringing historical apparitions into play, with a lantern-lit parade about the award-winning spaces. John Brolly, a Cornwall actor and director, will meet a resident spook and tell stories in the underground World War Two tunnels of the Telegraph Museum in Porthcurno, and the local Victorian sorceress, Granny Cousins, leads a guided ghost walk around the nearby Old Town as part of Poole Museum’s after-dark conspiring, to which fancy dress is strongly encouraged.

It’s one of several great museums to choose from in Dorset – over in Bournemouth, the Russell-Cotes is the mighty acorn of Merton and Annie Russell Cotes’ collection, gathered more than a century ago in a set of fantastical objects which, apparently, unintentionally contains ghosts and supernatural beings.

Storyteller Lizzie Bryant will introduce some of them along the darkened corridors, enchanting and entrancing along with craft-making and a fancy dress competition.

Monster masks, badge-making and trick or treat baskets all precede a parade of creepy costumes at the National Maritime Museum Cornwall, while the Wiltshire Museum - a near-neighbour of Stonehenge - will allow a Saxon Warrior to take over for stories, trails, prehistoric craft popcorn and a trip to a spooky cellar.

Knightshayes, a Victorian country house in Tiverton, should also provide one of the most picturesque events of the festival, with a twilight trail, illuminations and crafts.

South East
The ever-popular Peterborough ghost walks are, say planners at Peterborough Museum, “a bit special”. Find out why during a 100-minute stalk through the streets, warding off visitors of a nervous disposition.

Those who prefer letting the train take the strain (and Harry Potter) might prefer to take the Wizard’s Express, running from Wansford to Peterborough via Wellwarts and Wilma the Witch under the direction of the standard gauge Nene Valley Railway, which looks after a tunnel haunted since 1845.

The Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology, where visitors can make a mythical monster in a set of drop-in sessions, looks back even further than that, while a very modern gallery - Eastbourne’s Towner tower of art - will be open late for ghostly portraits, scary stories and spooky snacks.

Chiltern Open Air Museum once hosted a unicorn for Museums at Night, and this year it’s opted for fire-breathers and monsters on the Village Green, as well as witches, storytelling, fancy dress and more at their always-popular late opening.

Historic houses screech open their old doors across the region, including Southampton’s Tudor House and Garden, Hall Place and Gardens in Bexley, and Preston Manor – Brighton’s most haunted house, where tarot and mediumship readings and explanations of Victorian séances accompany noir short film screenings, a magic lantern show and tours of the underground cellars.

Scotland
The golden fibre of jute once ruled Dundee’s industry, so make the most of the chance to weave through the Victorian mill where it was once produced. The Jute Museum, at Verdant Works, is almost certain to be fine fodder for ghost stories, as is the train full of decorated coaches being laid on at Bo'ness and Kinneil Railway, the historic track stretching around five miles within sight of Edinburgh.

In Ayrshire, the Scottish Maritime Museum could never be accused of lacking imagination – apple-dooking, a mummy wrap race and a skeleton hunt are the rewards for anyone who turns up in costume, followed by a Halloween sleepover in the linthouse, slumbering surrounded by exhibits.

One of the choicest cinematic event of this year’s festival, improbably, arrives on a former 46-gun frigate in Dundee’s Victoria Dock. First launched in 1824, the Unicorn is hosting a screening of Nosferatu, the 1922 film which would be eerie enough without the live musical score it’s being played to.

For those of a more literary persuasion, the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum leads tours of the streets of Alloway, encountering suspicious deaths and a devil with “business on his hand”.

Wales
There have been abundant rumours of hauntings during the 555 years in which Bodelwyddan Castle and Park has stood. Little is known of Thomas Humphreys, who commissioned its creation, and a human skeleton was found bricked up behind a fireplace while the house was being transformed during the 1830s. An in-house paranormal team will be on the look-out during this year’s festival, including a mini ghost hunt in the cellar, which is usually kept away from the public.

It isn’t every day you get to step inside a 19th century workman’s cottage, either, but the cosy Syr Henry Jones Museum – the childhood home of the great Welsh education reformer – is inviting explorers in for a pumpkin judging competition, ghost stories and performances, complete with a fancy dress code.

Kids might not know the Reverend Wilbert Awdry, who the Narrow Gauge Railway Museum, in Gwynedd, is dedicated to. But they probably love his most famous creation, Thomas the Tank Engine, and the set of around 1,000 exhibits from 80 railways is a fitting tribute he’d be chuffed with.

Something odd is happening there on Halloween, with curators promising surprises and the chance to make off with a personally-crafted lantern. And Nosferatu’s at the Swansea Museum, which is screening Murnau’s German Expressionist horror.

Yorkshire
Clearing an infestation of phantoms falls outside the contractual obligations of Scarborough Art Gallery’s cleaners. On All Hallows Eve, a ghostbuster is turning up to help visitors find tormented souls, discover how they died and then collect a “manifestation” from each, fuelling the dephantomolemeter.

The Victorian housekeeper at Kiplin Hall, Mrs Jocelyn, sounds a bit more stylish than hunters in white overalls brandishing hoovers, and she’ll be leading the way through the historic 17th century hall with its drawing room, Second World War kitchen and Upper Drawing Room (where a hint of Cologne can be scented here, apparently).

The narrow servants’ tunnel at the hall is a tight squeeze, but there’s a chance of not even making it out alive from the Zombie Fright Night at Leeds’ Thackray Medical Museum. The discovery of an incurable virus will leave guests in a quarantine zone offering little protection from the infected, with those who survive reaching a zombie disco, infected photo booth and lucky dip.

Malevolent zombies are also storming the riverbanks of the Hepworth Wakefield, starting with a slow, staggering zombie walk, meandering and moaning through the galleries. Terrifying tours, pumpkin carvings and frightening films are a few of the other reasons to cautiously enter one of the county’s most celebrated collections.

The Brontës knew a thing or two about drama, and the creaks and chimes of their after-dark Parsonage send a shiver down the spine. Housekeeper Tabitha Aykroyd has macabre stories to share, with the bong of the Brontë grandfather clock ushering in superstitions and ghosts.

One ghost, that of Dame Margaret Constable, has been spotted walking down the Long Gallery at Burton Constable, a huge Elizabethan mansion which has also reportedly sheltered a nun and a disappearing black Labrador. And there’s a low-budget classic on the cards at Weston Park in Sheffield, where cushion-carrying visitors can watch Night of the Living Dead at a fancy dress screening until 1am.

Midlands
A historic factory in Birmingham’s old Jewellery Quarter, the Coffin Works was once the place where the fittings were made for the funerals of Joseph Chamberlain, Winston Churchill and the Queen Mother. It’s got deathly echoes before the visit of Notorious, a choir in the city who specialise in choral music.

Conducted by Clare Edwards, they’ll be performing early songs about death and decay as well as familiar classics, followed by mulled wine and tours of the museum. The carpenter at Blists Hill Victorian Town will also take an interest in coffins – more specifically, bodies to put in his. Their event, Ghostly Gaslight, is one of the grandest Halloween events in Shropshire, sending characters, colours and special effects through the cottage windows of its buildings from a bygone era.

Up on the hill above Birmingham, the 17th century Aston Hall is one of Britain’s most haunted buildings. Poised for nights of terror, its Halloween tours have the full shockfest: a bit of gore here, a spirit there and an abiding sense of unease.

Leamington Spa Art Gallery and Museum’s grand Pump Rooms home used to be a bath spa, but for Halloween it’s the home of Colin King, a storyteller with some strange tales to tell. A fellow master storyteller, Sally Tongue, will be at Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery, where a Spooky Supper will include a disco, crafts, fancy dress and prizes.

A pair of performances in Leicester combine the intriguing and the familiarly creepy: at the Guildhall, the Van Helsings must be the only group in the country offering a gothic camp vamp, envisaged as a biting satirical romp punctuated with “sucky” songs. It’s followed by a screening of Nosferatu, set to composer Dmytro Morykit's electrifying new score.

There are two screenings of Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb at St John’s House Museum. Opportunities to watch a film in a building with a 900-year past – St John’s was established as a hospital under St John the Baptist – are not to be missed.

Northern Ireland
Starting out as a children’s librarian for the city of Belfast during the 1970s, writer Liz Weir has gone on to win awards and enchant people all over the world, with the National Storytelling Network in the US calling her an “exemplary”  storyteller.

Weir will be at the impressive Mid-Antrim Museum to lead a trail around the galleries, recounting local stories and tales as she goes. The tour will end with a Halloween-inspired supper.

• Where will you go? Leave a comment below. Museums at Night 2015 runs October 30-31. Visit museumsatnight.org.uk for full listings.

Source: http://www.culture24.org.uk/places-to-go/museums-at-night/art539833-museums-at-night-halloween-october-2015-spooky-highlights