There’s more than 13 videogame haunted houses to explore, and what’s presented here is a list worth the time to visit, and lose your mind over….
Honestly, I doubt I can get through all the videogame haunted houses that are out there. When considering the classics to what’s new, there’s a lot! And to narrow down what are my top thirteen choices, that’s tough to do! I’d probably lose my sanity if I tried to play them all over a Halloween weekend. By the end, I’d probably look wide-eyed and droopy, with huge shadows underneath my eyes! While I have my favourite video game haunted houses to crawl through, I’ll only offer full entries on five titles I’m looking forward to playing, with the rest noted with a trailer.
From campy ghost hunts and psychological journeys into grief to shifting mansions, tightly scripted nightmares, and even a house that fights back, I think I’ve covered just about every kind of haunted house possible.
Look on, if you dare, because honey, even after one night of ghostbusting, those ghosts will just come back! And before we embark on this spooky little journey, I have just one thing to say: Sorry, Luigi, you’ve been dethroned.
Aardman’s expressive flock delivers plenty of laughs in this kid-friendly Halloween romp. Not everything has to be scary, and Shaun the Sheep The Beast of Mossy Bottom nicely gives fans young and old something to guffaw at. And we got news too about the home video release:
GKIDS & StudioCanal
Available on VOD
Coming to Blu-ray and DVD January 26, 2027.
As a kid-friendly film for the season, Shaun the Sheep The Beast of Mossy Bottom brings a little scare to its quiet hamlet. Shaun has come a long way since his introduction in Wallace & Gromit: A Close Shave (1995). That little sheep went on to lead his own TV series in 2007, with the Farmer, Bitzer the dog and the flock turning life into anything but a quiet country retreat. Aardman built this world around visual gags and expressive characters. Nobody needs a proper conversation for us to understand who’s causing trouble.
The leap to features gave that mischief more room to roam. Shaun the Sheep Movie (2015) took the flock to the big city, while Farmageddon (2019) brought an alien visitor to the countryside. For someone who loves silent films like I do, the appeal is easy to understand. A look, a gesture or a badly timed mishap can carry the joke. That’s nothing to bleat at, pardon the pun.
Step right up, ladies, gentleman, for Atomic Vaudeville’s annual Spooktacular! FUN HOUSE you say? Welcome to a history of tradition, and come what may if you dare enter….
Tickets can be bought in advance here. Limited tickets at the door.
The theatre company Atomic Vaudeville has been a Victoria, BC, institution since 2004. For those in the know, it is also a place where emerging local talent can find mentorship and opportunities to hone their skills. Some performers have graduated from the Canadian College of Performing Arts; others, I honestly don’t know. But when the team gathers to create its annual Halloween show, I take notice!
This year’s FUN HOUSE sounded like one I had to check out. Although I don’t get to see Atomic Vaudeville every year, I’ve followed with interest ever since 2016. It’s not only because certain luminaries honed their craft here and moved on to establish careers of their own but also they have other events throughout the years.
There’s Mike Delamont (God Is a Scottish Drag Queen), Wes Borg, the comic musician who co-founded Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie before joining the Atomic Vaudeville team, Ingrid Hansen, the puppeteer known for her work on the Fraggle Rock revival, and Trevor Hinton, an actor who appeared in Bones of Crows. The latter is amazing because I’ve seen him perform in numerous genre shows over the years.
Finding tenants is easy when you welcome the dead. Getting them to pay rent is another matter, and Welcome to Ghost Mansion turns that predicament into a spooky, surprisingly sweet comedy.
If Welcome to Ghost Mansion (訳アリ心霊マンション, Wakeari Shinrei Manshon) ever happens to get an animated adaptation, I can imagine it being something like Maison Ikkoku. Although the setups differ, there are some amusing parallels: the building is a worn-down apartment complex whose residents are hardly conventional. They are spirits! The resident manager, Kaoru Shinonome, is hardly fazed by that, and rather than try to convince the living to share the space with the undead, her advertising welcomes spirits who need a place to stay. No, this story isn’t Hotel Transylvania. There’s no young daughter coming of age here, but there is a family gradually coming together.
There’s no big threat yet, but across the three volumes released so far in English, I’m finding that this supernatural comedy has room to grow. In fact, the original Japanese edition is still ongoing as of October 2026, with six volumes, and the English publisher is moving quickly to get the first four volumes out this year. The other two may well be planned for later in 2027 to keep pace.
From Disney ballrooms to vampire masquerades, Nocturne Gala founder Anna Stankevich discusses the magic of formal dances and bringing the Vampire Ball to Victoria, BC.
Get your passes for the upcoming Blood Moon Ball in Victoria here.
Formal balls may seem like a thing of the past, something only seen in cinema, but that’s not the case! Based in the Greater Vancouver region, Nocturne Gala is an operation that wants to change that perception. Founder Anna Stankevich (pictured right) is a ball enthusiast and she says they are still ongoing. When she and her husband immigrated to Canada in 2022 and didn’t find anything similar, she started up this business. Balls still happen across Europe and as for why they never took off here, not even historians have an answer.
This organizer said, “A good number of guests attending Nocturne Gala events have a European background and recognize the format immediately, while others are discovering it for the first time. What I particularly enjoy is that these dances can be accessible and easy to learn.”
Depending on the generation, some will fondly recall either Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera and others Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula. But other films, like Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard predate both, and this is regarded as one of the greatest films ever made. For anyone who knows the song, “The Music of the Night,” the following lyrics say it all:
Slowly, gently
Night unfurls its splendor
Grasp it, sense it
Tremulous and tender
Turn your face away
From the garish light of day
Turn your thoughts away from cold unfeeling light
And listen to the music of the night
In the animated front, it began with a certain Disney princess, Cinderella, and that movie set a precedent future films from this studio must follow. Anna believes it’s about how the feeling, the music, the costume, and the magic come together. She also believes it’s essential not to go over the top.
When asked about the animated, theatrical, and live-action versions of Beauty and the Beast, Anna noted a difference. She said, “Compared with the polished, formal balls in earlier Disney films like Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, the 1991 Beauty and the Beast ball scene feels warmer and more inviting and real due to more realistic ballroom layout, sweeping camera movement, and the use of 3D. The 2017 live-action version is different. It’s at the end of the movie, and feels more like a theatrical vision of a royal court, perhaps something you could imagine at Versailles, not polished, sometimes even a bit quirky.”
For those folks looking for something to see eery day, Hollywood Suite’s 2026 Halloween Lineup is looking sweet and it represents a diverse range of films that also includes the classics!
Hollywood Suite’s 2026 Halloween Lineup may well be Canada’s go-to destination for a full month of spooky films playing nonstop. What’s offered is huge, and with every genre well represented to be presented on demand and on air, even I may tune in to watch those titles I don’t have on home media.
But what caught my eye is the original documentary series Cinema A to Z. If you haven’t watched this program yet, it’s a good primer for those who’d rather not learn about cinema history from a book. A full episode guide can be found here.
The show is now in its fourth season, with episodes devoted to Creature Features, Party, Sports and Witches, in that order. To celebrate Halloween, the network is focusing on the first and last instalments.
Honestly, I doubt I can get through all the videogame haunted houses that are out there. When considering the classics to what’s new, there’s a lot! And to narrow down what are my top thirteen choices, that’s tough to do! I’d probably lose my sanity if I tried to play them all over a Halloween weekend. By the end, I’d probably look wide-eyed and droopy, with huge shadows underneath my eyes! While I have my favourite video game haunted houses to crawl through, I’ll only offer full entries on five titles I’m looking forward to playing, with the rest noted with a trailer.
