The best scare mazes in the UK

Scare mazes are everywhere now. Taking the best of American haunted house attractions, walk-through theme park rides and fright night events, the UK now offers plenty of opportunities for you to be terrified by drama students whilst you shuffle through a dark corridor with a group of strangers.  

Done badly, the costumes look naff, the theming doesn’t work and the jump scares get boring. Done well, they can be a huge amount of fun – making you feel like you’re in the middle of a zombie apocalypse or a serial killer movie or a field full of evil scarecrows. 

Halloween is almost here so British farmers are busy cutting a path through their corn, abandoned buildings are being dressed to look like haunted asylums, and hundreds of out of work actors are practising their boo faces in the mirror. It’s officially scare maze season, and here’s the best places to find a good one.   

‘Barnaggedon’, Hallowscream Yorkshire

Hallowscream won 2018’s Best Scream Park prize in the ScareCon awards, and they’ve got five mazes themed around evil clowns, future zombies and Victorian meat markets. New this year is the brilliantly named ‘Barnaggedon’, which fuses dead factory workers, evil circus performers and 3D technology – giving you the chance to don a pair of specs and run screaming through a scare maze where the horrors are half projection and half “real”.  

Phobophobia – A Hillbillies Halloween, London Tombs London 

Already billed as “The UK’s scariest attraction”, the London Tombs is a permanent fixture next to London Bridge tube station, but Phobophobia is their annual Halloween event that promises to kick things up a notch. This year, the theme is dubious social stereotypes – with a high-end maze built around evil chainsaw-wielding cannibal rednecks that offers “new levels of shock, fear and depravity”.

‘The Village’, Xtreme Scream Park Leicestershire

Xtreme Scream Park, near Leicester, has six different scare mazes on one site. ‘Ash Hell Penitentiary’, ‘Stilton Hall Hotel And Hell Spa’ and ‘Pie Factory’ (showing you what really goes into Melton Mowbray’s pork pies) are all standouts, but the park’s newest maze, ‘The Village’ won ScareCON’s prestigious Best Halloween attraction in the 2018 awards. Think mutant scarecrows, killer birds and an East Midlands take on The Wicker Man. 

Scaresville Suffolk

Scaresville is pretty unique in offering an entire haunted village to get lost in – with a maze taking you through woods, sewers, houses and barns in what amounts to about an hour of walking in the dark. Scaresville is actually set in the grounds of Kentwell Hall which looks like an actual haunted house, so that’s a bonus.

‘Coven Of 13’, Shocktoberfest, Tulley’s Farm Sussex

Tulley’s Farm turns itself into Halloween town in October (before it turns itself into Christmas town in December), offering nine live horror attractions, including a “haunted hayride”. ‘The Cellar’ boasts a pretty nifty animatronic prop, and ‘The Chop Shop’ is the most intense, but ‘Coven Of 13’ has the best theming – with one section leading you into what looks and feels like shallow water (it isn’t) whilst you’re chased by a gang of witches. 

The Walking Dead: Living Nightmare, Thorpe Park Surrey

Thorpe Park actually has a pretty decent Walking Dead rollercoaster now, which includes a short walk-through scare section, but they amp up their proper themed maze every Halloween. The big draw here is the licence to the show – letting the park recreate all the awful bits you’ve seen on TV. New for this year, the maze will include “the world’s first experience of Season 7”, which probably means you get to watch your friends attacked with a baseball bat. 

‘Hollywood Horror 3’, Dr Fright’s Halloween Nights Northamptonshire

Dr Fright’s ‘Horrortown’ boasts four lengthy mazes, with ‘Shock Therapy’ scaring you with evil nurses, ‘What The Hell?’ scaring you with evil Satanists, and ‘Killer Clowns vs Cannibal Hillbillies’ really leaning into this year’s two biggest trends. The best, though, has to be ‘Hollywood Horror 3’, which pushes you through a maze that’s home to Freddy, Jason, Michael Myers and Pennywise.