Phantom Fall Fest returns to Kennywood for select days and nights through November 1, 2026, pairing daytime family fun with seven haunted houses and four roaming scare zones once the sun goes down. This year’s lineup spans a haunted estate open house, a twisted Wonderland descent, and a voodoo bayou, alongside old favorites like Kennyville Cemetery and Hellbilly Hollow.
We matched all ten of this year’s headline haunts with the horror films that share their DNA — a mix of direct thematic echoes and a few knowing genre nods.
This list was checked against streaming availability as of today; platforms shift constantly, so if a link goes cold, check JustWatch for the latest.
1. The Amityville Horror (1979) — for Ghostwood Estate: Open House
An “open house” tour of a haunted estate is a premise this 1979 classic basically invented for modern horror — a family moves into a house with a horrific history, and the house starts making its opinion of them very clear.
A young family settles into a Long Island house where a mass murder occurred the year before, only to find the walls, doors, and every other feature of the home actively working against them — the film that launched an entire subgenre of “based on a true story” haunted-house horror.
2. Puppet Master (1989) — for Detached
Detached leans into the uncanny horror of things that move when they shouldn’t, and there’s no more direct genre ancestor than Full Moon’s cult franchise-starter about a set of animate killer marionettes carrying out their master’s will.
A group of psychics converges on a hotel where a puppeteer’s reanimated creations are picking off guests one gruesome kill at a time — low-budget practical-effects horror that spawned more than a dozen sequels.
Watch it: The Roku Channel | Tubi
3. Coraline (2009) — for mALICE in Wonderland Unleashed
This year’s twisted Wonderland gets darker and stranger, and the closest modern cinematic cousin to a dreamworld that turns sinister the longer you stay is Henry Selick’s stop-motion classic about a girl who finds a door to an “improved” version of her life that’s hiding something monstrous.
A curious girl discovers a parallel world behind a hidden door, ruled by an “Other Mother” who wants to keep her forever — gorgeous, unsettling stop-motion horror that works as well for adults as it does for kids brave enough to watch.
Watch it: The Roku Channel | Tubi
4. American Mary (2013) — for Shady Grove
Shady Grove’s medical-horror undertones — a doctor with a very hands-on approach to her patients — pair naturally with the Soska Sisters’ body-horror cult favorite about a surgeon who finds an unlikely calling in extreme body modification.
A cash-strapped med student takes a job performing underground surgeries for the body-modification community, and finds she may be even better at it — and more drawn to it — than she expected.
Watch it: The Roku Channel | Pluto TV
5. Lights Out (2016) — for Dark Shadows
Dark Shadows’ name says it all — a shadow-dwelling entity that only appears when the lights go out is the entire premise of this modern supernatural horror hit, built on one of the simplest, most effective scare mechanics in recent memory.
A young woman investigates the sinister presence that’s been terrorizing her mother for years — a figure that can only exist in darkness, and vanishes the instant a light switches on.
6. The Skeleton Key (2005) — for Voodoo Bayou
Voodoo Bayou’s Louisiana swamp setting and hoodoo folklore call for this atmospheric Southern gothic about a hospice nurse who takes a job in a decaying plantation house and uncovers a decades-old voodoo curse still very much active.
A caregiver at an isolated bayou mansion discovers a hidden room tied to a Hoodoo ritual gone wrong decades earlier — slow-building Southern gothic dread with a twist ending that recontextualizes everything before it.
7. Night of the Living Dead (1968) — for Kennyville Cemetery
A cemetery where the dead don’t stay down has exactly one true cinematic ancestor: George Romero’s black-and-white original, the film that invented the modern zombie as we know it.
A group of strangers barricade themselves in a rural farmhouse as the recently deceased rise from their graves and lay siege — the foundational text every zombie film since has been working in conversation with.
Watch it: The Roku Channel | Pluto TV
8. Clown (2014) — for Fear Fest
Fear Fest’s carnival-and-clown scares pair with this nasty little horror film about a father who puts on a cursed clown costume for his son’s birthday party — and finds it won’t come off, in more ways than one.
A dad’s rented clown suit turns out to be an ancient, cursed garment that slowly transforms him into a genuinely monstrous creature — produced by Eli Roth, and meaner than its goofy premise suggests.
Watch it: Plex | The Roku Channel
9. 28 Days Later (2002) — for Dead Light District
Dead Light District’s urban outbreak setting is straight out of Danny Boyle’s genre-redefining infection horror — the film that reintroduced the zombie movie to a new generation with fast, feral “infected” instead of slow shamblers.
A bike courier wakes from a coma to find London emptied out by a rage-inducing virus — raw, guerrilla-shot digital-video horror that changed the visual language of the genre.
10. Wrong Turn (2003) — for Hellbilly Hollow
Hellbilly Hollow’s backwoods cannibal-family setup is the exact premise of this 2003 slasher throwback about stranded travelers who wander into the territory of an inbred family with a taste for hunting people.
A group of friends detour onto a remote West Virginia road and find themselves the prey of a family of cannibalistic mountain men — a lean, effective throwback to ’70s backwoods horror.
Phantom Fall Fest runs select days and nights through November 1, 2026, at Kennywood in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania. Get your watch list ready, then bring your nerve for seven haunted houses after dark.
