
Halloween used to be a minor concern in Britain, a silly occasion loved only by pumpkin farmers and horror fans. But these days we've got the taste for fake blood and dressing as Morticia Addams. Now the festival of darkness is a proper date in the fancy-dress diary and venues all over London pander to our ghoulishness. Can't decide between spooktastic raves, scary movie marathons or blood-curdling pub crawls? Here's our pick of the weekend's demon parties.
Hendricks Halloween Ball
The most peculiar Last Tuesday Society hosts Danse Macabre at the Hendricks Halloween Ball, below. Crawl through an unmarked red door into dark, derelict and candlelit 17th-century vaults that stretch under the Thames. An elixir of rosé with cucumber-infused Scottish gin will be served as Bloody Marys, and live entertainment comes in the form of performance art, Russian gipsy-folksters Mazaika, Balkan baroque, opera chanteuse Helen Noir and dancing skeletons. Dress code: the beautiful and the damned.
Saturday, 10pm, 10 Suttons Way, EC1 (thelast
tuesdaysociety.org), £20. Tube/Rail: Old Street