This Is The Absolute Best Town In Kentucky To Visit During The Halloween Season
By Sarah McCosham|Published October 11, 2022
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Sarah McCosham
Author
I write like it's my job - because it is! I have a Master's in English and love words: crossword puzzles, Scrabble games, Wordle, and, of course, good, old-fashioned books.
I'm a writer and editor at OnlyInYourState, and a contributing writer at Cincinnati Magazine. I love the Great Outdoors and am endlessly awestruck by this beautiful country of ours. Coffee keeps me going, yoga keeps me sane, my kids keep me grounded, and my writing keeps me inspired.
If you’re the kind of person who eagerly awaits the spooky season each year, watching “Hocus Pocus” on repeat while decking your home in all things witches and broomsticks, then there’s a Halloween town in Kentucky that’s absolutely calling your name (in a soft and spooky voice) this season. Bowling Green might be best-known as a charming college town and museum mecca, but come October, it transforms into the absolute best Halloween town in Kentucky.
With a population of 70,000, Bowling Green is by no means small; however, there is a distinct small-town vibe here that’s impossible to miss. You’ll find friendly faces, fascinating history, plenty of green space, and all sorts of unique attractions in Bowling Green's vibrant downtown district.
The historic Fountain Square Park is its crown jewel, and it's especially beguiling in the fall. But that's only part of what makes Bowling Green *the* quintessential Kentucky Halloween town, however.
You see, Bowling Green is the birthplace of none other than the Master of Horror himself, John Carpenter -- and come October, this legend is celebrated all around town.
Carpenter spent his formative years in Bowling Green after his father, Howard Carpenter, began as a professor of music at WKU in 1953 and eventually serving as head of the Music Department from 1965 to 1975.
Bowling Green's "Reel Sites, Real Scary" driving tour is dedicated to the famed director. Drive around Bowling Green and Warren County to see some of the sites that helped shape Carpenter's career, or are mentioned in some of his films.
While no movie scenes were filmed in Bowling Green, Carpenter did make numerous area references in a few of his films, using local street and community names like the fictitious Warren County - Smiths Grove Sanitarium from where Michael Myers escapes in "Halloween."
In fact, the town often attracts horror icons during the spooky season, like James Jude Courtney, who plays Michael Myers in the 2018 "Halloween" sequel, seen posing in the real-life Smiths Grove!
Walking tours of the town's (literal) haunts are also offered through Unseen Bowling Green, and the Murder Mansion Walking Tour is a popular one for intrepid ghost hunters!
The town is full of creepy and haunted places, in fact; sites of mischief and murder that you never knew existed in Bowling Green. Pictured here is the notoriously haunted Fairview Cemetery, which harkens back to the Civil War!
