Thirty years ago, Tulleys Farm was not home to a sprawling Halloween destination filled with elaborate haunted attractions, live shows, roaming characters, bars, fairground rides and thousands of guests.
It was a farm in West Sussex trying to find a way to make Halloween - and pumpkins - more interesting to the British public.
What followed has become one of the more unusual success stories in the UK attractions industry.
Shocktober Fest has grown from a single haunted experience into what Tulleys now describes as Europe's largest scream park, welcoming more than two million visitors during its history and becoming a destination in its own right.
As the event celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2026, its rise also tells a wider story about how Halloween entertainment in the UK has changed.
It started with pumpkins
Tulleys Farm's history stretches back far further than Shocktober Fest.
The Beare family's farming story began in 1911, before the business eventually settled at Worth Hall Farm in Sussex. By the 1970s, Tulleys had become heavily involved in Pick Your Own farming, growing dozens of different crops across the site.
Stuart Beare joined the farm in 1991, but his interests increasingly moved beyond conventional agriculture and towards creating experiences that would bring people onto the farm.
That shift would prove important.
An early Pumpkin Festival began during the 1990s, initially as a way of generating interest around pumpkin sales. In 1995, the Halloween offering reportedly attracted only around 300 visitors and included pumpkin carving, traditional games and slightly more unusual entertainment such as maggot racing.
It was a long way from the event visitors know today.
One haunted house changed the direction
By the late 1990s, Tulleys had begun experimenting with haunted walkthrough experiences.
An early haunted house eventually developed into Creepy Cottage, while the farm also tried concepts including a straw bale maze and spooky trails aimed at families.
The modern Shocktober Fest traces its history to 1996, when Tulleys says its first haunted house opened.
The idea was relatively simple, but it introduced something that would become central to the event: guests were not simply watching Halloween entertainment, they were walking directly into it.
That principle still defines Shocktober Fest today.
The Haunted Hayride arrives
A major step came in the early 2000s.
The Spooky Wagon Ride appeared first, followed in 2003 by a much more developed Haunted Hayride featuring multiple scenes spread through the woods.
That year, visitor numbers reportedly climbed beyond 15,000.
The Haunted Hayride became one of Tulleys' signature attractions and demonstrated that the farm could produce experiences on a significantly larger scale.
Expansion followed quickly.
Field of Screams arrived in 2005 as a live actor maze, the hayride received further scenes and increasingly permanent infrastructure began appearing around the event.
By 2009, additions including The Cellar and It's Curtains had taken the attraction line-up to five.
Tulleys was no longer simply running a Halloween event alongside the farm. It was gradually building something resembling a seasonal theme park.
Becoming a scream park
One of the most important parts of Shocktober Fest's development was everything that appeared between the haunted houses.
Fairground rides arrived. Food outlets expanded. Permanent guest facilities were introduced. Roaming characters began filling the pathways and increasingly elaborate live entertainment turned areas of the farm into attractions themselves.
By 2013, Tulleys was actively pushing a festival atmosphere, introducing larger stages and live music alongside its scare experiences.
That distinction helped separate Shocktober Fest from Halloween events where guests simply move from one maze to another.
The event increasingly became somewhere visitors could spend an entire evening, eating, drinking, watching entertainment and exploring themed spaces between attractions.
By 2015, Shocktober Fest had eight main scare attractions and was attracting more than 60,000 visitors.
Specialist scare attraction site ScareTOUR later reported annual attendance above 80,000, describing Tulleys as the UK's biggest Halloween event.
Why Tulleys feels different
There are now Halloween events at most major UK theme parks, alongside a growing number of independent scare attractions.
But Tulleys occupies a slightly unusual position.
It does not have roller coasters or permanent theme park lands, yet Shocktober Fest increasingly operates like a park during October.
There are themed areas, major walkthrough attractions, live entertainment, restaurants and bars, roaming performers, rides and an entire evening's worth of things to do.
More importantly, it has developed its own fictional worlds rather than relying on established film franchises.
Experiences such as Doom Town, Wastelands Penitentiary, The Village Coven of 13 and Route 666 Haunted Hayride have become recognisable attractions in their own right.
That gives Tulleys something theme parks often spend enormous amounts of money trying to create: its own identity.
Thirty years later, it is still expanding
The 2026 season demonstrates just how far the event has travelled from its beginnings.
Shocktober Fest is running across 26 selected nights between 2 October and 1 November, with Tulleys describing the anniversary edition as its biggest and most ambitious yet.
Three new immersive haunts have joined the line-up - The Cellar Returns, Appleton County Farm and Appleton Saw Mill.
Doom Town has also expanded again with Ross Records, a new retro record shop created in collaboration with Honey Ross, while the haunted Greggs introduced in 2025 has returned for another season.
The wider programme includes live music, DJs, street theatre, fairground attractions, themed food and several shows running throughout the night.
House of Hades pushes the event in another direction
Perhaps the clearest sign of where Tulleys is heading is House of Hades.
Rather than another walkthrough maze, the new attraction is a full theatrical production combining fire, aerial performance, dance, music and storytelling.
The production stars The Fuel Girls, whose previous appearances include Universal Orlando's Halloween Horror Nights.
Tulleys describes House of Hades as one of the largest theatrical productions in Shocktober Fest's history.
It feels significant because it pushes the event further beyond traditional scare mazes.
Shocktober Fest is increasingly becoming a Halloween entertainment resort for the evening rather than simply somewhere to be frightened.
More than two million visitors later
Tulleys says more than two million people have now attended Shocktober Fest since it began.
That figure is particularly striking when compared with the few hundred visitors attracted by the early Halloween events of the 1990s.
The growth has also helped transform the wider Tulleys business.
The farm now operates major seasonal events throughout the year, including its Pumpkin Festival, Christmas Light Festival and Tulip Festival, alongside escape rooms and other experiences.
In many ways, Shocktober Fest helped demonstrate what the site could become.
A different kind of UK attraction success story
The rise of Tulleys is interesting because it happened without the things normally associated with building a major visitor attraction.
There was no enormous roller coaster investment, established entertainment franchise or multinational theme park operator behind it.
Instead, the event grew gradually - one haunted house, one hayride, one maze and one experiment at a time.
Some ideas lasted. Others disappeared. Infrastructure improved, entertainment became more ambitious and the experience around the attractions became just as important as the attractions themselves.
Three decades later, a small Halloween event designed partly to encourage people to buy pumpkins has become one of the UK's biggest seasonal attractions.
And perhaps the most interesting part of the story is that Tulleys still doesn't appear finished.
