Yorkshire is a surprisingly fitting setting for celebrating Halloween. It already offers suitably spooky locations, from Mother Shipton’s Cave in Knaresborough to the moors that inspired Emily Brontë to write Wuthering Heights, and the region’s landscape has long been linked to supernatural stories of witches, goblins, and other unearthly creatures.

In recent decades, this history has become closely entwined with British cinema. In fact, a surprisingly quirky lineage of horror films links to Yorkshire. With Halloween approaching, October is a good time to revisit some of the region’s spookiest appearances in modern cinema.

When the Lights Went Out (2012)

When the Lights Went Out offers a wonderfully Yorkshire take on the haunted-house film. Set in 1974, it follows a working-class family who move into a new home and soon find themselves dealing with a poltergeist obsessed with their teenage daughter.

The story draws on the infamous Black Monk of Pontefract haunting at 30 East Drive and turns the familiarity of a Yorkshire housing estate into a dangerously sinister setting. This film is for fans who enjoy old-fashioned ghost stories and iconic films like Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist (1982).

Ghost Stories (2017)

Ghost Stories is a pleasingly wacky type of modern Yorkshire horror film. It follows sceptic Phillip Goodman as he investigates a set of supernatural hauntings and finds his scepticism beginning to unravel.

The film was shot across locations including City Varieties, Saltaire, and Harewood Estate. Ghost Stories has enough oddball humour to keep things interesting, and if you’re looking for a Halloween film with unexpected jump scares, you should have great fun with this one.

Saint Maud (2019)

Rose Glass’s psychological horror follows Maud, played by Morfydd Clark, a deeply religious nurse who becomes fixated on saving her patients’ souls.

Filmed partly in Scarborough, Saint Maud makes eerie use of the town’s seafront resort architecture. Scarborough residents and regular visitors will recognise familiar stretches of the Yorkshire coast transformed into something much more unsettling, with the bright seaside attractions taking on a lonely, almost creepy quality. It makes the town feel every bit as Gothic as Yorkshire’s more traditional moorland settings.

Starve Acre (2023)

Starve Acre, set in rural Yorkshire during the 1970s, follows Richard and Juliette, a couple who move with their young son to a remote house on the Yorkshire moors. Their isolation deepens after tragedy strikes, while Richard becomes increasingly obsessed with the land’s history and disturbing local legends. 

Starring familiar faces including Matt Smith, best known for Doctor Who, Starve Acre makes for atmospheric Halloween viewing.

28 Years Later (2025)

Danny Boyle’s zombie franchise began with 28 Days Later in 2002, turning a deserted central London into one of modern horror’s more iconic images. More than two decades later, 28 Years Later brought the apocalypse to Yorkshire by using the ruins of Fountains Abbey and the surrounding Studley Royal estate as a major filming location. For horror fans in Yorkshire, this is a memorable opportunity to see Yorkshire join one of the world’s top horror franchises.

Follow Christina on social media @yorkshirefilmcritic