Four days ago the last tents came down on St. James Court. The St. James Court Art Show ended its 70th year on Sunday, October 4. For three days it had closed St. James Court, Belgravia Court, Magnolia Avenue, and Third and Fourth Streets inside its perimeter. WDRB's wrap-up counted more than 600 artists and an expected 300,000 visitors.
The next set of visitors arrives Friday, and this crowd won't stay on the sidewalks. Old Louisville's Halloween season is a string of ticketed productions staged inside its Victorian houses on the three weekends before October 31. Most of them begin at the same address, 1402 St. James Court, home of the Conrad-Caldwell House Museum. The night of the 31st is a smaller story here than the weekends leading up to it.
One front door, three weekends
Here is the October calendar as the organizers and local press list it for 2026.
| Dates | Event | Where it starts | Ticket | Who it's for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct. 9–11 | Boos & Brews Ghost Tour | Conrad-Caldwell House Museum | $25, includes a craft beer | 21 and over |
| Oct. 16–18 | 18th Victorian Ghost Walk | Conrad-Caldwell House Museum, 1402 St. James Court | $40 plus fees | Departures every 15 minutes, 6–9 p.m. |
| Oct. 23–25 | Haunting: Devil's Night | Conrad-Caldwell House Museum | See museum | Not suitable for children under 16 |
| Sept. 30–Nov. 1 | The Haunting | Kentucky Shakespeare HQ, 616 Myrtle St. | $30 | Evening and matinee performances |
The weekends follow one after another with no gap between them. Anyone who lives on or near St. James Court will have lantern groups, tour lines or theater audiences on their block every Friday through Sunday from October 9 to October 25. Then Kentucky Shakespeare's run carries the season a week past Halloween, a few blocks west near Central Park.
What each weekend actually puts inside the houses
The three Conrad-Caldwell weekends build on each other. Each one goes further into the neighborhood's houses, and each one draws a different kind of crowd.
Boos & Brews opens the season this Friday. WLKY's 2026 Halloween guide describes it as a tour of an Old Louisville home "where more than 40 confirmed deaths have occurred," with a pint of craft beer included. The museum is clear that this is not a ghost hunt, and ghost-hunting equipment isn't allowed. The museum's own page describes an hour-long tour for guests 21 and over at $25. As of this week, that page's booking calendar was still labeled October 2025. Check session times with the museum directly before you plan an evening around one.
The Victorian Ghost Walk fills the middle weekend and reaches well past the museum. The organizer describes it as a once-a-year outdoor theater production. Lantern-bearing guides lead groups through the gas-lit streets and into Gilded Age mansions, where costumed actors play real former residents of the neighborhood. David Dominé wrote it and Keith McGill directs it. 2026 is its 18th year, and the event benefits the South Fourth Street Association. Tours leave the Conrad-Caldwell House every 15 minutes from 6 to 9 p.m. on October 16, 17 and 18. Each lasts about two hours, so the last group finishes by 11 p.m. It runs rain or shine, tickets are nonrefundable, and it is "always the third weekend in October." That last detail makes the walk the one fixed point in the neighborhood's fall calendar. You can plan a year ahead on it.
Haunting: Devil's Night closes the run on October 23–25 and goes back indoors. The museum presents it as a lamplit tour built on criminal history from the Victorian and Edwardian eras. WLKY says guests move from room to room and hear stories inspired by real figures of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The museum says it isn't suitable for children under 16. That makes the final weekend before Halloween, usually the one families build around, the most adult event of the three.
The run on Myrtle Street that outlasts all of them
While the Conrad-Caldwell weekends rotate, one production plays straight through. Kentucky Shakespeare is staging the U.S. premiere of Hugh Janes' The Haunting, directed by Matt Wallace, inside its headquarters at 616 Myrtle Street. The company says the run was "extended through November 1" due to popular demand. The story suits the setting. In a crumbling mansion, a man hired to catalogue an estate's library of rare books keeps getting pulled away from his work by events he can't explain. The play draws on Charles Dickens' ghost stories.
The regular schedule is 7 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday and 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. The company has added a 7 p.m. show on Sunday, October 25, another at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, October 27, and a 9 p.m. show on Halloween. Tickets are $30, and the play runs one hour and 50 minutes with one intermission.
The parking guidance on the production page is written partly for the neighbors. The building is half a block from Central Park, across the street from WaterStep, and has about 15 free spaces beside it. Kentucky Shakespeare asks theatergoers not to park in front of the residential buildings on the east end of Myrtle Street. Instead it points them to Myrtle in front of Kentucky Shakespeare, Aztec Flooring and WaterStep, and to the Central Park side of Sixth Street. If you live on east Myrtle, that is the arrangement to expect on show nights through November 1.
The one stop without a ticket
Every event above has a box office. The Witches' Tree at Sixth Street and Park Avenue doesn't. WLKY's 2026 guide lists it as "available to see anytime." It sits a short walk south of the Myrtle Street theater, so an evening of The Haunting and a stop at the tree fit easily together.
The legend, as WLKY told it in 2022, begins in 1889. Witches gathered around the maple that stood there before the current tree, until city planners picked that maple as a May Day maypole. After warnings, the witches left, heading west, and their leader left a curse behind:
"BEWARE LOUISVILLE, BEWARE THE 11TH MONTH!"
In the story, a tornado struck 11 months later, on March 27, 1890. Lightning hit the old stump as the storm passed, and the twisting tree that stands there now grew back. Accounts of the tornado's toll differ. WLKY puts it at 76 deaths, while Louisville Historic Tours says well over 100.
The offerings are the part that changes from visit to visit. WLKY describes visitors hanging trinkets on the branches as peace offerings for good luck. Louisville Historic Tours lists beads, charms, horseshoes, skeleton keys, crucifixes and candles, and repeats the custom that the higher the beads land in the branches, the better the luck. It credits David Dominé with popularizing the tree in his memoir. Neither source says who first told the legend. The tour company's September 2026 guide still describes the tree as covered in offerings all year.
October 31, for the record
Halloween night itself is where Old Louisville's calendar gets thin, at least on paper. No 2026 listing names an Old Louisville block as a trick-or-treat or decorating destination. WLKY's trick-or-treat roundup says only that Louisville times "vary by city/neighborhood." The organized events that night are the regular nightly Old Louisville Ghost Tour, which runs all year, and Kentucky Shakespeare's 9 p.m. performance.
The city's best-known decorated street on Halloween night is a few miles northeast, on Hillcrest Avenue in Crescent Hill. Its neighbor decorating contest started in the 1980s and has grown to more than 50 decorated homes. The 2026 guide from Louisville Historic Tours lists trick-or-treating from 5 to 9 p.m. and suggests parking on side streets and walking the block. In 2025, WAVE reported that Hillcrest typically sees 3,000 to 4,000 trick-or-treaters. That year the street closed to traffic for the first time, after a petition, with free entry tickets handed out at the Frankfort Avenue and Brownsboro Road entrances. As of this writing, no one has confirmed whether the closure will return in 2026.
The difference comes down to timing and access. Hillcrest's Halloween takes place on porches and lawns, one night, for free. Old Louisville's takes place inside parlors, libraries and stair halls, on three weekends plus a theater run, and most of it needs a ticket. If you want a look inside the mansions on your own street, the window runs from this Friday to November 1. The Historic Old Louisville Visitor's Center is open daily from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. if you'd rather ask in person.
Every October, the houses on these tours show how much of Old Louisville's character survives indoors: the plaster, the woodwork, the rooms that still read as Victorian. If you've walked through one this month and wondered what keeping a house like that actually involves, from condition and restoration to what changes when it eventually sells, Michael Mawood has spent more than three decades living in and restoring homes in Louisville's preservation districts. He's glad to talk through what you saw. Let's Connect.
