Boney Island is back this Halloween season! One of the LA area's most popular family-friendly haunts for decades, the former lawn haunt from Sherman Oaks has joined forces with the Natural History Museum to stage a spookily exciting comeback.

The NHM is giving a new home to Boney Island in Exposition Park, allowing families to walk the Halloween Lights Experience for the first time since 2018.

Traditionally, Boney Island is as family-friendly as a haunt can be. Every inch of free space is filled with skeletons, most of whom are engaging in some form of magic trick, including interactive optical illusions and a crowd-pleasing mind-reading skeleton (if you figure out the trick, don't spill the beans!). The biggest highlight is an impressive musical light show with glow-in-the-dark fountains shooting phosphorescent streams of water high in the air under the direction of a wise-cracking skeleton host.

We will have to see how many familiar illusions return, but one thing we know is that the museum is putting its own spin on the event as well, by adding artistic performances, real fossils, live animal presentations, and trick-or-treating.

This haunt has come back from the dead before; it existed as a free home installation for decades before being shut down by bureaucratic issues arising from its extreme popularity. A brief return was staged at the Griffith Park Ghost Train, before that popular Halloween event was also shut down. This third after-life is an exciting gift to another generation of LA kids!

Tickets go on sale on August 24, with early access for museum members on August 22.