Cemetery Lane: 2022 Review

Heritage Square Museum, Los Angeles, CA

Wow, it’s the second to last weekend before Halloween. Where does the time go? Well, it flies like bats when you’re having fun, or getting spooked, or covering as many haunted attractions as you can! Today, we’re moving back to the family-friendly zone with an on-time review of this year’s Cemetery Lane Trick-R-Treat Experience! We attended last year’s event and had an absolute blast, marveling at the wonderfully decorated historic houses of the Heritage Square Museum in Los Angeles, dripping with vintage Halloween spirit and nostalgia. But we didn’t get around to posting our review of the event until earlier this year! Of course, not being able to visit until the second to last evening of the season certainly dragged down the urgency to post.

Fortunately, this year, Cemetery Lane has expanded to ten total dates, running this weekend through tomorrow and this upcoming Thursday evening through Halloween night! Produced by Black Cat Orange, the company behind Midsummer Scream and creators of the springtime event, Spooky Swap Meet, Cemetery Lane is once again taking place at the Heritage Square Museum of Los Angeles and transforming this amazing open air museum collection of historical Los Angeles residences and buildings into a Halloween wonderland!

This year, Cemetery Lane jumps forward a couple of decades, moving from last year’s vintage Halloween aesthetic to the middle of the 20th century, where shows like The Twilight Zone, The Addams Family, and The Munsters ruled the airwaves, and horror media had an eerie and comedic touch to it.

The spooky and delightful ambiance of Cemetery Lane is back.

Just look at the beauty of the dressed up residences like the Valley Knudsen House!

This year also marks a change in the set-up and approach to the event, with entry taking place on Pasadena Avenue instead of Homer Street. In fact, visitors are asked to enter 3515 Pasadena Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90031 into their GPS for direction-finding, with last year’s Homer Street entrance not even accessible. Once at the indicated address, they will be directed to park in the Heritage Square Gold Line Station parking lot just north of the 110 freeway. This lot isn’t much larger than the gravel lot in which guests parked last year (if at all), but it is paved at least. Local street parking is also available, similar to what most guests had to deal with in Cemetery Lane’s inaugural year.

From there, guests will walk across the bridge over the freeway and cross Pasadena Avenue to access the entrance to Cemetery Lane, located on the east side of the street just south of the freeway. Though the street crossing can be perilous since there are no marked crosswalks, there are attendants helping guide drivers to the parking lot and pedestrians to the street entrance, and the volunteers can help flag down traffic to allow guests to safely cross.

This is the entrance to Cemetery Lane this year, off Pasadena Ave.

This approach means guests enter Cemetery Lane through the backside of last year’s arrangement. The set-up helps keep the event a friendlier host to adjacent residential Homer Street, which saw a lot of vehicular traffic last year that certainly was a hassle to those who lived there. Keeping visitors on the commercial side of the property definitely makes life easier for the neighbors of the Heritage Square Museum and increases the chances that Cemetery Lane can continue in the future!

The walk from the Metro Gold Line parking lot to the actual entry will take guests about five to ten minutes and is lined with a series of solar powered stake lights plopped into traffic cones, providing easy wayfinding for this unfamiliar route. Shortly before reaching the control point, guests encounter a mid-century camper van with an amateur astronomer gazing at the stars. But she’s also searching for extraterrestrial life, and her scanners indicate that an alien may have landed in the Square nearby! To incentivize visitors to help look, the ET-searcher offers some candy to those who agree to assist—marking the first trick-or-treat station before guests have even formally entered.

The first trick or treat stop isn’t even inside Cemetery Lane proper!

From the south to the north, Cemetery Lane is once again dressed up and decorated for the Halloween season. There are a few food stands located near the Colonial Drug Store, with pizza, tacos, ice cream, and refreshments offered to those hungering for more than just sweets. The Lincoln Avenue Church is once again home to an intimate night market selling Halloween wares and spooky mementos, just like last year. Missing is the looping clips of black and white horror movies, though. Across the church, an old streetcar—now populated by glow-in-the-dark skeleton riders bathed in blacklight—sits quietly. Between the church and the Carriage Barn—where guests can play a series of fun carnival games—a graveyard has been unearthed, offering eerie vibes and literally cryptic treats. There is no walkthrough in the garden across from the graveyard, but the rest of the ambiance initially is pretty similar to last year’s event.

**Olde Tyme Ice Cream** is serving up sweet eats at Cemetery Lane.

A graveyard fills in the dead space between the Lincoln Ave Church building and the Carriage Barn.

Things change a little bit at the Ford House, which is once again bathed in green but has taken on the residence of an alluring spirit with vampy Morticia Addams energy. Just adjacent, the Octagon House has been overrun by spiders again, though its resident, a 50s sock hop girl with a pretty serious case of possibly arachnid-induced rashes, seems to be taking everything in stride, hilarious proclaiming her popularity when guests ask to pose for photos, inviting people to stroll around the cobweb-infested building, and warning visitors about her mother around the back of the house.

The Octagon House is once again overrun by spiders.

A pop-up tiki-esque bar offers refreshments to guests looking for potent potables. Younger guests can engage a surfing werewolf who’s quite friendly and howling to enjoy the relaxing weather. A little further on the same west side, before the Palms Depot station building, a cute hay maze has been set up, with a mischievous ghost and devil leading the way through and tricking guests who follow them. Fortunately, some candy near the end of the maze smooths the situation.

A totally tubular werewolf hands out candy.

A look at the Hale House from the new hay maze at Cemetery Lane.

The highlight of the event, though, are the three neighboring houses that are the most spectacularly lit and feature the most captivating and entertaining characters. The Valley Knudsen house is home to an archeologist and a mummy who can’t help but try to steal visitors’ candy. Chastised as she is for her attempts at confectionary thievery, she keeps trying. Next door to the north, the Hale House is home to Dr. Frankenstein and his two creations, the creature and the bride. These characters are wonderfully charming, and guests also have the opportunity to walk through the Hale House and see some of the strange and peculiar contraptions that have been set up inside by the mad doctor. Finally, the Perry Mansion has taken on a mostly monochromatic aesthetic, like the setting of one of the aforementioned 50’s television shows, and is home to an egotistical Hollywood director looking to cast his next star and his aging starlet wife, a woman past her prime and looking to the be attention of any sort of film-making. These two are exceptionally entertaining with their balance of serious Hollywood bluster and desperate casting call longing.

The Valley Knudsen House is home to an archeologist and a candy thief mummy.

The Hale House features Dr. Frankenstein, and as shown here, his monster and the bride.

The Perry Mansion is almost monochrome and has an old Hollywood director and his former starlet wife.

Each of the locations described in the paragraphs above offer trick-or-treating, which is great, because something needs to fill the orange plastic Cemetery Lane-branded bags that guests are given upon entry! They’re also incredibly moody and amazingly executed decorated facades that do a terrific job of capturing the mid-century Halloween spirit. The characters also offer a great mix of improvisational interactions and caricature-like personalities. And even in between buildings, there are sporadic, small temporary sets that allow for more chances to meet the residents of this curious town.

There are also interim trick or treat areas like this nuclear fallout shelter display.

Cemetery Lane once again succeeds at being a whimsical and Halloween-magical destination that is a lot of fun for the entire family, a couple on a date, or even friends just enjoying the Halloween season and seeking to connect with their inner children. This year’s new storyline timeline still packs in that sentimental resonance, and the ambiance is utterly perfect to for a Halloween season evening. By transforming everyone who attends Cemetery Lane into a child again, who can gawk and gasp at the escapist furnishings of the Heritage Square buildings, the event really capitalizes on the wistfulness inherently outlined as a goal for these types of productions. Without a doubt, Cemetery Lane is well on its way to become an established Los Angeles tradition for families setting out enjoy the Halloween season!

Don’t enter Cemetery Lane on this side. It’s closed!

Cemetery Lane is located at the Heritage Square Museum at 3515 Pasadena Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90031 and continues it run today and tomorrow and next Thursday through Monday, October 27-31. The hours were 6:00 - 10:00pm on the weeknights, and 3:00 - 10:00pm on this Saturday and Sunday and 2:00 - 10:00pm on Halloween weekend Saturday and Sunday, and 4:00 to 8:00pm on Halloween night. Tickets cost $27 - $32 plus fees depending on time and date and should be purchased online in advance. Cemetery Lane uses a timed ticket entry system that requires guests to enter as early as their ticket time and as late as 59 minutes later.

If you didn’t go last year, what are you still waiting for? Reserve your visit today!