If you're looking for a way to lean into spooky season, the Twin Cities Horror Festival is back for its 15th year, and it's the longest-running live performance horror festival in the country. This year it runs from October 16 to 31 at The Crane Theater, a building with a history of its own: it opened in 1922 as a Westinghouse factory and added its theater space in 1953. You'll find it in Northeast Minneapolis, just a block off Stinson between Hennepin and Broadway Avenues.
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What makes the festival stand out is how it's put together. It's a juried, artist-centric event that pulls horror across a lot of different disciplines — theater, dance, cabaret, puppetry, short film, and even spooky programming for kids. The festival hands 100% of ticket sales to the participating producers and runs a BIPOC Artist Fund to help cover production costs. "Horror is for everyone," says artistic director Nissa Nordland, and the lineup backs that up, with everything from all-ages shows to R-rated territory.
There are 11 productions spread across The Crane's main stage and The Studio, a new, more intimate space inside the building. The schedule is built for a slow burn rather than a single weekend, so you can pick and choose based on what you're in the mood for. If you're going early, Leslie Vincent's A Monster & Mayhem Cabaret opens the festival on Friday night, blending jazz cabaret with horror schtick. For something more improvised, Tales of Terror... From the Tomb!!! is made up on the spot, and Evidence: Silence Experiments and The Slender Vale Archives both build horror improv around the fictional Minnesota town of Slender Vale.
On the more visceral side, Augmentation takes a Cronenberg-inspired look at cybernetic implants, Shed is the bloodiest show on the bill, and Music & Monsters: A Grand Guignol Double Feature pairs a Lovecraftian adaptation with a re-reading of Mary Shelley. If you're bringing kids, The Sludge is a gelatinous family adventure about a child who finds a mysterious creature in the woods, and Kalinga: Feast of the Fallen draws from a 12th-century Tamil literary work.
One thing worth knowing before you go: the festival takes its content ratings seriously. Every show comes with a 1-to-5 rating for blood, language, and violence, so you can gauge exactly what you're signing up for. The experience is described as live, theatrical horror with bloody special effects and real-time fear — a safe space to explore the unsafe. And because it's a horror festival, masks are part of the deal: attendees, volunteers, and artists wear them at all times, except when eating, drinking, or performing.
Behind the scenes, the festival has deep roots in the local scene. Nissa Nordland, the artistic director, is a Twin Cities actor, writer, producer, musician, and sound designer, and she co-created the long-form improv duo Bury The Leads. The festival itself started with Katie Hartman and Nick Ryan, who premiered their two-person musical Edgar Allan about Edgar Allan Poe at the 2013 edition.
Tickets are sold online or at the door, and doors open 30 minutes before each show. The Crane is ADA accessible, with an accessible lift, wheelchair seating in the front row, and service animals welcome, so it's easy to get in regardless of mobility. Whether you want one night of cabaret or a full month of the strange, there's plenty here to fill your October.
Published Date
16 October 2026
