Tweetsie Railroad Ghost Train guide and review
The Tweetsie Railroad Ghost Train event offers a unique, family-owned Halloween haunt in the middle of the mountains.
Update, Oct. 11, 2024: Tweetsie Railroad Ghost Train is canceled for the remainder of the 2024 Halloween season as a result of Hurricane Helene. Learn more about Tweetsie’s reopening plans and fundraising efforts for hurricane relief in our follow-up story.
Tweetsie Railroad in Blowing Rock, N.C. transforms into the Ghost Train event during autumn weekend evenings. The main attraction is a haunted ride onboard a full-scale steam-engine train, though the independent, family-owned park also offers two haunted houses, trick-or-treating, and carnival rides during Ghost Train nights.
Tweetsie hosted Attractions Magazine to check out the Ghost Train on its opening weekend of the 2024 season. Here’s what to expect at the event.
Tweetsie Railroad Ghost Train 2024 dates and hours
Note: Tweetsie Railroad Ghost Train is canceled for the remainder of the 2024 Halloween season as a result of Hurricane Helene. See the top of this story for more information.
The Tweetsie Railroad Ghost Train operates on Fridays and Saturdays from Sept. 20 – Oct. 26, 2024. The nighttime event is ticketed separately from daytime Tweetsie Railroad admission.
The event begins at 7:30 p.m., except for on Oct. 12, 19, & 26, when it starts at 7:15 p.m. Park personnel told us the event officially ends at 11 p.m., but the park may close as early as 10:30 p.m. if crowds are sparse.
The Ghost Train experience
What exactly is a Ghost Train? For starters, Tweetsie Railroad is steeped in real-life history. Before it was a family-owned attraction, its trains provided industrial services to its immediate vicinity of towns in the North Carolina mountains near the Blue Ridge Parkway. By the 1960s, the railroad tracks were repurposed as a three-mile attraction called Tweetsie Railroad (and originally developed by Grover Robbins, the same mind behind Land of Oz in Beech Mountain, N.C.).
During the Halloween season, one of Tweetsie’s two locomotives moonlights as the Ghost Train, a 22-minute ride combining live theater, multimedia, and passage through the pitch-black, very real mountain forest. The train stops several times along the route for show scenes with live performers, lighting effects, and pyrotechnics.
When purchasing event tickets, guests reserve a designated time to ride the Ghost Train.
Haunted walkthrough attractions
In addition to the Ghost Train, Tweetsie Railroad operates two walkthrough attractions during its Halloween event: the Haunted House and the Freaky Forest. Both experiences are what haunt fans might call a haunted house or maze.
The Haunted House takes on the guise of a manor overrun by ghouls and screamo music, while the Freaky Forest mimics the woods (though it’s entirely inside) with cryptic creatures and critters.
Around 70 performers entertain guests throughout the Ghost Train event. That number includes actors part of the Ghost Train ride itself, as well as the two walkthroughs and the various live entertainment offerings. Some performers are theater students earning their degree from the nearby Appalachian State University.
‘Tweetsie Palace Spooktacular’
“Tweetsie Palace Spooktacular” is not, as its saloon-style venue might imply, a song-and-dance revue, but rather a performance of blacklight puppets. If you’ve ever seen some of the more experimental sketches from the original late-’70s episodes of “The Muppet Show,” “Tweetsie Palace Spooktacular” very much gives off a similar vibe.
Creepy Carnival
At the Creepy Carnival (Tweetsie’s words, not ours) are a selection of rides of similar scope and manufacturing as what you might find at a state fair. These include the family-friendly carousel, Ferris wheel, and airplanes, as well as the more thrilling tilt-a-whirl, tornado, drop tower, swinging pendulum, and figure-8 spinning coaster.
Ghost Train park atmosphere
Fog, mood lighting, and seasonal décor populates Tweetsie Railroad during the Ghost Train event. If you’re looking for that perfect spooky-season Instagram background, you’ve come to the right place.
Young guests are encouraged to attend in costume and can participate in free trick-or-treating at designated stations.
Along the park’s Main Street, family-friendly characters host a dance party all night.
How scary is the Ghost Train?
Tweetsie Railroad recommends the Ghost Train, Haunted House, and Freaky Forest only for guests ages 8 and up, though anyone can experience those attractions at their own discretion. In our opinion, a brave 8-year-old will probably be okay on the Ghost Train, as most of the spooks are along the ride path rather than on the train itself. In contrast, the Haunted House and Freaky Forest are definitely not for the nervous; we’d recommend around ages 12 and up for those.
Tweetsie Railroad Ghost Train is designed to be an event the entire family of multiple generations can attend together. The scarier experiences at the park can either be sought after or easily avoided, based on one’s preference. That being said, the Ghost Train is the star of the night. For guests who choose to skip the train ride, the even’t $40-$60 price tag might be too steep to justify. (There is no option to purchase a ticket without a Ghost Train reservation.) Still, it’s one of the few nighttime Halloween attractions we can think of that caters to multiple styles of spooks rather than being 100% horror-based, and that’s important for many folks looking for a more wide-ranging autumn activity.
Tips for Tweetsie Railroad Ghost Train
If you arrive before the park opens for the evening, you may see a long line of guests waiting to enter. Don’t worry; once the gates open, the line moves quickly.
Concerned about long waits for attractions? Don’t be. Even during busy nights, a Tweetsie spokesperson told us, wait times for the carnival rides and haunted walkthroughs rarely exceed 15 minutes. During our visit, we waited 0 minutes for both walkthroughs and one cycle for the spinning coaster.
When you purchase your admission ticket, you’ll also make a reservation for which time you’d like to ride the Ghost Train. Keep in mind that during the first reservation slot of the night, the sun may not have completely set yet (perhaps a not-ideal situation for horror junkies, but preferable for families with young kids).
Though your Ghost Train ticket is time-specific, you can sit anywhere. The best views are in Car 3.
A quick-service dining location serves pizza, hot dogs, and ice cream. We recommend eating dinner beforehand at a local restaurant nearby in Blowing Rock or Boone.
With the Ghost Train being a nighttime-only event, we recommend making a full day out of a trip to the mountains. A visit to Tweetsie pairs nicely with attending a football game at App State, hiking at any of the designated trails along the Blue Ridge Parkway, visiting Grandfather Mountain, or grabbing dinner in the quaint downtown of Blowing Rock. Especially as the leaves turn brighter closer to late October, it’d be a shame to visit Tweetsie without appreciating the area’s autumn delights.
If you plan on staying in the area overnight, hotels near Tweetsie Railroad are those located in the towns of Blowing Rock (closest to Tweetsie) and Boone (home to App State).
Overall thoughts
Attractions Magazine readers who have exclusively attended big-budget haunt events like Halloween Horror Nights at Universal theme parks or Knott’s Scary Farm would be wise to remember Tweetsie Railroad is an independent, home-grown haunt. Shift your expectations of movie-set-quality production design and layered narrative storylines. Tweetsie Railroad Ghost Train and its haunted attractions carry an aura of local flavor, and therein lies the event’s niche charm. (This charm, of course, does not pertain to the imagery glorifying weaponry and the exploitation of Native Americans, as depicted throughout the gift shop.)
We visited with two adults, one of whom wasn’t interested in the carnival rides. We ran out of things to do pretty quickly — but again, that was partly because everything was a walk-on. (At some haunts, the only reason our night would’ve been longer is because of huge wait times.) The Ghost Train itself, though, is unique from anything we’ve done at other haunt attractions and was worth the trip for us at least once.
Tickets to Tweetsie Railroad Ghost Train
Tweetsie Railroad Ghost Train tickets cost $60 for guests ages 13 and up and $40 for guests ages 3-12. Guests ages 2 and under get in free.
There is no parking fee.
This compares to other North Carolinian autumn attractions such as Carowinds in Charlotte (starting at $55 and including Scarowinds, Oktoberfest, and Tricks and Treats), Lake Hickory Haunts in Hickory (starting at $65), and the North Carolina State Fair in Raleigh ($10 for admission + an unlimited rides pass starting at $30).
More Attractions Magazine stories:
Follow us:
No matter where you want to go, our trusted partner MEI-Travel will handle the planning so you can focus on the memories. They offer free vacation-planning services and have nearly 20 years of experience creating memorable vacations. Visit MEI-Travel for a fee-free, no-obligation quote today.
