Join the Burpee Museum Saturday, October 26th for a fun, spooky Halloween party!
Costumes Encouraged!
Looking for spooky Halloween fun? Where better than the museum with the most dead things in Rockford! Get ready for science that’s so fun, it’s scary! Join us on Saturday, October 26th, from 12 PM to 7 PM for an evening of all things dead. Learn about skulls, skins, and bones, and even try your hand at dissection!
Kick off your Halloween weekend with a haunted museum experience full of fascinating, spooky stuff
Enjoy museum-wide special displays from the art of taxidermy to eyeball dissection!
Wander into the Haunted Graveyard and find your lost friends armed with a flashlight!
Admission Includes:
- Science Demonstrations, experiments, dissections, and glowing nature!
- Haunted Graveyard: Explore the spooky auditorium turned into a haunted hike…if you dare! Family Fun & Jump Scares included!
- Amazing Animals & Plants: Burpee is a library of dead leaves, reptiles, dinosaurs, and so much more. Explore with us!
- Bones & Fossils: Don’t mind us…we have been dead for a long time!
Additional Fun
- Barnes Mansion Tour: Join the ghost of Mrs. Julia Barnes as she guides you through the halls where she once hosted grand parties, mourned at heartbreaking funerals, and endured her final years in pain from a mysterious gunshot wound
DATE
- Saturday, October 26th, 2024
- 12:00 pm-7:00 pm
COST
- Non-Members: General Admission is $15 for adults, $13 for kids 4-12, and 3 and under are FREE.
- Members are FREE!
- Barnes Mansion Tour (includes Gen Admin) $20 and Members (will sell out)
Museum Activities
- Join the family fun with activities like ‘Creatures of the Night’ featuring real SKULLS
- lung inflation demos, paper skull construction, and a spooky Haunted Graveyard. Explore bones galore and dive into the Mad Scientist Lab for hands-on experiments!
- Mad Scientist Lab
Barns Mansion:
- Step inside a rare 1890s Victorian masterpiece built by the prominent Rockford Barnes family.
- Journey through time as you witness the home’s evolution with the arrival of electricity, the shift from wood to coal heating, and more.
- Explore the first-floor parlor and uncover the secret servant hallways.
- Hear captivating stories of the family’s triumphs, struggles, and even horrors, brought to life by your storyteller—the ghost of Mrs. Julia Barnes!
Barnes Mansion
GUIDED TOURS
Find out for yourself if it is really “haunted.”
Julia Barnes
ROCKFORD RESIDENT
Walk through her home and hear the family stories!
Taxidermy & Dissection
DEMONSTRATIONS
Learn how we preserve our precious dead things!
