Every October we get some version of the same question from clients with kids, grandkids visiting, or just a soft spot for the holiday: where does everyone actually trick-or-treat around here, and is there one set time like back home? The honest answer is that Myrtle Beach Halloween events are spread across a patchwork of neighborhoods, shopping centers, and one genuinely all-in small town, with no single countywide rule tying it all together. So we pulled together what’s actually confirmed for this year, what’s just long-standing local custom, and where the real action is.
There’s No Official Trick-or-Treat Ordinance Here
This surprises a lot of people who move here from places with a city-mandated schedule. Myrtle Beach itself has no ordinance or set trick-or-treating hours on the books. The city’s informal guidance is simply to go out on October 31 and stick to homes with the porch light on, which functions as the universal signal here that a house is participating. The same is true just about everywhere else in the immediate area. Horry County has no countywide ordinance either, which means unincorporated communities like Carolina Forest follow the same unwritten porch-light rule rather than a posted time window. North Myrtle Beach, Surfside Beach, and Pawleys Island are the same story: no restrictions, no official hours, just the custom of heading out on Halloween night itself.
A handful of smaller Pee Dee-area towns do set actual hours. Loris, Dillon, and Bennettsville each designate 6 to 8 p.m., with Bennettsville’s hours set by its police department specifically. Mullins doesn’t set a blanket time but anchors its evening around a 6 to 8 p.m. “Trick or Treat Down Main” event. None of that applies directly along the Grand Strand itself, but it’s useful context if you’ve got family scattered across the wider region.
Conway Is the One Town That Goes All In
If there’s a single place that treats Halloween as a genuine identity rather than a one-night event, it’s Conway. The city started decorating Main Street with fake pumpkins back in 2020, during the pandemic, when City Administrator Adam Emrick and his wife strung them up as a small gesture to brighten a hard year. It caught on fast enough that the city officially adopted the “City of Halloween” branding in 2022, and it’s only grown since. This year the city is planning more than 200 events across October, more decorations and programming than it’s ever put together, with over 130 volunteers helping hang them. Downtown Conway drew roughly 235,000 visitors during the month last year, up from about 135,000 back in 2017, which gives you a sense of how much this has become a destination rather than a neighborhood tradition.
The celebration runs October 1 through October 31, 2026, centered around 428 Main Street downtown, with features like Squeal Alley, the Tunnel of Bones, and the Shiverwalk alongside a kickoff party, a costume parade, and a decorated pirate ship along the Conway Marina. Conway recommends trick-or-treating between 5:30 and 8:30 p.m., which isn’t a formal ordinance but is the closest thing to an official window anywhere in the immediate area. For the full day-by-day schedule, the city posts an events pinboard online that’s worth checking closer to the date, since specific happenings shift from week to week.
Where to Trick-or-Treat Along the Grand Strand
Beyond the porch-light custom, several of the area’s shopping and entertainment districts run their own confirmed Halloween events this year, and these are the ones most families plan their evening around.
Market Common’s Hometown Halloween is set for Saturday, October 31, 2026, from 5 to 7 p.m., with participating businesses handing out candy to trick-or-treaters walking the district. Broadway at the Beach has two separate events on the calendar: an adult-oriented Halloween Bash on The Avenue on Saturday, October 24, at 7:30 p.m. with a live DJ and costume contest outside Crocodile Rocks, and its own trick-or-treat evening on Saturday, October 31, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. The Patch, Broadway’s seasonal pumpkin-and-fall-activities area, runs daily from late September through October 31, with Saturday kids’ activities from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Barefoot Landing holds its trick-or-treat evening as part of its WonderFall celebration, also on October 31 from 5 to 7 p.m., with participating merchants along the boardwalk handing out treats. Downtown Myrtle Beach runs its Fright Nights programming in Plyler Park and along the Boardwalk throughout the month, building toward a Halloween Carnival on October 31 from 5 to 8 p.m. and a Day of the Dead celebration on November 1.
The Myrtle Beach Pelicans round things out with their own ballpark trick-or-treat event, confirmed for Thursday, October 29, 2026, from 4:30 to 8 p.m. Kids 12 and under can collect candy throughout the stadium and out on the field itself. Admission is free, but the team requires a ticket reserved in advance, and it’s popular enough that waiting until the week of the event is a real risk of missing out.
A Few More Myrtle Beach Halloween Events Worth Knowing About
The big shopping districts and Conway tend to dominate the conversation, but they’re not the only Myrtle Beach Halloween events worth putting on your radar. South of the city, Georgetown runs its own Front Street celebration geared specifically toward younger kids, with trick-or-treating along the historic waterfront business district from 5 to 7 p.m. for children 12 and under, no ordinance required since it’s organized directly by the merchants. North Myrtle Beach doesn’t run a single centralized event the way Conway does, but individual shopping centers and churches across the city regularly host their own trunk-or-treats in the weeks leading up to Halloween, so it’s worth checking neighborhood social media groups and church bulletin boards rather than assuming nothing’s happening just because the city itself hasn’t posted an official schedule.
Carolina Forest follows a similar pattern. Because it’s unincorporated Horry County rather than its own municipality, there’s no single countywide event tying the whole community together, but individual neighborhoods and HOAs inside Carolina Forest frequently organize their own trunk-or-treats, golf-cart parades, or clubhouse parties in the days before the 31st, on top of whatever informal porch-light trick-or-treating happens on Halloween night itself. If you’re relocating into one of these communities, asking a current resident or the HOA directly about what’s planned is usually more useful than searching online, since these smaller neighborhood events rarely get picked up by local news coverage the way the bigger commercial districts do.
What We’d Actually Recommend
If you’re new to the area and trying to plan one evening around this, here’s how we’d break it down. If you want the single biggest, most all-in experience, make the short drive to Conway and plan around its 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. recommended window, especially if your kids are old enough to enjoy the Tunnel of Bones or Shiverwalk. If you’d rather stay closer to the coast, Market Common and Barefoot Landing both run their main trick-or-treat windows from 5 to 7 p.m. on October 31 itself, which makes it realistic to catch one in the early evening and still be home in time for neighborhood trick-or-treating once the porch lights come on. Families with younger kids who want to avoid Halloween night crowds entirely should look hardest at the Pelicans’ event on October 29, since it’s on its own separate night and happens in full daylight into early evening rather than competing with every other event on the calendar at once.
Whatever you choose, it’s worth double-checking times closer to the date on each venue’s own site, since weather and scheduling tweaks do happen even after an event is publicly announced.
Why Myrtle Beach Halloween Events Actually Matter to Buyers
We bring up something as specific as this year’s Myrtle Beach Halloween events because questions like this come up constantly from relocating families, and they’re genuinely hard to answer with a quick internet search when so much of what’s published online is recycled from a prior year without anyone updating it. The bigger point underneath it is this: a town that puts this much volunteer effort and civic energy into something as simple as trick-or-treating tends to be a town with real neighborhood identity and year-round community programming, not just a backdrop for a vacation. That’s exactly the kind of texture that’s hard to evaluate from a listing photo, and it’s one of the things we try to walk new clients through when they’re comparing neighborhoods rather than just square footage and price per acre.
Browsing what’s currently available across Myrtle Beach is a good way to start getting a feel for which neighborhoods put on this kind of community event versus which ones keep things quieter. If you’re relocating with kids and want to talk through which parts of the Grand Strand tend to have the most going on throughout the year, reach out to our team and we’re happy to walk through it.