😨 The scariest things to do in Madison

🍻 Young Blood Beer Leaving Northstreet: After three years, Young Blood Beer Co. is leaving its Northstreet location Oct. 31 to focus its energies on its King Street taproom and new headquarters in DeForest. A new craft cocktail spot, The Flying Fox, will open in its place before the end of the year. [Instagram]

💰 Proposed County Budget Includes $3M For Body Cams: Dane County Executive Melissa Agard released her proposed $946.8 million budget for 2027 that includes $3 million for body-worn cameras for the sheriff's office and $20 million for affordable housing. The county is facing a $15 million shortfall, less than half what it had when Agard took office in 2024. [WKOW]

💻 Number of Madison Students Refusing Laptops Skyrockets: With some parents expressing concerns about screen time in classrooms, the number of Madison students who declined to use school-issued Chromebooks has more than quadrupled this year, from 44 students in 2025 to 249 students this year. [Cap Times]

🚨 UW-Madison Police Sees Spike in Stalking, Hate Crimes: Reported sexual assaults were down, but stalking, hate crimes and vehicle theft were up, according to the UW-Madison Police Department’s annual 2025 safety report. Hate crimes increased from seven cases in 2024 to 26 cases in 2025, more than half of them related to sexual orientation. [Daily Cardinal]

🥁 Celebrating Madison’s Funky Drummer: A new book documents the life of Clyde Stubblefield, the legendary drummer who played for James Brown and lived for decades in Madison until he died in 2017. “Clyde Stubblefield: The Legend of the Funky Drummer” was written by author D. Leah Steinberg, who befriended Stubblefield when they both lived in Madison.

• There’s also a documentary in the works about Stubblefield. Back in 2023, filmmaker Trevor Banks talked to City Cast Madison about the underappreciated musical pioneer. [News 3, Georgia Press, 🎧 City Cast Madison]

💔 Remembering Madison Playwright and Poet Charles Payne: Local writer, teacher, and playwright Charles Payne, whose play “When The Classroom Ain’t Enuf” was produced at Broom Street Theater in 2024, died last week. In lieu of flowers, his family is suggesting donations be made to the Arts + Literature Laboratory, where Payne taught and enriched the community. [🎧City Cast Madison, Instagram]

📰 Tone Madison Founder’s New Venture Takes Flight: Scott Gordon, who founded the Madison culture and politics website Tone Madison in 2014, has started a new monthly newsletter called the Yahara Flyer.

• Scott is on the City Cast Madison podcast today to talk to host Bianca Martin and executive producer Hayley Sperling about the new venture, and about the subject of the latest issue, the debate over police body-worn cameras. [Yahara Flyer, 🎧City Cast Madison]

It’s October in Madison, which means there’s lots of scary stuff going on. And there’s lots of kinds of scary stuff to do, whether you want to see a horror movie, get lost in a haunted forest, learn about some haunted spaces, or more.

So here’s a list of the ways that Madison is trying to scare you this Halloween. Enjoy, and make sure to keep the lights on at night.

👺 Enter a Haunted House!

Get the willies scared out of you at one of the area’s haunted houses. Screamin’ Acres near Stoughton includes four haunted experiences to walk through for one price, including a prison and a mad scientist’s laboratory. (That’s a no from me!)

🌽 Escape a Haunted Forest!

By day, Schuster’s Farm near Deerfield offers a fun and family-friendly corn maze. But by night, the ghouls come out for the farm’s Haunted Forest attraction. Good thing there’s a bar where you can decompress afterward with a beer and some live music.

👻 Take a Ghost Walk!

Madison Ghost Walks offers eerie tours of both downtown Madison and the UW-Madison campus, digging up stories of the spirits that may still haunt those historic spaces. Meanwhile, Madison Ghost Tour unveils the spooky stories behind locations like the Majestic Theater and Tempest Oyster Bar.