to think places have gone too far with Halloween themed ‘fun’ for children.

[MapleTreees]

It’s half term for us and all the local attractions seem to be Halloween themed. My kids (aged 10&7) are very sensitive and hate anything scary. One is particularly scared of skeletons but cartoony ones might just be OK.
So we went out yesterday, not realising an industrial museum might be Halloween themed and they were just terrified. I walked round and could feel my daughter jump whenever there was a new surprise.
It wasn’t just cartoony fun, there were headless zombies etc.

Have places forgotten that children are children and not all like quite graphic horror? I don’t think the thought of showing such things to young kids a couple of decades ago would have been considered OK?

We had to abandon the visit as they would only look at the ground and were just hating it.

AIBU to think this is too much for a child themed event or do I need to toughen my kids up?

This hits the nail on the head.

I live in Canada, where Halloween has always been huge. Over the last decade I’ve also noticed this trend away from “fun and spooky” to gruesome.

I think it needs to be appropriate to the audience. Family orientated type places should not be this scary, they should stick to the pumpkin/bats more harmless type stuff. This sort of thing would be fine for an adult Halloween event like Frightmare. But it’s unfair to spring it on unsuspecting children.

Im not someone who's usually overly sensitive to these things but I agree. And agree with PPs about people's houses as well, our neighbours have a display with bin bags looking like body bags hanging from their trees I find it very disturbing even as an adult!

It wasn’t Irish. Ireland had a festival at that time but Halloween isn’t a direct descendant of Samhain.