Halloween and Dia de los Muertos - Fred Crowden Photography

The Dia de los Muertos Festival at Mesa Arts Center features a huge community altar display where people can place frames or other important mementos. The family-friendly event will include music, food, over 50 vendors in the Mercado Marketplace, face painting and flower making, live painting by muralists and more.

Phoenix Dead Rising – Nick Chryst is crazy for Halloween — and exhibit A is the spooky walk-through display he creates every year with his wife, Kristy, at their north Phoenix home. A legion of decorations (including skeletons, zombies, ghouls, and other ghostly figures) make up the ominous display in the front yard and garage, which is shrouded in stage fog and is lit with an eerie purple glow.

Haunted Graveyard – Chris Birkett has been completely swamped with Halloween-related activities lately. He wouldn’t have it any other way. Aside from assembling a large outdoor display at McCormick-Stillman Train Park in Scottsdale, the 44-year-old wedding DJ been turning his house into the Haunted Graveyard, a Halloween cavalcade of lights, decorations, gravestones, skeletons, and creepy creatures.

Halloween invades the town of Carefree in the form of whimsical pumpkin carvings from master sculptor Ray Villafane and the Villafane Studios team for a fourth year. The Enchanted Pumpkin Garden, a one-of-a-kind fall festival celebrating the magic of the season takes place each October, with the incredible artistry of Villafane Studios on display throughout the four-acre Carefree Desert Gardens in downtown Carefree. This year another colossal pumpkin will be carved. Enjoy magical activities for both kids and adults plus culinary delights and autumnal refreshments including a beer garden and live music on the weekends.