Affordable Fun on the Farm:  Family Pass for 4 to Pumpkin Fest 2013 with Kettle Corn & Lemonade to Siegel’s Cottonwood Farm in Crest Hill.

Admission for Two and Two Small Pumpkins for $11 at Susanna Farms in Lake Villa.

Bring your family to enjoy Locktoberfest — a month-long celebration of autumn in Lockwood Park in Rockford that features a different fall theme each weekend. Admission is free to each October weekend session, but pay $12 ($20 value) and get 40 activity passes to use on wagon rides, pumpkin picking, s’mores by the bonfire and more.

The Four Themes are: Pumpkins, Apples, Scarecrows and Costume Party.

Pay $9 for ticket and parking to Screams in the Park Haunted House at MB Financial Park in Rosemont (dates through November).  Based on the horrific true story of Dr. H.H. Holmes, widely considered to be America’s first serial killer (and whose crimes are chronicled in the best-selling book The Devil in the White City), this eerie Halloween adventure takes visitors back to 1895 Chicago, when Holmes was kidnapping, torturing and killing victims while masquerading as a doctor and caring husband. The sprawling house that police discovered to be the scene of his ghastly crimes came to be known as the Murder Castle, and was filled with secret passages, vats of acid for disposing of the dismembered bodies, and other horrors.  Screams in the Park puts you right back at the scene of the crime, where the Dexter-like Dr. Holmes just may be lurking.