Built as early as 1830, the Science and Industry Museum’s buildings are themselves steeped in history… and mystery. There’s something incredibly special about working amongst the world-class collections, but after dark, it can be a bit spooky too! Here are my Halloween highlights guaranteed to give you a thrill… or a chill!
Be transported back in time by stepping inside the newly opened Power Hall: The Andrew Law Gallery. Wake the ghosts of Manchester’s industrial past and be immersed in the sights, sounds and smells of times gone by. Walk in the footsteps of 19th century railway workers and see engines built in the 1830s brought back to life. Visitors can even peer inside Pender, a steam locomotive from the 1870s, to reveal its spectacular insides.
Don’t forget to search for what’s lurking in the shadows and spot lesser-noticed details on the engines and locomotives inside the gallery.
Bump into a cycling skeleton and get an insight into your insides when you visit the Experiment gallery, where you can also create glow-in-the-dark art or fashion shapes from with shadows.
Visit the Textiles Gallery to witness monstrous machines in action and hear the thunder of original 19th century mill machinery that would have once roared across Manchester. And don’t be misled by Baby’s deceiving nickname—The Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine is a GIANT in the world of computing with a legacy that shaped history, and at 17 feet long stands imposingly in the Revolution Manchester Gallery.
If it’s less gore and more goo you’re after this Halloween, the museum’s family-favourite special exhibition, Operation Ouch: Brains, Bogies and You, has it in bucketloads. Venture through the senses of touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste as you take a deep dive inside the human body, dodging icky earwax, squeezing past sticky snot and steering clear of saliva as you discover exactly what goes on inside our bodies as we make sense of the world.
Swap scary for hairy as you enter through the ear canal and discover more about the cochlea and the hair-like sensors that send signals to our brains, or trade macabre acts for snotty facts—like how we make enough snot every year to fill two bath tubs!—and learn about how this magical mucus helps us smell.
There are still smatterings of supernatural throughout the exhibition, including coins touched by Henry VIII. Five hundred years ago, people believed that illness could be cured by the touch of a king or queen. The King gave coins he touched to sick people in the hope of healing them. A collection of coins from 1799 and 1806 are also on display in the Textiles gallery. They were hidden in an Ancoats mill during its construction, when people often concealed money with the superstition that it would bring luck or wealth.
You can also experience some spooky tricks in Operation Ouch: Brains, Bodies and You with some brain-altering illusions that prove you can’t always believe what you see, including ghost dots appearing in blank spaces, straight lines being bent by the brain, circles seeming to spiral and even faces appearing upside down.
And finally, those set on a scare can visit gaming experience, Power Up to tackle a range of enemies and supervillains. Fight off zombies in Minecraft, battle bats and skeletons in Sir Floofington, designed by this year’s BAFTA Young Game Designer of the winner, or grapple with ghouls in Furniture Fu, designed by another young computing talent, Luke Rayfield.
