Chicago is getting a Halloween soundtrack worthy of a horror movie… This spooky season, Candlelight is bringing a live performance of iconic Halloween music to the Congress Plaza Hotel & Convention Center, where thousands of candles will illuminate the historic venue.
Performed by the Metropolis String Quartet, the concert reimagines familiar favorites in a classical setting.
A Halloween setlist filled with iconic horror themes
The program spans decades of spooky-season favorites, from Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” to the themes from Halloween, Psycho, Beetlejuice, and The Addams Family. Fans of supernatural television can also look forward to the Stranger Things theme and “Ghostbusters.”
Classical selections include Camille Saint-Saëns’ “Danse Macabre,” Modest Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain,” and Charles Gounod’s “Funeral March of a Marionette.” Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells,” famously associated with The Exorcist, adds another horror classic to the program.
30 October 2026 18:30
The Congress Plaza Hotel & Convention Center
The performance also features “Time Warp” from The Rocky Horror Picture Show and a medley from The Nightmare Before Christmas, all reimagined by the live string quartet.
Inside Chicago’s most haunted hotel
The Congress Plaza Hotel opened in 1893 as the Auditorium Annex, built to accommodate visitors attending the World’s Columbian Exposition.
Designed by architect Clinton J. Warren and expanded in the early 1900s, the hotel eventually grew to 871 guest rooms. Its Beaux-Arts architecture features ornate interiors and grand historic spaces overlooking Grant Park and Lake Michigan.
Beyond its architecture, the hotel is famous for paranormal legends. Guests have reported unexplained noises and shadowy figures, while Room 441 is associated with stories of a mysterious woman appearing near beds. Another local legend concerns the 12th floor and the deaths of a mother and her two young sons in 1939.
While these accounts remain unverified, they have helped establish the hotel as one of Chicago’s most notoriously haunted locations…
