Halloween Trivia
24 Halloween questions with answers — folklore, superstitions and horror films. Works in a mask and in the dark.
Which vegetable was carved into lanterns before pumpkins took over?
Question packs
24 questions in the packs you have on.
Questions per round
Keeping score
Off by default — plenty of people just want the questions.
The one game costumes cannot break
Halloween does two things to a room that no other occasion does, and both of them wreck party games. Costumes take away faces — a third of the guests are behind a mask — and they take away hands, because gloves, claws and anything with a sleeve past the fingertips make a phone unusable. Low light takes away everything the room has to look at together.
A quiz is close to immune to all three. It needs no faces, since nobody has to read anybody’s expression. It needs no hands, because the answer is shouted rather than typed. And the only lit thing it requires is the phone the host is reading from, which supplies its own light. That is a slightly unglamorous argument for a quiz, and it is why one is usually the best-attended thing at a Halloween party without anyone planning it that way.
The corollary is about timing. Run it early, while people are still arriving. A quiz is one of the very few games that works with eight people in a room and still works when thirty have turned up, so it covers the awkward stretch where a party is not yet a party — which is the hour a Halloween host most needs covering, since everyone arrives in costume and then stands about.
Why half of these are not about horror films
The obvious Halloween quiz is a horror film quiz, and it is a mistake at a party. Horror is a genre people either follow closely or avoid entirely — there is very little middle — so a pack made of it splits the room into four people who get every question and everyone else, who came in a costume and are now losing at something they did not sign up for.
So roughly half of these are folklore, superstition and where the night’s traditions actually came from, and that half is reliably the more interesting one. Jack-o’-lanterns were carved from turnips before anyone had a pumpkin. Trick-or-treating in Scotland is guising, and children were expected to perform something to earn the sweets rather than simply turn up. Halloween itself is the eve of All Hallows’ Day, which is where the name comes from and which almost nobody can tell you.
Those questions do something a film question cannot: they are answerable by anyone who has ever been curious, rather than only by people with the right viewing history. That is the whole difference between a quiz a room plays and a quiz a room watches four people play.
Running it in a loud room
The practical problem at a Halloween party is not the dark, it is the volume. A question read once over music does not land, and repeating it four times to different corners kills the pace. Two things fix it, both cheap: turn the music down for the round rather than shouting over it, and read every question twice as a matter of course, so nobody has to ask.
Keep the teams large and few. At a party the point is not a fair contest, it is that everybody is included, and three teams of ten works far better than ten teams of three — with small teams half the room is waiting, and waiting in a costume that is already too warm is how people drift off to another room.
And decide the half-marks rule out loud before the first question. It matters more here than at a quiet quiz, because in a loud room the host genuinely may not have heard which team shouted first, and a rule agreed in advance is the only thing standing between that and an argument.
Common questions
- Can you play a quiz at a Halloween party?
- Better than most games, and for a specific reason: a quiz needs neither faces nor hands. Masks, gloves and claws break almost every party game — charades, anything with a phone passed round — and they do not affect answering a question out loud at all.
- Does a quiz work in a dark room?
- Yes, because the only lit thing it needs is the phone the host is reading from, and a phone is backlit. What fails at a Halloween party is anything the whole room has to see clearly, which is the opposite problem.
- Are these questions all about horror films?
- Deliberately not. Roughly half are folklore, superstitions and where the traditions came from, because a pack that is all horror films excludes everyone who does not watch them — and at a mixed party that is a good half of the room.
- Are the questions suitable for children?
- The folklore, superstition and pumpkin-carving questions are fine for a classroom or a children's party. A few of the film questions assume a familiarity with horror films that younger children will not have, so turn the round length down and skip what does not land.
- When should you run it at a party?
- Early, while people are still arriving and there is not yet enough of a crowd for anything physical. A quiz is one of the few games that works with eight people in a room and still works when thirty have shown up.
- How is this different from a Halloween scavenger hunt?
- A hunt sends people moving around a space and works best with children or in daylight; a quiz keeps everyone in one room and works in the dark with adults. They suit opposite halves of the same evening, and there is a Halloween pack for the hunt too.