Halloween
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179 free Halloween trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
100 free Halloween trivia questions with answers. From its ancient Celtic roots as Samhain to the billion-dollar candy industry, Halloween is a holiday wrapped in mystery, mythology, and a whole lot of sugar. How much do you know about the spookiest night of the year?
30 of 179 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which group of settlers, hostile to old church festivals, kept Halloween out of colonial New England?
The Puritans
The Puritans rejected Halloween, like Christmas, as a relic of the old church calendar, while Anglican colonists in the South and Catholics in Maryland went on marking All Hallows' Eve.
Q 02The green-skinned witch of Halloween costumes was made famous by which classic film?
The Wizard of Oz
The Wizard of Oz gave the Wicked Witch her green skin in 1939, with copper-based make-up on Margaret Hamilton; in L. Frank Baum's book she has no green skin, only a single eye as powerful as a telescope.
Q 03Which ancient Celtic festival is most often named as a root of Halloween?
Samhain
Samhain marked the end of harvest and the start of winter in Gaelic lands, a night when the boundary with the Otherworld was thought to blur so that spirits and the dead could cross over.
Q 04Which Halloween sweet was originally marketed under the name 'Chicken Feed'?
Candy corn
Candy corn was sold as Chicken Feed because, when it appeared in the late 1800s, corn was thought of as feed for farm animals rather than food for people.
Q 05In the 1978 horror film "Halloween," what is the name of the masked killer?
Michael Myers
Michael Myers stabs his sister on Halloween night at the age of six and escapes from a sanitarium 15 years later; the end credits list the masked adult simply as 'The Shape'.
Q 06Real vampire bats, which feed only on blood, live in the wild in which part of the world?
Central and South America
Central and South America are home to all three species of vampire bat, the only bats that live on blood alone; Europe, where the vampire legend grew up, has none of them.
Q 07In It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, who gives up trick-or-treating to wait in the pumpkin patch with Linus?
Sally
Sally misses the candy and the party out of devotion to Linus, then rounds on him in fury when the only thing to rise from the patch turns out to be Snoopy.
Q 08The e'en in Hallowe'en is a contraction of 'even', meaning evening, in which language variety?
Lowland Scots
Lowland Scots shortened 'even', evening, to e'en, so All Hallows' Even shrank to Hallowe'en, which is why older spellings keep an apostrophe where the v fell out.
Q 09In a Scottish Halloween game played beside the dooking tub, what is hung on strings to be eaten hands-free?
Treacle scones
Treacle scones, smeared with yet more treacle, hang from the ceiling on strings and must be bitten without using the hands, so every player ends up with a sticky face.
Q 10Which realm's ruler, Louis the Pious, made 1 November the date of All Saints' Day throughout his lands?
Frankish Empire
The Frankish Empire took up the feast on its emperor's order, given at the pope's request; churches in Ireland and Northumbria were already keeping 1 November by about 800 and may have set the example.
Q 11In Bram Stoker's Dracula, which conqueror does the Transylvanian Count boast of as his ancestor?
Attila the Hun
Attila the Hun's blood runs in his veins, the Count brags, tracing his Székely people to Hun warriors whom legend made the children of Scythian witches and desert demons.
Q 12Stick insects, the Phasmatodea, share the Greek root phasma with phasmophobia, the fear of what?
Ghosts
Ghosts: phásma is Greek for 'apparition', a fitting root for insects that vanish among twigs; some even sway from side to side, which is thought to mimic twigs stirring in a breeze.
Q 13In Hocus Pocus (1993), what does Mary Sanderson fly on after the sisters' broomsticks are stolen?
A vacuum cleaner
Q 21What is the name of the phobia that describes an intense fear of spiders?
Arachnophobia
Arachnophobia comes from arákhnē, Greek for spider; in Ovid's telling the weaver Arachne hanged herself after a contest with the goddess Minerva, who then turned her into one.
Q 22What famous magician died on Halloween in 1926?
Harry Houdini
Harry Houdini died of peritonitis days after a student punched him in the stomach in his Montreal dressing room; whether the blows caused it is still argued.
Q 23The mask worn by the killer in the 1978 film 'Halloween' was originally cast from which actor's face?
William Shatner
A vacuum cleaner is what Mary grabs when no broom is left, while her sister Sarah makes do with a mop: the joke is a 17th-century witch riding a modern appliance.
Q 14Which New York City parade began in the 1970s as puppeteer Ralph Lee's walk with his puppets?
Village Halloween Parade
The Village Halloween Parade began as Ralph Lee's walk from house to house for his own children and their friends, and grew into a march up Sixth Avenue billed as the world's largest Halloween parade.
Q 15What are Día de los Muertos home altars laid with the departed's favourite foods called?
Ofrendas
Ofrendas, Spanish for 'offerings', carry the dead person's favourite dishes and a glass of water, set out because the souls are said to arrive thirsty after their long journey home.
Q 16In Bram Stoker's Dracula, which young English solicitor finds himself a prisoner in the Count's castle?
Jonathan Harker
Jonathan Harker comes to explain the purchase of a London estate, then finds every door locked and writes in his journal, 'The castle is a veritable prison, and I am a prisoner!'
Q 17Which horror movie features a character named Ghostface?
Scream
Scream (1996), directed by Wes Craven, introduced Ghostface, the hooded killer in a wailing-ghost mask who telephones victims with horror-movie quiz questions.
Q 18Which unusual substance was traditionally poured into water for Halloween fortune-telling in Ireland?
Molten lead
Molten lead was poured through the ward of a door key into a bowl of cold water, and the shape it hardened into was read as an omen of what lay ahead.
Q 19Which once-common Halloween handout fell out of favour in the US after rumours of hidden pins and razor blades?
Candy apples
Candy apples lost their place in the treat bag to 1960s and 1970s scares about pins and blades; some hospitals even X-rayed children's hauls, though almost every report that was traced proved a hoax.
Q 20What is the name of the elegantly hatted skeleton lady who became an icon of Día de los Muertos?
La Catrina
La Catrina began as printmaker José Guadalupe Posada's skull in a fancy hat, mocking Mexicans who aped European fashions; Diego Rivera gave her a full figure in a 1940s mural.
William Shatner's face, on a Captain Kirk mask bought from a Hollywood Boulevard costume shop, became the killer's once the crew widened the eye holes and sprayed it a bluish white.
Q 24In the original 1820 tale of the Headless Horseman, what is Ichabod Crane's job?
Schoolmaster
Schoolmaster Ichabod Crane lodges a week at a time with the farmers whose children he teaches; Tim Burton's 1999 film Sleepy Hollow recast him as a New York police constable.
Q 25In Ghostbusters (1984), which towering mascot does the god Gozer turn into to trample New York?
The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man
The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man appears because Gozer tells the team to choose the form of their destroyer and one Ghostbuster cannot help picturing a beloved mascot from his childhood.
Q 26Which farm figure is a traditional Halloween costume model alongside vampires, ghosts and skeletons?
Scarecrow
The scarecrow joined vampires, ghosts, skeletons and witches as a stock Halloween costume, a harvest-field figure that fits the festival's end-of-harvest roots.
Q 27In the horror film "A Nightmare on Elm Street," what is Freddy Krueger's signature weapon?
A bladed glove
A bladed glove is Freddy Krueger's own handiwork: in the films' story he welded the knives to a leather glove himself before turning it on his victims.
Q 28In old Scottish Halloween custom, burning torches were carried around homes and fields in which direction?
Sunwise
Sunwise, or deiseal, follows the sun's course and was the lucky direction in Gaelic custom, widdershins the unlucky one; Braemar families still walked their fields that way with fir torches in the 19th century.
Q 29Which author wrote the gothic novel "Frankenstein"?
Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley began Frankenstein at 18, after Lord Byron proposed a ghost-story contest during a rainy summer at Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva.
Q 30Which sitcom starred Elizabeth Montgomery as Samantha, a suburban witch who cast spells by twitching her nose?
Bewitched
Bewitched ran on ABC from 1964 to 1972: Samantha marries a mortal and vows to live as a typical suburban housewife, a promise her 'witch twitch' kept breaking.