Halloween Songs
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6correct to beat the crowd
88 free Halloween Songs trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
40 free Halloween Songs trivia questions with answers. Every Halloween party runs on the same twenty songs, and almost nobody knows the stories behind them: the BBC banned Monster Mash as 'too morbid', Thriller started life as a song called 'Starlight', Ghostbusters cost Ray Parker Jr. a lawsuit settlement to Huey Lewis, and the Addams Family finger-snaps come from a harpsichord arrangement written in 1964. This quiz runs through the playlist: novelty hits (Monster Mash, Purple People Eater), 80s staples (Thriller, Ghostbusters, Somebody's Watching Me), rock and goth (Werewolves of London, Bad Moon Rising, Bela Lugosi's Dead, Highway to Hell), film and stage songs (Time Warp, This Is Halloween, I Put a Spell on You from Hocus Pocus, the Halloween theme), and the classical pieces that soundtrack every haunted house: Danse macabre, Night on Bald Mountain and Bach's Toccata and Fugue. Easy openers, hard ones for the person who runs the aux cord. Use it as a music round at a Halloween quiz or a party game between tracks. Every answer was checked against a documented source and the citation sits under each explanation.
30 of 88 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who recorded the 1962 novelty hit 'Monster Mash' with a Boris Karloff impression?
Bobby Pickett
Pickett was an aspiring actor whose Karloff impersonation during a cover of 'Little Darlin'' went down so well his bandmate told him to build a song around it.
Q 02Which broadcaster banned 'Monster Mash' as 'too morbid' when it topped the Hot 100 in 1962?
The BBC
The song took its cue from the Mashed Potato dance craze; nearly 60 years later, in 2021, it re-entered the Hot 100 at number 37.
Q 03Which horror actor performs the spoken-word 'rap' at the end of the title track of Thriller?
Vincent Price
Rod Temperton wrote the song and Quincy Jones produced it; it was the seventh and last single from the album.
Q 04Songwriter Rod Temperton's first draft of 'Thriller' had a different title. What was it?
Starlight
The chorus ran 'Give me some starlight'; Quincy Jones's team wanted a stronger album title and 'Midnight Man' was tried before Temperton landed on 'Thriller'.
Q 05Who wrote and performed the 1984 theme song 'Ghostbusters'?
Ray Parker Jr.
It spent three weeks at number one, Parker's only Hot 100 chart-topper, and lost the Best Original Song Oscar to Stevie Wonder's 'I Just Called to Say I Love You'.
Q 06Which artist sued over 'Ghostbusters', claiming its melody was lifted from 'I Want a New Drug'?
Huey Lewis
Lindsey Buckingham says he had been approached to write the theme first, on the strength of 'Holiday Road' from National Lampoon's Vacation.
Q 07Which superstar sang uncredited chorus vocals on Rockwell's 1984 hit 'Somebody's Watching Me'?
Michael Jackson
Rockwell is Kennedy Gordy, son of Motown boss Berry Gordy, who reportedly warmed to the record only after hearing Jackson's voice on it.
Q 08'This Is Halloween', sung by the citizens of Halloween Town, was written for which 1993 film?
The Nightmare Before Christmas
Danny Elfman composed it and also sang Jack Skellington's parts; Marilyn Manson and Panic! at the Disco both covered it in 2006.
Q 09According to the lyrics of 'Time Warp' from The Rocky Horror Show, what comes after 'a jump to the left'?
A step to the right
The song is both an example and a parody of the dance-instruction genre, and the dance became the centrepiece of audience participation at midnight screenings.
Q 10Who first recorded 'I Put a Spell on You' in 1956, reportedly after the producer got the band drunk?
Screamin' Jay Hawkins
Hawkins had meant it as a refined blues ballad; DJ Alan Freed then suggested he rise out of a coffin on stage, and a stage persona was born.
Q 11In 'Werewolves of London', the werewolf goes to Lee Ho Fook's to get 'a big dish' of what?
Beef chow mein
The song took seven different studio line-ups to get right, though Waddy Wachtel nailed the guitar solo in one take.
Q 12Stevie Wonder wrote 'Superstition' in sessions with which British guitarist, who was meant to release it first?
Jeff Beck
Wonder played the famous riff himself on a Hohner Clavinet; the song went to number one in the US.
Q 13Which composer wrote 'Night on Bald Mountain', finishing it on St John's Eve 1867?
Modest Mussorgsky
His mentor refused to perform it; the version everyone knows is Rimsky-Korsakov's 1886 arrangement, which Disney used for the demon Chernabog in Fantasia.
Q 21AC/DC's 'Highway to Hell' is named for a road past Bon Scott's favourite pubs in which city?
Perth
Canning Highway links the Kwinana Freeway to Fremantle; the album of the same name was Scott's last before his death in 1980.
Q 22Which singer co-wrote Rihanna's 'Disturbia', originally planning it for his own album?
Chris Brown
It topped the Hot 100 for two weeks as the third number one from Good Girl Gone Bad; the video is a straight horror-film homage.
Q 23Dolores O'Riordan wrote The Cranberries' 'Zombie' about a bombing in which English town?
Warrington
The 1993 IRA bombing killed two children; in 2020 the song became the first by an Irish act to pass a billion YouTube views.
Q 14In Saint-Saëns's 'Danse macabre', which instrument imitates the rattling of skeleton bones?
Xylophone
The harp strikes twelve Ds for midnight, then Death tunes his fiddle to a tritone, the 'devil in music', with the E string tuned down to E flat.
Q 15In the legend behind 'Danse macabre', what sends the dancing dead back to their graves?
A cockerel crowing at dawn
The piece began as an 1872 art song to a poem by Henri Cazalis before Saint-Saëns swapped the voice for a solo violin.
Q 16The haunted-house staple Toccata and Fugue in D minor is traditionally attributed to which composer?
Johann Sebastian Bach
A minority of scholars have doubted the attribution since 1981; it became a horror cliche in silent cinema and appeared in the 1931 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Q 17John Carpenter's piano theme for Halloween (1978) is in which unusual time signature?
5/4
He composed and recorded the whole score in three days and credited himself as the 'Bowling Green Philharmonic Orchestra', despite not reading music.
Q 18Which singer-songwriter wrote the meme song "Spooky, Scary Skeletons" for a 1996 Halloween album?
Andrew Gold
The album was Halloween Howls; the song's revival came via a 2013 Living Tombstone remix and endless pairings with Disney's 1929 short The Skeleton Dance.
Q 19In Sheb Wooley's 1958 hit 'The Purple People Eater', the creature comes to Earth to do what?
Join a rock 'n' roll band
The idea came from a joke told by a friend's child; the toy-saxophone sound was made by recording a real sax at slow speed.
Q 20Bauhaus's 1979 debut single, called the first gothic rock record, is named after which actor?
Bela Lugosi
'Bela Lugosi's Dead' runs over nine minutes, was cut live in a single take, and opens the 1983 vampire film The Hunger.
Q 24Which Talking Heads member supplied the French lyrics in 'Psycho Killer'?
Tina Weymouth
'Qu'est-ce que c'est?' simply means 'What is it?'; the song appeared on the band's 1977 debut Talking Heads: 77.
Q 25Santana's 1970 hit 'Black Magic Woman' was originally written for Fleetwood Mac by which British guitarist?
Peter Green
Santana's version, sung by Gregg Rolie, reached number four in the US and became the better-known recording.
Q 26Why is Ozzy Osbourne's 1983 album Bark at the Moon unusual in his catalogue?
He is the only credited songwriter
Guitarist Jake E. Lee and bassist Bob Daisley both say they wrote most of it and accepted buyouts in exchange for credit.
Q 27The Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Halloween-party favourite 'Heads Will Roll' comes from which 2009 album?
It's Blitz!
The A-Trak remix and a Glee cover pushed the song well beyond the indie audience of the original.
Q 28'Ghost Riders in the Sky', voted the greatest western song of all time, was written in 1948 by whom?
Stan Jones
Jones said he heard the tale of damned cowboys chasing red-eyed cattle across the sky from an old Native American man when he was twelve; Vaughn Monroe took it to number one in 1949.
Q 29Donovan's 'Season of the Witch' first appeared on which 1966 album?
Sunshine Superman
A record-company dispute kept the song off UK shelves until 1967, and collaborator Shawn Phillips has also claimed authorship.
Q 30Which classic Halloween film's soundtrack features Bette Midler's version of 'I Put a Spell on You'?
Hocus Pocus
The song has been recorded by dozens of artists; Nina Simone's 1965 version reached number 23 on the US R&B chart.