Scary Halloween
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44 free Scary Halloween trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
50 free Scary Halloween trivia questions with answers. Are you ready to test your knowledge of all things spooky and terrifying? Our Scary Halloween trivia quiz will challenge you with questions about classic horror films, haunted legends, and creepy Halloween traditions. Prove you're a true Halloween expert and see how well you know the darker side of the season!
30 of 44 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which ancient Celtic festival is considered one of the origins of modern Halloween traditions?
Samhain
Samhain marked the end of the harvest, when the dead were thought to return home; people lit hilltop bonfires and wore disguises so the ghosts would not recognise them.
Q 02What vegetable was originally used to carve jack-o'-lanterns in Ireland?
Turnip
Turnip lanterns recall Stingy Jack, the trickster of Irish legend sent to roam the night with a burning coal in a carved-out turnip; immigrants to America switched to the native pumpkin.
Q 03Which author is credited with writing the novel 'Dracula'?
Bram Stoker
Bram Stoker wrote Dracula while holding down a day job: the Dublin-born author managed London's Lyceum Theatre for the actor Henry Irving for almost three decades.
Q 04The zombie of modern horror comes from the folklore of which Caribbean country?
Haiti
Haiti's zombie is a corpse revived by a bokor, a sorcerer, to serve as a slave with no will of its own; the belief is thought to have taken shape among enslaved Africans on the island's sugar plantations.
Q 05In spiritualism, what substance is believed to be exuded by mediums during séances?
Ectoplasm
Ectoplasm was named by the physiologist Charles Richet; when investigators examined samples from mediums such as Helen Duncan, they found cheesecloth, paper and egg white.
Q 06Halloween is the vigil of which Christian feast day?
All Saints' Day
All Saints' Day, 1 November, was once called All Hallows, which is why the night before became All Hallow Even, later shortened to Halloween.
Q 07Which term names an object, often inscribed with symbols, believed to hold magical power and protect whoever carries it?
Talisman
A talisman takes its name, by way of Arabic, from a Greek word meaning to consecrate or endow with magic power; medieval handbooks said one had to be made at an astrologically chosen moment.
Q 08Which Shakespeare tragedy has three witches chanting 'Double, double toil and trouble' over a bubbling cauldron?
Macbeth
Macbeth was written soon after James I took the English throne; the new king was obsessed with witchcraft and had published his own book on the subject, Daemonologie.
Q 09Which Irish Halloween fruitcake is baked with a ring, a coin and other charms hidden inside?
Barmbrack
Barmbrack doubles as a fortune-telling game: whoever finds the ring in their slice is said to be next to marry, while the coin promises wealth.
Q 10Which film, considered one of the most influential vampire movies, features Count Orlok?
Nosferatu (1922)
Nosferatu (1922) was an unauthorised Dracula adaptation with the names changed; the novelist's widow sued, and a court ordered every copy destroyed, yet a few prints survived.
Q 11How were 19 people convicted in the Salem witch trials put to death?
Hanging
Hanging was the sentence for all 19, most of them women; in 1711 Massachusetts began clearing the condemned and paid restitution to their heirs.
Q 12Which studio's monster series brought Dracula, Frankenstein and the Phantom to the screen in the 1920s and 30s?
Universal Pictures
Universal Pictures had such a hit with Dracula early in 1931 that it followed with Frankenstein before the year was out.
Q 13In British folklore, a black cat crossing your path is traditionally a sign of what?
Good luck
Good luck is what a black cat on your path means in Britain, the exact reverse of the United States, where the same cat is an ill omen left over from its old association with witches.
Q 21Which horror writer created Pennywise the Dancing Clown and the fictional town of Derry, Maine?
Stephen King
Stephen King traced It to a walk across a wooden bridge that made him think of the troll in 'Three Billy Goats Gruff'; he then imagined the troll in the sewers under a city like Bangor, Maine.
Q 22What is a ghost that makes itself known through loud noises and moving or broken objects commonly called?
Poltergeist
Poltergeist joins the German poltern, 'to make noise', and Geist, 'ghost'; investigators have traced many famous cases to hoaxes, often a youngster playing tricks on credulous adults.
Q 23Which accused man in the 1692 Massachusetts witch trials died under torture for refusing to enter a plea?
Giles Corey
Q 14The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity are landmark films in which horror subgenre?
Found footage
Found footage presents a film as recordings its characters left behind; The Blair Witch Project pushed the trick further, with a website treating its three student film-makers as genuinely missing.
Q 15Baking and sharing which food door to door at Allhallowtide is a suggested origin of trick-or-treating?
Soul cakes
Soul cakes went to the poor and to children who went 'souling' from door to door, promising in return to pray for the souls of the givers' dead relatives.
Q 16Which fictional creature is usually depicted as vulnerable to silver and resistant to almost everything else?
Werewolf
The werewolf's silver weakness is often linked to France's Beast of Gévaudan, a wolf-like killer of the 1760s; later storytellers had its hunter load silver bullets.
Q 17Which killer, who attacks teenagers in their dreams wearing a striped sweater and bladed glove, stalks A Nightmare on Elm Street?
Freddy Krueger
Freddy Krueger grew out of newspaper reports of refugees who died in their sleep after recurring nightmares; his creator also drew on a bully from his own schooldays.
Q 18Count Dracula's surname is thought to derive from the patronymic of which ruler?
Vlad the Impaler
Vlad the Impaler was known as Dracula, 'son of Dracul'; the name Dracul, 'the dragon', came from the Order of the Dragon, a brotherhood of Christian knights.
Q 19Which 'Master of Suspense' made The Birds in 1963 and turned up in cameos in most of his own films?
Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock was nominated five times for the Best Director Oscar and never won; the Academy's one award to him was honorary, the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 1968.
Q 20Which 1968 film launched modern zombie movies?
Night of the Living Dead
Night of the Living Dead lost its copyright by accident: the distributor changed the title and left the notice off the new prints, so George A. Romero's film went straight into the public domain.
Giles Corey, about 80, would not let the court try him, so stones were piled on him until he died; a local tradition, which historians dispute, says he was shielding his farm from seizure.
Q 24What iconic mask does the character Jason Voorhees wear in the 'Friday the 13th' film series?
Hockey mask
Jason Voorhees only gained the hockey mask in the third film, in 1982; in the film before, he hid his face under a burlap sack.
Q 25Which film was the first horror movie nominated for the Best Picture Oscar?
The Exorcist
The Exorcist earned ten Oscar nominations and lost Best Picture to The Sting; William Peter Blatty had built his novel on reports of a boy's alleged exorcism in 1949.
Q 26Which mythical creature is a harbinger of death, its mournful wailing said to foretell a family member's passing?
Banshee
The banshee takes her name from the Irish bean sídhe, 'woman of the fairy mound'; she was said to wail only for the old Irish families she had attached herself to.
Q 27Frankenstein grew out of an 1816 ghost-story contest proposed by which poet during a rainy Swiss summer?
Lord Byron
Lord Byron's guests were kept indoors by the 'Year Without a Summer', the cold, wet aftermath of Mount Tambora's 1815 eruption; Mary Shelley, then 18, answered his challenge with her novel.
Q 28Which character wears a white mask and wields a large knife in the "Halloween" film series?
Michael Myers
Michael Myers's white mask in the 1978 Halloween was a William Shatner Captain Kirk mask, painted white and bought for under two dollars.
Q 29What is the name of the red-haired killer doll, possessed by a serial killer's spirit, in the Child's Play franchise?
Chucky
Chucky is short for Charles Lee Ray, the strangler whose soul enters the doll; the film-makers built that name from Charles Manson, Lee Harvey Oswald and James Earl Ray.
Q 30Which figure from Washington Irving's 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow' pursues Ichabod Crane?
The Headless Horseman
The Headless Horseman is said to be a Hessian trooper who lost his head to a cannonball; Irving hints the rider was really Ichabod's rival Brom Bones, since only a shattered pumpkin is found.