Halloween Games and Activities

Hangman may seem like an obvious game for Halloween, but I’ve never seen it mentioned by anyone before. It’s a fun game for small and large groups and easy enough to play that you can get the kids involved.

Basic hangman rules:

1. Draw a scaffold on a large sheet of paper or board for all your guests to see.
2. Place a dash under the scaffold for each letter of the word or phrase your guests are going to try to discover.
3. Guests call out letters, on their turn, and if the letter is in the word or phrase then place it in the correct dash space.
4. If the guest calls a letter out that isn’t in your word or phrase then you write the letter above the scaffold and draw a body part, beginning with the head and working your way down until a completed person is hanging there, in which case the guests lose.
5. At any time during their turn a guest may try to guess the word or phrase and win the game. If they guess incorrectly they are out.

Halloween variations:

• Use halloween words or phrases from well known Halloween movies like The Nightmare Before Christmas, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Disney version) or It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown.
• Hang monsters instead of people; you could hang witches, mummies, sea monsters with tentacles, skeletons, vampires, etc.