This article is written by two lovers of Halloween, Peter Boie and Gus Davis. Peter tours colleges and theaters with a show called Summoning Spirits where he brings ghost stories alive on stage. Gus is a game show host and produces game shows for colleges and corporate events. He offers a Halloween themed game show, where you’ll be spooked about all the Halloween trivia you didn’t know!
WE love Halloween! The costumes, the candy, the fake blood. Nothing is better. It’s one of the best times for campus programming too, you can do so much with the Halloween theme. Here are 24 event ideas for the Halloween season, take an idea or two and run with it!
Day of the Dead Festival
It’s a Halloween and multi cultural event in one! Dia de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead) is a Latin holiday that celebrates life and death. Technically celebrated on November 2nd, but ties in perfectly with Halloween. Try to find someone that has grown up in the Latin culture that can help you plan your event. Decorations can include bright colors as well as skulls and skeletons. Maybe you have free skull masks for attendees, or you have a face painter that is painting skulls onto people all night. Here’s a short video with some info about the holiday to get you started https://www.nationalgeographic.org/video/what-day-dead/
DID YOU KNOW? October 31st, 2020 was on a full moon? Not only that but it was on a rare occurrence called a BLUE Moon, meaning it was the 2nd full moon of the year AND it was on Daylight Savings Day!
Halloween Dance
This is an obvious one but here’s where you let your creativity shine. Come up with a cool name for the dance if you haven’t already. Try to work in your school name or mascot into the title, it’ll be more specific and then no other school will have the same name as you. Put smaller events inside this larger one, like skull face painting, bobbing for apples, or a haunted house.
DID YOU KNOW? That Halloween is the 2nd largest revenue holidays in the US? This season brings in an estimated 6 BILLION dollars in revenue for retail. That’s a lot of costumes, Vampire Fangs, and candy!
Costume Contest
This is a must at your dance. It encourages people to come in costume but also to be creative with it. Have a really great prize for the best costume too. That doesn’t mean you have to spend tons of money for it, maybe it’s a $100 gift card to the pizza place or coffee shop everyone loves, or just a big trophy. Maybe get a decibel meter and the costume that gets the loudest applause wins!
DID YOU KNOW? That an estimated 600 MILLION pounds of candy is sold in the US each Halloween season!
Halloween Bingo
Take regular bingo and theme it to Halloween. Print bingo cards with zombies, ghosts, or other halloween images. Have every prize relate to Halloween like scary movies, a halloween costume, special effects makeup, a halloween decoration for their room, and candy.
Build a Cardboard Box Costume
Set this up in a lounge area where people go to hang out. Get a ton of cardboard boxes from local stores hot glue, glue guns, scissors, duct tape and colored markers for students to build costumes out of. Why cardboard boxes? Because it’s interesting and by limiting people’s choices you will force creativity, and this idea is very out of the box ;) Take pictures of people wearing their finished costumes and post them to your social media. Maybe even have a week long cardboard box costume contest with a prize!
DID YOU KNOW? The fear of Black Cats may have helped create the spread of the Bubonic Plague? Pope Gregory the IX decreed that cats were in league with evil spirits. As such in the Dark Ages people began to kill cats at an increased rate. It is believed that the lack of cats caused an increase in Rats that carried the deadly plague.
Zombie Laser Tag
This is a simple idea, but tons of fun. Hire a novelty company to come in with laser tag and call it The Zombie Apocalypse. For every game one team is the zombies and the other team is the humans. You could have zombie costumes for the zombie team if you want to get really into it. Keep a running total of wins and loses and announce at the end of the event and on social media if the zombies took over the world or if the humans prevailed.
DID YOU KNOW? Rabies was a terrifying disease that was transmissible to humans. It had virtually a 100% fatality rate and was the closest thing we have ever seen to a fast moving Rage Zombie outbreak in real life!
Zombie Ultimate Frisbee
Here’s an idea like the laser tag but cheaper! One team is the zombies, one is the humans and they ultimate frisbee to the death! Definitely a good idea to have zombie costumes for team zombie… or at least get some fake blood dripping from their mouths.
Murder Mystery Party
Someone was murdered in the study with a candlestick! But who is the culprit? Doing a murder mystery party on campus is so much fun! It gives you a lot of ways to be creative with theming, decorations and food. There are tons of ready made murder mysteries for you too. Just google “murder mystery home party” and you can buy great games for about $40. But remember the game gets better the when people really get into it. How well the room is decorated will affect how much the players get into it, you want people feel like they are IN the story!
There are a million more ideas out there for Halloween events, here are a few more to get the creative juices flowing:
Dorm decorating contest, make a haunted house, scary movie night, trick or treating on campus, creepy carnival, Halloween themed food, zombie 5k fun run, pumpkin carving, bobbing for apples, ghost hunting, hire a special effects makeup person to cause harm to people’s faces, fortune teller, haunted hayride, haunted escape room, fake body part scavenger hunt.
For more information on Peter: www.summoningspirits.com
https://www.instagram.com/peterboie/
https://twitter.com/peterboie
For more information on Gus
https://www.instagram.com/triviastreamgameshow/
https://twitter.com/Trivia_Stream