Looking for Halloween activities you haven’t done a million times? We’ve got you covered.
19 Unique Halloween Activities You Should Try
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1. Four Parties
For a Halloween spin on TLC’s Four Weddings, grab three party-loving friends and compete for the best Halloween party! Click here to see how it works and to get free printable rating cards!
2. Themed 5Ks
Many cities hold Halloween 5Ks in October. It can be a blast designing a costume you can also run in!
In 2011, Mariah and Jake participated in a Zombie Apocalypse 5K and got to infect the “healthy” by tagging them and taking their flags.
3. Zombie Paintball
Here’s another awesome zombie experience: Zombie Paintball! Shoot zombies with colorful ammunition- all while riding on a hayride in the middle of the woods.
4. Attend a Masquerade
Get mysterious! Look up a local masquerade party or host your own. Masks are really fun to make, or you can find tons of inexpensive masks online, like these beautiful couple’s sets.
5. Take a Face Painting Class
Brush up on your face painting skills to be able to pull off a killer Halloween costume, or to makeover your little nieces and nephews with cute designs. Attend a local class or do an online course, like this Special Effects Makeup class from Udemy.
You can center an entire evening around doing costume or injury makeups and sharing their backstories! In MaLee’s makeup class, her teacher asked the class to create a story to inspire their injury makeup, and it made the experience more fun. Here is MaLee after “getting punched by a man’s fiance in a bar.”
6. Halloween Food Frenzy
Creating Halloween themed food is so fun! You can have a bake-off with friends, a spooky dessert potluck, or an all-pumpkin recipe party!
7. Halloween Competitions
Friendly-competitions can fire up your creativity and amp up the fun. Go against friends and loved ones and have a house decorating, costume, or pumpkin carving contest.
8. Go Boo People
The nice kind. Similar to cookie ditching, spread some Halloween cheer and leave goodies by someone’s door! Attach one poem card encouraging the “booed” person to carry on the tradition, and one “We’ve Been Booed” card to the goodies. The person will put the “We’ve been Booed” sign in their window to let people know they’ve been booed. This is one of Maegan and Tara’s favorite Halloween activities! Click here to grab one of our cute Booing card sets to put with your treats! (We recommend printing on card stock for more durability.)
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9. Halloween Villages
Create a spook-tacular mini village complete with lights and sound! Scout out your local thrift stores for any cool, cheap pieces, or scout online for unique pieces like this haunted well, pumpkin water tower, or you know, Bone Jovi!
10. Costume-Making Party
This can be a family activity or a fun time with friends! Bring your costume materials and craft supplies, set up a large table, and get creative together.This event can be even more fun if you are doing a group costume, like our cute Curious George and the Man in the Yellow Hat.
Here’s a few costume ideas for you!
11. Dia De los Muertos
This beautiful Mexican holiday centers around remembering family and friends who have passed on. There are many activities you can do to honor your ancestors, such as decorating their grave sites (marigolds are typically used) or researching their histories on ancestry.com. There is a good chance that there is a Day of the Dead festival near you, too, which is sure to be a colorful and uplifting experience. Don’t forget to make treats like sugar skulls (recipe from Sugar and Charm), pan de muerto (recipe from Nibbles and Feasts), tamales (What’s Cooking America), or these adorable sugar skull cookies from My Crazy Good Life!
We also LOVE the movie Coco, which centers all around this holiday.
12. Visit a Candy Making Factory
Don’t wait until Halloween to gorge on candy! You can tour a local candy-making factory or make your own candy at home! Last year, MaLee, Tara, and Makayla made assorted chocolates at Just Add Chocolate in Lehi, UT. Read about their experience here!
13. Attend a Haunted Corn Maze or Witch Village
Skip the Haunted House and get scared outside instead. Shake things up.
14. Movie in the Backyard
Speaking of getting scared outside, watching a movie in the dark increases the creep factor. Bonus points if your house faces woods.
A non-scary alternative? Put on a classic like It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (Tara’s family tradition) or Harry Potter and enjoy a warm bowl of one of our favorite chili recipes!
15. Grab Allll the Halloween Food Freebies & Meal Deals
There are so many freebies and discounts around the 31st. Do a quick search in your area and try to get to every single one! Krispy Kreme, Sonic, IHOP, and Chipotle usually do a Halloween promotion every year.
16. Ghost Story Night
Host a fun evening around a campfire, make some wolf’ems, and bring your best ghost stories to swap! Or, tell a silly ghost story to your kids and have them illustrate it.
17. Escape Room
Nothing like being trapped to get you in the mood for Halloween. Can you get out in 60 minutes?
18. Plants Vs. Zombies Binge
Hook up your console and see how many levels you beat in one sitting. It’s more fun to play Plants vs. Zombies in a group, and is almost as entertaining to watch as it is to play!
Mariah’s kids love the Plants Vs. Zombies soundtrack, which you can buy for $3.99 here.
19. Night Time Games
One of our favorite night games was Ghost in the Graveyard. Try out glow games like glow-in-the-dark bocce, glow bowling, or glow ring toss. You can also put together your own version of Fear Factor.
Have a fun, safe Halloween!
-This Blue Dress Sisters
Hate getting scared but love the fun side of Halloween? Check out Madison’s list of non-spooky activities for adults!
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These are such fun ideas! I did a themed 5K last year with my dogs and it was a blast.
Thank you!
Whhaaat?? I didn’t know there were races you could do with dogs!! That’s so awesome. I’m taking notes for the future when I have a dog. 🙂
Carving pumpkins puts me in a halloween mood, but these are such fun ideas!!
Thanks for your feedback, Joy! 🙂 We love carving pumpkins, too! You should enter our pumpkin carving contest in October.
I wanna do a themed 5k desperately!! They look so fun!
They really are SOO fun! Plus, the race seems to go by faster when there are interesting costumes everywhere.
So many fun ideas here! I’m always so focused on fall activities but Halloween specific ones are fun too!
Thank you so much! 🙂
Love the Boo neighbor idea! We did that last year and my kids still talk about it and just asked me this week who our first BOO will be this year! Love making these traditions!
That is so sweet! I love how excited they are about doing it again this year, too. <3
These are great ideas! I did facepainting a couple of years ago and 5K run!
Those are a couple of our favorites, too! Did you take a face painting class?
No, I didn’t. I was going to but I managed to DIY
This is a great list! I love the “You’ve been booed.” I think thats such a wonderful idea and I want to try that out with my kids!
Thank you! I have yet to go booing, but two of my sisters say it’s so much fun. Let us know how it goes for you 🙂
These are some really great ideas! I did the “You’ve Been Booed” before at work and it’s fun. My other favorite is the masquerade party!
That would be a blast to do at work! Great idea! 🙂
Oh wow, these are great ideas. I love your Four Halloween parties idea. How fun! And I didn’t realize so many places had Halloween food deals. I need to look into these!
-Lauren
http://www.shootingstarsmag.net
Thanks, Lauren! I wish my sisters lived close to me so we could do a little friendly competition. 🙂 And YES, tons of restaurants have Halloween deals. We will post the ones we hear about on our Facebook page!
Love these ideas! Every year my city has a masquerade ball for charity and it’s my dream to go!
That’s something I’d like to do,too. 🙂 I love that they do the masquerade for charity. You should go this year!
Halloween time is one of my favorite. I like the whole idea of taking face painting classes.
I agree- there are so many fun things to do around Halloween! And you should definitely try out a face painting class. It’s really rewarding when you complete a really cool look 🙂
These are such great ideas!! How fun!! We went to a Halloween themed amusement park last weekend, so fun! Love the face painting too!
That sounds so fun! The closest thing I’ve done like that is visit Holiday World. That’s awesome that the whole park was Halloween themed!
We just went to a corn maze!! We plan on doing a few other things I love these ideas. thanks