Halloween Bingo

About this template

Halloween Bingo is for trick-or-treat night, costume parties, and the whole spooky-season weekend. Each card tracks Halloween tropes: the kid who came as something nobody recognises, the adult who tried too hard, the doorbell ring with no kids in sight, the inevitable Thriller dance break at the costume party.

It's a great game for hosts and trick-or-treat-walkers alike. Hosts mark squares from the front porch as costumes arrive; walkers mark squares as they hit houses with full-size candy bars, scary lawn decorations, or motion-activated jumpscares.

When to use it

• Trick-or-treat night for parents walking with kids.
• Halloween house parties with costumes.
• Horror-movie marathon nights.
• Office Halloween parties with costume contests.
• Trunk-or-treat events at schools and community centres.

Hosting tips

• Print the card before the night starts — once costumes arrive, you want to be marking, not designing.
• Use different cards for different roles. Parents walking with kids see different things than hosts handing out candy.
• Include some 'costume tropes' (somebody as a generic ghost, an out-of-season costume, a perfectly-coordinated couple) and some 'event tropes' (full-size candy bar house, smoke machine on porch, dog wearing a costume).
• For hosting at home, set a small prize for the first kid to call bingo on their own card — turn the doorbell into a game.

Variations

• Costume bingo — squares are costume archetypes (group dressed as Pixar characters, sexy version of a non-sexy thing, kid in a homemade cardboard box).
• Horror-movie bingo — slasher tropes, jump-scare patterns, the obligatory power outage.
• Decor bingo — porch decorations, lawn decorations, the inevitable inflatable.
• Trick-or-treat route bingo — squares mark the things that happen on a 2-hour walk around the neighbourhood.