Halloween Word Search

About this puzzle

This Halloween word search mixes the fun stuff kids shout out first, like Pumpkin, Bat, Costume, and Candy Corn, with words that carry real history. Samhain is the old Gaelic festival at the root of the holiday, Jack O Lantern traces back to an Irish tale about a man too stingy to be let into heaven or hell, and Frankenstein was written by a teenager.

It works well as a quiet activity during a classroom Halloween party, a placemat puzzle before trick-or-treating, or a warm-up for older students reading Macbeth. Easy keeps to friendly favorites, while Hard adds harvest traditions like the Hayride, Corn Maze, and Caramel Apple. Every word has a short note, so a teacher can turn a ten-minute puzzle into a quick lesson on why we carve pumpkins and wear masks each October.

The 35 words in this puzzle

Every word, with a short note. Handy for teaching the vocabulary before or after solving.

In every version (12)

Bat

Bats are the only mammals that can truly fly. One popular explanation for their spooky reputation is that harvest bonfires drew insects, and bats swooped in to catch them.

Black Cat

Medieval Europeans often linked black cats with witchcraft, but in Britain and Japan a black cat crossing your path has long been considered good luck.

Candy Corn

Candy makers were producing these three-colored kernels by the 1880s. Early boxes were sometimes sold as Chicken Feed, since corn was what farmers fed their chickens.

Costume

Dressing up grew partly out of guising in Scotland and Ireland, where people in disguise went door to door offering a song, a joke, or a verse in exchange for food.

Ghost

The word comes from the Old English "gast," meaning spirit or soul, which is also why the Holy Spirit was once called the Holy Ghost.

Monster

The word monster comes from the Latin monstrum, which meant an omen or warning. Friendly monsters with fuzzy fur and goofy grins are favorite costumes for young trick-or-treaters.

Mummy

Ancient Egyptians preserved bodies by drying them with a salt called natron and wrapping them in linen. Boris Karloff starred in the classic 1932 film The Mummy.

Pumpkin

The word traces back to the Greek "pepon," meaning large melon. Botanically, a pumpkin is a fruit, since it grows from a flower and holds seeds, and it is a close cousin of squash.

Skeleton

An adult human skeleton has 206 bones. Babies are born with more, but many of those fuse together as the body grows.

Spider

Spiders are arachnids, not insects, with eight legs instead of six. Most are harmless to people and helpful in gardens, where they catch flies and other pests.

Vampire

Vampire legends come from Eastern European folklore, but Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula created the caped, aristocratic vampire most people picture today.

Witch

The pointed hat, black cloak, and broom became the standard Halloween witch in American postcards and illustrations around the early 1900s.

Added in Medium and Hard (8)

Broomstick

Witches riding brooms show up in European art by the 1450s, when a French manuscript sketched two women flying on a broom and a stick in its margins.

Cauldron

A cauldron is a large metal cooking pot hung over a fire. In Shakespeare's Macbeth, three witches chant "Fire burn and cauldron bubble" while stirring one.

Full Moon

A full moon comes about every 29.5 days. The one nearest the fall equinox is called the Harvest Moon, because its bright light helped farmers gather crops after sunset.

Haunted House

Walk-through haunted attractions became an American Halloween fixture in the twentieth century, and Disneyland's Haunted Mansion opened in 1969.

Jack O Lantern

The name comes from an Irish folktale about Stingy Jack, who wandered the dark with a coal inside a hollowed turnip. Irish and Scottish carvers used turnips before pumpkins took over in America.

Scarecrow

Farmers have stood scarecrows in fields for thousands of years to frighten birds away from seeds and crops, which is why they turn up in so many fall decorations.

Trick or Treat

The phrase spread across North America in the 1920s and 1930s. Some of the earliest known printed examples appeared in Canadian newspapers, in Ontario in 1917 and Alberta in 1927.

Werewolf

The word combines the Old English "wer," meaning man, with wolf. The idea that a full moon triggers the change was popularized largely by twentieth-century films.

Added in Hard (15)

All Hallows

All Hallows' Eve, the night before All Hallows' Day on November 1, gave Halloween its name. Hallow is an old English word for a saint or holy person.

Bonfire

The word bonfire comes from bone fire, since early fires sometimes burned animal bones. Large bonfires were lit at Samhain to mark the turn from harvest toward winter.

Boo

Boo is the classic word for giving someone a playful scare. Some neighborhoods have a booing tradition, leaving a bag of treats on a doorstep with a note saying you've been booed.

Caramel Apple

A caramel apple is a crisp apple on a stick, dipped in warm, gooey caramel. A Kraft Foods employee named Dan Walker is often credited with inventing it in the 1950s.

Cobweb

The "cob" part comes from an old English word for spider, "coppe," so a cobweb is simply a spider web. Dusty, abandoned webs are the ones usually called cobwebs.

Corn Maze

A corn maze is a puzzle path cut through a tall cornfield. Many are planned from above to form giant pictures, and they became a popular fall outing in the 1990s.

Crystal Ball

A fortune teller's crystal ball is a clear glass or crystal sphere. In stories, gazing into one reveals the future, which makes it a favorite prop at Halloween carnivals.

Dracula

Count Dracula is the vampire villain of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel. Bela Lugosi's 1931 film performance, with its swirling cape and slicked-back hair, shaped the costume kids still wear.

Frankenstein

Mary Shelley began writing Frankenstein when she was 18, and it was published in 1818. Frankenstein is actually the scientist's name; the creature he builds is never given one.

Goblin

Goblins are small, mischievous creatures from European folklore. James Whitcomb Riley's 1885 poem Little Orphant Annie warned readers that the goblins will get you if you don't watch out.

Graveyard

A graveyard traditionally means a burial ground beside a church, while a cemetery is a separate plot of land set aside for burials.

Hayride

A hayride is a slow, bumpy trip through the fields on a wagon piled with hay, usually pulled by a tractor. Many farms offer hayrides alongside their pumpkin patches each October.

Mask

Masks are among the oldest disguises people have worn at celebrations around the world. On Halloween, a mask can turn a trick-or-treater into anyone, from a superhero to a friendly ghost.

Potion

Potion comes from the Latin "potio," meaning a drink. In fairy tales and Halloween stories, potions are brewed to cast spells, cure illness, or cause mischief.

Samhain

Pronounced SOW-in, Samhain was a Gaelic festival marking the end of the harvest around October 31 and November 1, when the boundary to the spirit world was thought to be thin.

A few facts to share while you solve

• Halloween is a shortened form of All Hallows' Eve, the evening before All Saints' Day on November 1.
• The famous escape artist Harry Houdini died on Halloween in 1926, and some fans still hold séances on October 31 in his memory.
• Illinois usually grows more pumpkins than any other U.S. state, and much of that crop is a variety raised for canned pumpkin rather than carving.

Four versions of this puzzle

Pick a version with the buttons above the grid. Each one has its own grid and answer key, and your progress on each is saved separately in this browser.

Hard and large print versions

Hard halloween word search: all 35 words on a 19 × 19 grid, hidden forward, backward, up, down and along both diagonals, with filler letters borrowed from the word list. Print it without the word list for an extra challenge. Play the hard version, or see all hard word searches.

Large print halloween word search: the 12 most familiar words on a 11 × 11 grid, printed with big letters and a big word list, and no backwards words. Play the large print version, or see all large print word searches.

Printing this word search

Press Print / PDF above the puzzle. You get a clean one-page sheet with the title, the grid, a word list with tick boxes, and optional name and date lines. The answer key prints on a second page. Prefer a file? Download it as a PDF or an image to print later or drop into a worksheet. Whatever version is showing on screen is the one that prints, and the large print version prints with bigger letters.

How to play online

1. Find a word from the list in the grid. Scanning for its first letter is the quickest way.
2. Drag across the word from its first letter to its last. On a phone, you can also tap the first letter, then the last.
3. Found words get highlighted and crossed off. Stuck? Hint circles the first letter of a word you haven’t found.

Read the full guide to solving word searches, with tips that make big grids much faster.