Movies & Shows
The Addams Family is an iconic cartoon that has been adapted into several films and television shows, and musicals. A Halloween party at their house would be a night to remember - if you survived it. The oldest child of the Addams family has become famous in her own right. She even has a Netflix series named after her. What is her name?
A) Morticia
B) Wednesday
C) Christine
B - Wednesday
In the late 1900s, a quirky ghost-themed movie was released with an iconic song featuring the lyrics:
"If you see something strange in the neighborhood, who you gonna call?"
What is the name of the movie?
Ghostbusters
What is the name of the horror novel written by Mary Shelley in which a college student named Victor reanimates a body in the basement of his dormitory (in most movie adaptations, he's an older gent in a laboratory)? Bonus points if you can remember the full title!
Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was written circa 1819 by American chappie Washington Irving (whose initials, by the way, are the inverse of mine). Sleepy Hollow is about a phantom known as the Headless Horseman who rides a jet-black horse and wears a Jack O'Lantern head with two burning red eyes. What is the name of the school teacher who is tormented by the Headless Horseman?
A) John Jacob Jingleheimer Smith
B) Cauldwell Black
C) Ichabod Crane
C) Ichabod Crane
In "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown," a Halloween-themed cartoon featuring the beloved Peanuts comic strip characters, Linus believes that the Great Pumpkin will appear in "the most sincere" pumpkin patch on Halloween night and ...
A) Give presents to children
B) Predict the future
C) Turn into a pumpkin carriage
A - Linus believes the Great Pumpkin will appear with a bag full of presents to give to children.
In the 1944 horror comedy Arsenic and Old Lace, Cary Grant's character, Mortimer Brewster, informs his long-absent brother, Jonathan Brewster, "You look like Boris Karloff!" Boris Karloff originated the role of Jonathan Brewster in the Broadway play that the Cary Grant film was based off. Boris Karloff is famous for playing what "monster" on television?
A) Frankenstein's monster
B) Dracula
C) the Wolfman
A - Frankenstein's "monster"
Which artist released the pop song 'vampire' in the year 2023?
A) Dua Lipa
B) Olivia Rodrigo
C) Taylor Swift
B - Olivia Rodrigo released 'vampire' as the first single in her sophomore album GUTS
In her novel Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen writes about Catherine Moorland, a teenage girl who visits Northanger Abbey, the house of her prospective love interest, Henry Tilney. Catherine is obsessed with Gothic novels, and convinces herself that the abbey is haunted. Then she persuades herself that Henry Tilney's father, General Tilney, has got his allegedly deceased wife trapped in his attic. When she confides her theories to Henry Tilney, he replies, "That sort of thing doesn't happen in England."
However, in what Gothic novel, published almost 30 years after Northanger Abbey and also set in England, does a character actually have his wife locked in his attic?
A) Wuthering Heights
B) Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
C) Jane Eyre
C - Jane Eyre
Vampires are undead ghouls with a passion for red liquid. There have been a handful of real people described as vampires, perhaps the most notable being Vlad the Impaler in the 1400s. According to legend, you can only kill a vampire by driving a wooden stake through its heart. To be fair, most of us wouldn't survive that. And vampires are supposedly deterred by an odoriferous vegetable that also deters most people if they're around too much of it.
The vegetable to which I'm referring is, of course:
A) carrots
B) garlic
C) onions
B - Garlic!
True or False: After the death of her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley kept his heart in a wooden box until her own death almost 30 years later. After Mary's death, the box containing the heart was given to their son Percy Florence Shelley, who, at his own death, was buried with it.
That is true! At his cremation, Percy Bysshe Shelley's heart remained intact, and his friend Leigh Hunt pulled it from the ashes and gave it to Mary. Though, there is some dispute over whether it was actually Percy's heart, or if it was some other organ.
Sabrina the Teenage Witch was a sitcom series that ran from 1996 - 2003, starring the character Sabrina Spellman, who discovers she is a witch on her 16th birthday. The series follows her as she navigates her way through the rules of witchcraft and the insanity known as teen years. At least she's got a cute, feisty black cat.
What is the name of the actor who portrayed Sabrina Spellman in this TV show?
A) Melissa Joan Hart
B) Kiernan Shipka
C) Ashley Tisdale
A - Melissa Joan Hart
Complete the lyric to the iconic 1962 Halloween song Monster Mash by Bobby "Boris" Pickett & The Crypt Kickers.
"Out from his coffin, Drac's voice did ring/ Seems he was troubled by just one thing/ He opened the lid and shook his fist/ He said/ ..."
"Whatever happened to my Transylvania Twist?"
Romanticism was a movement in 1800s English literature that explored the intricacy of human emotion. It went hand-in-hand with the Gothic movement, which explores the propensity our emotions have to drive us insane. Name the 1840s Gothic horror novel in which the anti-hero speaks these lines: "You said I killed you - haunt me, then!"
A) Frankenstein
B) Wuthering Heights
C) Gone with the Wind
B - Wuthering Heights (the line is spoken by Heathcliff)
Loch Ness is a lake in Scotland whose maximum depth is roughly 755 feet. It is famously inhabited by the Loch Ness Monster - aka Nessie. True or False: in the 1930s, a lad working at the Glasgow University Museum put forth the theory that Nessie was, in fact, a circus elephant who had somehow wandered into the loch and decided to vibe there for a bit, and that the famous photos of a serpentine head raising out of the water was, in fact, the elephant's trunk.
True! A paleontologist named Neil Clark at the Glasgow University Museum did, in fact, suggest this.
True or False: during the Victorian era, there was a popular Halloween game called Apple and Candle, in which players would tie an apple to one end of a string and a candle to the other end. The string would be hung from the ceiling, then spun. Each player would try to catch the apple in their mouth. If they missed, they'd end up getting smacked in the face by the hot wax of the candle.
True! I decided to be nice to you guys and not do that game for this party.
Alfred Hitchcock was an American director. Some of his most famous titles include Rear Window, North by Northwest, and Psycho, which is the reason I don't shower when I'm alone in the house. Daphne du Maurier was a legendary British writer most famous for her novel Rebecca. What is the name of the Daphne du Maurier short story Alfred Hitchcock adapted into a film?
A) The Birds
B) After Midnight
C) Turn of the Screw
A - The Birds (which is the reason large flocks of birds freak me out)
Which singer has a song titled 'Waking the Witch?'
A) Kate Bush
B) Lana Del Ray
C) Taylor Swift
A - Kate Bush has a song titled 'Waking the Witch' on her album 'Hounds of Love.'
In 1816, during a stormy summer, the poet Lord Byron challenged his friends Percy Bysshe Shelley, Percy's future wife Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, Mary's stepsister Claire, and Byron's physician John William Pollidori to a writing contest while they were all staying in a villa on Lake Geneva in Switzerland. Their Lake Geneva writing contest produced three works that were met with critical acclaim upon publication, the most famous being Mary Godwin (later Mary Shelley)'s novel Frankenstein. The second work was an unfinished story by Lord Byron. The third work was a novel John William Pollidori titled The Vampyre. Although not widely known now, The Vampyre did help inspire an Irish author who published a fiction work about vampires in 1897. What was the name of said Irish author?
A) Aldous Huxley
B) Bram Stoker
C) Oscar Wilde
B - Bram Stoker
True or False: During the pagan festival Samhain, from which our modern-day Halloween was derived, it was tradition to carve small designs into acorns, then throw the acorns into the fire as a way to send messages to the spirit world.
False! As far as I know, this did not occur. But people would carve turnips, potatoes, and beets, hollow them out, and place a candle inside, as we do nowadays with pumpkins.
According to various censuses, the most popular Halloween costume of 2025 came straight from a hit movie released on Netflix. Which movie was this?
A) Wicked
B) Wednesday
C) K-Pop Demon Hunters
C - K-Kop Demon Hunters
The Phantom of the Opera has a somewhat questionable plot, but beautiful music. Originally a novel by Gaston Leroux, it became the longest running musical on Broadway and was adapted into a movie in 2004 starring Emmy Rossum and Gerard Butler as Christine and the phantom, respectively. Complete the following lyric from the show's title song "The Phantom of the Opera":
"Sing once again with me/ our strange duet/ my power over you ..."
"Grows stronger yet"
You may have heard of the band 1970s band KISS. During shows, KISS's special effects included things breathing fire and spitting blood, and their wardrobes were about 50% leather, 50% glitter. Rock star aesthetic all the way. True or false: KISS's lead singer and front man Paul Stanley (aka Starchild) and his co-founder Gene Simmons (aka Demon) would perform a ritual before every show during which they would set their guitars together on the floor, drew a pentagram around them, and prayed to the rock n roll gods.
False, as far as I know, though given their other antics, I wouldn't put anything past 'em
Oscar Wilde was a famous Irish writer primarily known for his play The Importance of Being Earnest. Oscar Wilde only wrote one novel - but what a novel! His chilling, psychological work was about a handsome young man whose soul becomes trapped in his newly commissioned portrait. Without his soul, the young man becomes spiteful, immoral, and eventually evil. What is the title of Oscar Wilde's novel?
A) Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
B) Picture of Dorian Grey
C) Portrait of a Lady
B - Picture of Dorian Grey
True or False: Shortly before his death, Edgar Allan Poe wrote to a friend that he intended to put a curse on his grave: if his grave was disturbed in any way, those who disturbed it would be punished. Poe was buried in an unmarked grave. Years after his death, his remains were exhumed so that he might be moved to a more prestigious gravesite. Reports of the "curse" were not taken seriously, but one week after his coffin was moved, the man who dug up Poe's remains found a dozen ravens nesting in the rafters of his barn.
False! There is no record of Poe having cursed his grave. However, Poe actually did put a curse on a pub called Deer Park Tavern ("All who enter it shall have to return!"), which was met with enthusiasm from the patrons.
If you want to summon Bloody Mary (the knife-wielding spirit not the cocktail), you would say her name 3 times (or 13 times - the internet couldn't make up its mind) while standing in front of what?
A) a mirror
B) a closed door
C) a window
A - a mirror