35 Halloween Writing Prompts for Kids to Tell Spooky Stories

Halloween is the easiest time of year to get a reluctant writer started, because the ideas do half the work. Pumpkins, costumes and friendly ghosts give a child something to picture before they have to write anything down.

The thirty-five below are grouped by what they practise: inventing characters, describing a place, building a twist, seeing things from somebody else's point of view, and quick warm-ups. Each one has a small rule attached, because a rule gives a child somewhere to start. Nothing here is genuinely frightening.

They suit roughly ages six to eleven. For younger children our kindergarten writing prompts work differently, and for something year-round there are writing prompts for kids and elementary writing prompts.

• Read it aloud and talk about it first. Two minutes of talking before writing produces a much better first sentence.
• Set a short timer. Ten minutes for younger children, fifteen for older ones. Stop when it goes off, even mid-sentence.
• Let them draw it. Illustrating the story is part of the work at this age, not a reward for finishing.
• Do not correct spelling in the first draft. Get the ideas down first. Spelling is a separate job for a separate day.

Expand

Seven prompts about inventing a character. The costume is a way in: it is much easier to imagine a personality when you can already picture what it is wearing.

1. The costume wakes up

Your Halloween costume comes to life at midnight. Write about the first thing it says to you, and make it something you did not expect.

2. A costume with a job

Your costume can do one real thing that you cannot do. Write about the day it helps you with it.

3. Stuck in costume

You cannot take your costume off. Write about going to school the next morning.

4. Swapping costumes

You swap costumes with a friend, and you swap personalities too. Write about one hour as them.

5. The costume chose you

You did not pick your costume. It picked you. Write about why it thinks you are the right person to wear it.

6. A costume for somebody else

Design a costume for your pet, your teacher, or somebody in your family. Describe it, then explain why it suits them.

7. The least scary costume ever

Invent the least scary Halloween costume in history. Then write about the one night when it works perfectly.

Expand

Ask what the costume is afraid of. A character with a fear is more interesting than a character with a power, every single time.

Description practice, dressed up as spooky settings. Several of these take something away - a sense, a detail - because limits make children look harder at what they are imagining.

8. The house at the end of the street

There is one house on the street that nobody visits. Describe the front door in five sentences. Do not say what is inside.

9. Sounds in the dark

Write about a spooky place using only sounds. No colours, no shapes, just what you can hear.

10. The polite haunted house

Describe a haunted house where everybody is extremely polite. What does the ghost say when you knock on the door?

11. The path that splits

You are walking through a forest and the path splits in two. Describe both directions, then choose one and say why.

12. Inside the pumpkin

You shrink and climb inside a carved pumpkin. Describe what it looks like and what it smells like from in there.

13. The light in the cellar

There is a light on in a cellar that is supposed to be empty. Write what happens in the next two minutes, then stop there.

14. Spooky in daylight

Describe somewhere spooky in the middle of a sunny afternoon. It should still feel strange, and that is the hard part.

Expand

The most convincing spooky writing uses ordinary details. A door that is slightly open is more unsettling than a door covered in cobwebs.

These are about surprises. A story becomes a story the moment something happens that the reader did not see coming.

15. The sweet that does something

One sweet in your bag is magic. Write about what happens when you eat it, but do not reveal which one it was until the very end.

16. The wrong house

You knock on a door and the person who answers seems to be expecting you, by name. Write what happens next.

17. The great swap

Write about the best swap you ever made at the end of trick-or-treating. Then write the version where it goes badly wrong.

18. The empty bowl

There is a bowl of sweets with a note saying take one. Somebody took all of them. Write the investigation.

19. Reverse Halloween

This year you have to give out treats instead of collecting them. Write about the strangest visitor to your door.

20. The trick that backfires

Somebody plans a small trick and it goes completely differently from how they expected. Write it from their point of view.

21. One sweet left

It is the end of the night and there is one sweet left. Three people want it. Write how they decide.

Expand

Ask them to plan the ending before they start. Twists that were planned land far better than twists invented in the last sentence.

Quietly the most useful group here. Writing from a monster's point of view is practice at imagining how somebody else feels, which is also the hardest thing in writing.

22. The monster who is scared

Write about a monster who is frightened of children. What do they do on Halloween night?

23. Interview a ghost

Interview a ghost who has lived in the same building for a hundred years. Write five questions and their answers.

24. The vampire's ordinary problem

A vampire has a completely ordinary problem, like losing their keys. Write about their evening.

25. The monster under the bed

The monster under your bed is tired of hiding and wants to talk. Write the conversation.

26. New monster in town

A monster moves in next door and does not know anybody. Write about their first week.

27. Monster school

Write about the first day at a school for monsters, from the point of view of the one human who ended up there by mistake.

28. What monsters are afraid of

Make a list of five things monsters find frightening, then write a short story about one of them.

Expand

Give the monster one very ordinary problem. It makes them funnier and more real at the same time.

Warm-ups for when there is not much time, or when somebody is stuck. Good for the start of a lesson.

29. Six-word spooky stories

Write five different spooky stories, each exactly six words long. Count them.

30. Sound effects only

Write a Halloween scene using only sound words. No characters and no explaining.

31. Ten words or fewer

Write the most unsettling sentence you can in ten words or fewer. Nothing gory - just strange.

32. Rewrite a rhyme

Take a nursery rhyme you know and turn it into a Halloween version. Keep the rhythm exactly the same.

33. A magic recipe

Write a recipe for a magic potion. Include one ingredient that would be very hard to find.

34. A polite warning sign

Write a warning sign for the door of a haunted house. Make it extremely polite.

35. One-minute word list

Set a timer for one minute and list every spooky word you can think of. Then use five of them in a single sentence.

Expand

Put the good ones on the wall. Children write more when they can see what they already made.

These work as a full lesson, a ten-minute warm-up, or something to do at the kitchen table while somebody sorts through the sweets. Children can also illustrate their finished stories with an AI image generator, which is popular at this time of year and doubles as a lesson in description: they describe their monster, see what appears, and immediately understand how much detail was missing.

For preparation, an AI idea generator will produce thirty variations of any prompt here so a class is not all writing the same story, and our ChatGPT prompts for teachers cover more of the planning side.

The writing itself should be the child's own. At this age the point is fluency, and a tool that produces the words removes exactly the part that builds it. If you teach older year groups too, the middle school writing prompts carry the same approach forward. Chat Smith is free to try if you want to test any of this before a lesson.