There are many ways to incorporate a little extra scary fun into your Halloween festivities this frightful season. By hosting Halloween scavenger hunts, you can add in a little thoughtful activity that steers away from the usual tricks and treats. Take one of these spooky ideas and run wild with the ghosts and ghouls this Halloween night.
Ghosts, Goblins, Ghouls and Clues
This Halloween night, combine costumes with clues. For the youngest in your family and their little friends, you can create a very simple scavenger hunt using the full benefits of Riddle Me. Easily select the number of participants you will have and their age level. Using simple, easy-to-read clues created directly with the program, send your little ones on a hunt around the house to find both tricks and treats before getting in their costumes and heading into the streets to fill their goody sacks.
Select fun and festive images to decorate their clues or use images that you have taken yourself or found online. Riddle Me clues are created using a simple tool so that you can easily create clues that the children can solve successfully that will lead them from clue to clue. Gaining in confidence and excitement as they solve one clue after the next, they can be rewarded at the end with a bright orange pumpkin just waiting to be carved into a jack-o-lantern or a spooky flashlight to use as they head out for their annual round of trick or treating.
Head into the Graveyard
As most Halloween activities begin at night, set a scary scene by hosting a hunt in your local graveyard. After checking with local authorities to be certain an activity like this is allowed on the premises, set out on making clues that will lead your scavenger hunt guests in and among the headstones to solve a series of riddles. By using the Riddle Me program, you can easily create clues that are age appropriate for guests – young or old. If you have specific clues in mind, you can simply use the program to generate clue cards made from riddles you have created yourself.
Once your young guests have arrived, arm them with flashlights, divide them into groups or send them all out in one large pack to solve one spooky riddle after the next. Lead them to specific headstones with identifying features where they can pick up the next clue in the series. You can put these clues over very large statue headstones that are easily recognisable such as natural landmarks throughout the cemetery that can be identified with distinctive flags, headstone engravings or interesting names of the deceased. This will allow you to make more specific clues that the children will need to work together to solve or find before they can collect their next clue and move the hunt along.
When the children have successfully completed their hunt, they can be rewarded with a special Halloween treat as a prize for their hard work.
Set a Spooky Atmosphere
After preparing Riddle Me Clues complete with fun, Halloween-themed background images for the kids, you can send them on a scavenger hunt through a spooky haunted house. You will need some Halloween scene ideas to help you create a frightening scavenger hunt atmosphere for your children or young guests. Of course, you will have to be mindful of your space as the scenes you can create will depend on the space you have available.
One spooky idea is to use a large, inexpensive net and an oversized fake plastic spider to create a large spider’s web where you can strategically place one of the clues on. Better yet, place it in the center of a big web full of tons of little plastic spiders for an extra scary effect. After the kids solve their clue, they will have to send the bravest of the bunch into the swarm of spiders to grab their next clue.
Other spooky places where you can hide subsequent clues are in a bat cave full of bats, in a coffin with a vampire sleeping inside, attached to a hanging man or ghost, or hanging along a wall of unnerving missing children or wanted posters. The scavenger hunt will allow the kids to use a little brain power to determine where to find their next clue and the scary setting will give them that perfect fear factor for a fun Halloween night.
Frightening Food
To create this frightening food scavenger hunt, use Riddle Me to create invites and organize the whole event beforehand. For this hunt, the kids can try their hand at making scary food creations by using clues. These clues will help them find the correct ingredients that they will need to make their funky treats. The kids can be divided into groups that will each be creating a different type of Halloween party food. Once the kids have been put on a team, they will receive their first Riddle Me clue. The solution to the riddle will be a specific ingredient that they will need to create their treat. When they solve the riddle, they will head into a pantry or refrigerator area and find that ingredient before running it back to their cooking station. An adult judge will verify that they have successfully solved their first riddle and will hand them the clue to their second ingredient.
To make things fair and balanced, depending on the number of ingredients in their treat, teams may begin with a station that already has some of the needed ingredients. Make sure that each team has an equal number of riddles to solve before they can proceed with making their treat. Once all the riddles have been successfully solved and all the ingredients returned to their cooking station, they will receive a recipe that they will have to read and work through together to create their spooky treat. From eye ball cookies to jello worms in straws or frozen whipped cream brains for topping hot chocolate, the spooky food creations are only limited by your imagination and budget. Just be sure that you have gathered all the ingredients, created clues that are able to be easily solved and have patient adult assistants that can help the kids successfully execute their treats.
Once the treats have been made, after a round of trick or treating, all the kids can return home to a Halloween party of their own creation and get a taste of that frightful food.
The Night of the Dead
This idea might be more suitable if you are hosting a Halloween scavenger hunt for adults as the clues will reference historical events or pop culture icons. First, you’ll need to think of historical figures or pop stars who have met with tragic or untimely endings. Select people that are well-known personalities from history like Marie Antoinette, Caesar, Houdini or John F. Kennedy. To broaden the range of the riddles you can create, it’s a good idea to include some pop stars or pop icons as well, like Princess Diana, Amy Winehouse, Elvis Presley or Tupac Shakur.
Next, you’ll want to find head shots online of each of the people you have selected. Next do some simple editing to add a spooky black line over their eyes, just to give them an added fear factor and print them out, each on a full page. Now you’ll have to create riddles or rhymes that describe each person. Select a large outdoor space, such as a nearby forest, farm or park, and hang the images throughout the space.
At dusk, gather your friends and guests together and divide them into teams. Hand out sufficient flashlights for the groups. It’s okay to add a level of mischief and fill some of the flashlights with batteries that are nearly dead and offer dim and inconsistent light. It is Halloween after all. Each team will follow a different course that will send them from one personality to the next as they solve their riddles and clues. First, they must successfully solve their clue, then they must find the image of the person out in the dark. If they have in fact found a correct image, they will find an envelope containing their next clue. Be sure to mark it with a sticker that identifies it as their teams’ clue and perhaps provide the order number, in case the group has difficulty with a riddle and happens upon the incorrect face.
It will be a spooky evening as your guests revisit the dead from the distant and near past as they work their way to the end of the scavenger hunt. The first team to successfully complete their night walk through the faces of the dead can be rewarded with an official Halloween prize.
Trick or treating doesn’t have to be the only fun had on this spooky holiday. Hosting Halloween scavenger hunts can be a great way to level-up your frightful fun this year. To know how exactly to work set up a scavenger hunt with Riddle Me, watch the demo video right now!