Halloween Book Trivia
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98 free Halloween Book trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Halloween book trivia quiz covers the reading list for the spookiest month: the Gothic classics people rediscover every October, from Frankenstein and Dracula to The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The Raven, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and The Turn of the Screw, plus modern horror from Shirley Jackson, Ira Levin, William Peter Blatty, Anne Rice and Stephen King. Ray Bradbury's two great Halloween novels are here, and so is Agatha Christie's murder at an apple-bobbing party. It also covers the books children reach for: Goosebumps, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Room on the Broom, Meg and Mog, Roald Dahl's The Witches, Bunnicula and Neil Gaiman's Coraline and The Graveyard Book. About a third of the questions are easy for anyone who has read the books or seen the films, a third need a closer memory of plots and authors, and the rest reward the readers who know the publishing dates and the stories behind the stories. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the books before publishing, and each question carries the sentence that establishes it. If you think one is wrong, use the report button and we will look again.
30 of 98 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the subtitle of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein?
The Modern Prometheus
The Modern Prometheus casts Victor as the Titan who, in some Greek myths, shaped humankind from clay and was punished by the gods; Shelley's first edition of 1818 carried no author's name.
Q 02At whose villa on Lake Geneva did the 1816 ghost-story contest that produced Frankenstein take place?
Lord Byron's
Lord Byron's rented Villa Diodati hosted the contest: the rainy 'Year Without a Summer' of 1816 kept Byron, Polidori, Percy Shelley and Mary Godwin indoors, and her entry grew into Frankenstein.
Q 03Who leads the hunt for the Count in Dracula?
Van Helsing
Van Helsing is called over from Amsterdam by his old student Dr Seward to treat Lucy Westenra, and he orders blood transfusions before he dares to name the cause.
Q 04Which English seaside town does Dracula plague after arriving from Transylvania?
Whitby
Whitby: the Count's ship runs aground below the East Cliff in a storm and he leaps ashore as an immense dog. Stoker holidayed in the town in 1890 and is said to have found the name Dracula in its public library.
Q 05What is the profession of Jonathan Harker, whose visit to the Count opens Dracula?
Solicitor
Harker is a solicitor: he has just passed his examinations when his employer Peter Hawkins sends him to Transylvania to complete the Count's purchase of Carfax, an estate near Purfleet.
Q 06Which Washington Irving collection contains both The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle?
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon came out in instalments in 1819-20 while Irving was living in England; he wrote Rip Van Winkle overnight at his sister's house in Birmingham.
Q 07What is found near the bridge the morning after Ichabod Crane vanishes?
His hat and a smashed pumpkin
His hat and a smashed pumpkin lie by the brook, a hint that the 'head' hurled at him was no ghost's; his rival, who soon marries Katrina, laughs whenever the pumpkin is mentioned.
Q 08What is the name of Ichabod Crane's rival for Katrina Van Tassel?
Brom Bones
Abraham "Brom Bones" Van Brunt torments the nervous schoolmaster with pranks rather than confronting him.
Q 09In Poe's 'The Raven', the bird perches on a bust of which goddess?
Pallas Athena
Pallas Athena: the raven settles on 'a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door', and from the head of the goddess of wisdom it answers every question the narrator asks with 'Nevermore'.
Q 10Which Charles Dickens novel, with a talking raven, partly inspired Poe's "The Raven"?
Barnaby Rudge
Barnaby Rudge (1841) features Grip, a talking raven; Poe reviewed the novel and wished the bird had been used more prophetically. He also borrowed the metre of Elizabeth Barrett's 'Lady Geraldine's Courtship'.
Q 11In Poe's 'The Raven', which lost love is the narrator mourning?
Lenore
Lenore is the 'rare and radiant maiden' he grieves for; Poe later argued that the death of a beautiful woman is 'the most poetical topic in the world', and built the poem around her loss.
Q 12What was the title of the first Goosebumps book, published in July 1992?
Welcome to Dead House
Welcome to Dead House, in which Amanda and Josh Benson move to the town of Dark Falls and find the neighbours are living dead, launched Goosebumps in July 1992.
Q 13Which Goosebumps book traps Carly Beth inside her Halloween costume?
The Haunted Mask
Q 21What does the Other Mother want to sew over Coraline's eyes?
Buttons
Buttons: everyone in the world beyond the door has black buttons for eyes, and the Other Mother offers to sew a pair onto Coraline so she can stay forever. Gaiman began the novella in 1990 and published it in 2002.
Q 22Which director made both The Nightmare Before Christmas and the 2009 stop-motion film of Coraline?
Henry Selick
Henry Selick directed both films; for Coraline he added a boy called Wybie, who is not in Gaiman's book, so that Coraline would not seem to be talking to herself all the time.
Q 23What is the name of the boy raised by ghosts in Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book?
Nobody Owens
The Haunted Mask fuses to Carly Beth's face after she buys it for Halloween; Stine says the idea came one Halloween when his son Matt pulled on a mask and struggled to get it off.
Q 14Which actor plays a fictionalised R. L. Stine in the 2015 film Goosebumps?
Jack Black
Jack Black plays a fictionalised R. L. Stine in Goosebumps (2015), whose monsters escape from his locked manuscripts; he also voices the dummy Slappy and returned for Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween (2018).
Q 15Who wrote the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books?
Alvin Schwartz
Alvin Schwartz drew the three collections (1981-1991) from folklore and urban legends; Stephen Gammell's nightmarish drawings were replaced by Brett Helquist's in 2011, then restored in later printings.
Q 16Per the American Library Association, what distinction did Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark hold in the 1990s?
Most challenged book series
Most challenged book series: Scary Stories topped the ALA's list for 1990-1999 and was still seventh for 2000-2009, with complaints calling it too violent and unsuited to its age group.
Q 17Who wrote Room on the Broom, the picture book about a kind witch and her cat?
Julia Donaldson
Julia Donaldson's witch keeps making room for strays, and they repay her by scaring off a dragon that wants to eat her; the 2012 animated film of the book was nominated for an Oscar.
Q 18Which three animals join the witch and her cat on the broomstick in Room on the Broom?
Dog, bird and frog
Dog, bird and frog each return something the witch dropped (hat, bow and wand) and hitch a ride; when the broom snaps over a bog, they pose as one muddy monster to scare off a dragon.
Q 19In Roald Dahl's The Witches, what does the Grand High Witch plan to turn all of England's children into?
Mice
Mice: the Grand High Witch unveils Formula 86 Delayed-Action Mouse-Maker to turn every child in England into a mouse; the narrator, eavesdropping at a Bournemouth hotel, is transformed himself.
Q 20Who played the Grand High Witch in the 1990 film of The Witches?
Anjelica Huston
Anjelica Huston's witch sheds her glamorous disguise to reveal a monster built by Jim Henson's Creature Shop, on the last film project Henson worked on before he died.
Nobody Owens, called Bod, is adopted by the ghosts Mr and Mrs Owens after his family is murdered by the man Jack; his guardian Silas, neither living nor dead, brings him food from the world outside.
Q 24The Graveyard Book was the first book to win which two children's book medals?
Carnegie and Newbery
Carnegie and Newbery: no book had taken both the leading British and American children's prizes before; Gaiman got the idea watching his small son ride a tricycle among gravestones.
Q 25In James and Deborah Howe's Bunnicula, what does the pet rabbit seem to feed on at night?
Vegetables
Vegetables turn up drained white with two tiny holes, which convinces Chester the cat that the new rabbit is a vampire; Harold the dog narrates.
Q 26Which Bradbury novel follows eight boys and Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud on a journey through time?
The Halloween Tree
The Halloween Tree sends the boys from ancient Egypt to Mexico's Day of the Dead in a race to save their friend Pipkin; Bradbury himself wrote and narrated the animated film of it in 1993.
Q 27In Something Wicked This Way Comes, which fairground ride can make its riders older or younger?
The carousel
The carousel adds years when it turns forwards and takes them away in reverse; the boys watch Mr Cooger ride it backwards and step off as a twelve-year-old.
Q 28Which Shakespeare play supplies the title Something Wicked This Way Comes?
Macbeth
Macbeth: the Second Witch says 'By the pricking of my thumbs, / Something wicked this way comes' in Act 4, Scene 1, just before Macbeth enters to demand prophecies from the witches.
Q 29Which character's investigation of Jekyll's will drives Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde?
Gabriel John Utterson
Gabriel John Utterson, Jekyll's lawyer, starts digging when the doctor's will leaves everything to the unknown Mr Hyde; Stevenson had long been fascinated by Deacon Brodie, an Edinburgh councillor who burgled by night.
Q 30Who wrote the 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House?
Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson's Dr Montague rents Hill House for a summer and invites people who have brushed against the paranormal; only two say yes, the artist Theodora and the shy Eleanor Vance.