Halloween Songs
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6correct to beat the crowd
87 free Halloween Songs trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
40 free Halloween Songs trivia questions with answers. Every Halloween party runs on the same twenty songs, and almost nobody knows the stories behind them: the BBC banned Monster Mash as 'too morbid', Thriller started life as a song called 'Starlight', Ghostbusters cost Ray Parker Jr. a lawsuit settlement to Huey Lewis, and the Addams Family finger-snaps come from a harpsichord arrangement written in 1964. This quiz runs through the playlist: novelty hits (Monster Mash, Purple People Eater), 80s staples (Thriller, Ghostbusters, Somebody's Watching Me), rock and goth (Werewolves of London, Bad Moon Rising, Bela Lugosi's Dead, Highway to Hell), film and stage songs (Time Warp, This Is Halloween, I Put a Spell on You from Hocus Pocus, the Halloween theme), and the classical pieces that soundtrack every haunted house: Danse macabre, Night on Bald Mountain and Bach's Toccata and Fugue. Easy openers, hard ones for the person who runs the aux cord. Use it as a music round at a Halloween quiz or a party game between tracks. Every answer was checked against a documented source and the citation sits under each explanation.
30 of 87 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who recorded the 1962 novelty hit 'Monster Mash' with a Boris Karloff impression?
Bobby Pickett
Bobby Pickett was an aspiring actor whose Karloff voice in a cover of 'Little Darlin'' went down so well that a bandmate urged him to build a song around it.
Q 02Which broadcaster banned 'Monster Mash' as 'too morbid' when it topped the Hot 100 in 1962?
The BBC
The BBC kept the record off British radio in 1962, so it only became a UK hit eleven years later, when a 1973 reissue climbed to number three.
Q 03Which horror actor performs the spoken-word 'rap' at the end of the title track of Thriller?
Vincent Price
Vincent Price read lines that songwriter Rod Temperton had dashed off in a taxi on the way to the studio that same day.
Q 04What was the title of Rod Temperton's first draft of the song 'Thriller'?
Starlight
Starlight was Temperton's first title, with a chorus about a 'starlight sun'; Quincy Jones wanted a stronger name for the album, and 'Thriller' followed.
Q 05Who wrote and performed the 1984 theme song 'Ghostbusters'?
Ray Parker Jr.
Ray Parker Jr. had only a few days to write it, and said the hard part was the order to work the film's awkward title into the lyric.
Q 06Which artist sued over 'Ghostbusters', claiming its melody was lifted from 'I Want a New Drug'?
Huey Lewis
Huey Lewis settled out of court, then was sued in turn in 2001 for breaking the deal's confidentiality by talking about it on VH1's Behind the Music.
Q 07Which superstar sang uncredited chorus vocals on Rockwell's 1984 hit 'Somebody's Watching Me'?
Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson's voice on the chorus reportedly won over Motown founder Berry Gordy, who had shown little faith in the music of his son Kennedy, alias Rockwell.
Q 08'This Is Halloween', sung by the citizens of Halloween Town, was written for which 1993 film?
The Nightmare Before Christmas
The Nightmare Before Christmas composer Danny Elfman wrote it and also gave Jack Skellington his singing voice, while Chris Sarandon spoke the lines.
Q 09In 'Time Warp' from The Rocky Horror Show, what comes after 'a jump to the left'?
A step to the right
A step to the right comes next, and audiences have long got up to follow the instructions themselves at late-night screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Q 10Who first recorded 'I Put a Spell on You' in 1956, reportedly after the producer got the band drunk?
Screamin' Jay Hawkins
Screamin' Jay Hawkins had planned a refined ballad before the boozy session turned it into a howl, and he was soon rising out of a coffin on stage.
Q 11In 'Werewolves of London', the werewolf goes to Lee Ho Fook's to get 'a big dish' of what?
Beef chow mein
Beef chow mein was the order at Lee Ho Fook, a real restaurant in London's Chinatown; the song grew from Phil Everly's joking request for a dance tune with that title.
Q 12Stevie Wonder wrote 'Superstition' in sessions with which British guitarist, who was meant to release it first?
Jeff Beck
Jeff Beck was promised the song in return for playing on Wonder's album, but Wonder's own version came out months earlier and went to number one.
Q 13Which composer wrote 'Night on Bald Mountain', finishing it on St John's Eve 1867?
Modest Mussorgsky
Q 21Which singer co-wrote Rihanna's 'Disturbia', originally planning it for his own album?
Chris Brown
Chris Brown and his writing team finished it for a reissue of his own album, then decided it suited a female singer better and passed it to Rihanna.
Q 22Which Irish band wrote 'Zombie' in protest at a 1993 IRA bombing?
The Cranberries
The Cranberries' Dolores O'Riordan wrote it after the Warrington bombing killed two children; since her death in 2018, Irish hurling and rugby crowds have adopted it as an anthem.
Q 23Which Talking Heads member supplied the French lyrics in 'Psycho Killer'?
Tina Weymouth
Tina Weymouth had spoken French at home with her Breton mother, so drummer Chris Frantz suggested she write the bridge for David Byrne.
Modest Mussorgsky never got it performed: his mentor refused to conduct it, and the familiar version is Rimsky-Korsakov's posthumous arrangement, which Stokowski adapted for Fantasia.
Q 14In Saint-Saëns's 'Danse macabre', which instrument imitates the rattling of skeleton bones?
Xylophone
Xylophone it is, and Saint-Saëns later poked fun at his own skeletons by quoting the tune on the same instrument in 'Fossils' from The Carnival of the Animals.
Q 15In the legend behind 'Danse macabre', what sends the dancing dead back to their graves?
A cockerel crowing at dawn
A cockerel crowing at dawn ends the revels in Henri Cazalis's poem, which Saint-Saëns first set as a song in 1872 before handing the vocal line to a solo violin.
Q 16The haunted-house staple Toccata and Fugue in D minor is traditionally attributed to which composer?
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach's authorship has been questioned by a minority of scholars since 1981; long before that, silent-era cinemas had made the piece a cliche for horror and villainy.
Q 17Which singer-songwriter wrote the meme song "Spooky, Scary Skeletons" for a 1996 Halloween album?
Andrew Gold
Andrew Gold wrote it for his album Halloween Howls; a 2013 dance remix by The Living Tombstone and pairings with Disney's 1929 short The Skeleton Dance turned it into a meme.
Q 18In Sheb Wooley's 1958 hit 'The Purple People Eater', the creature comes to Earth to do what?
Join a rock 'n' roll band
Join a rock 'n' roll band is the alien's ambition; its squeaky voice and the tinny horn solo were both made by recording slowly and playing the tape back fast.
Q 19Bauhaus's 1979 debut single, called the first gothic rock record, is named after which actor?
Bela Lugosi
Bela Lugosi, star of the 1931 film Dracula, gives the song its title; the band cut all nine minutes in a single take at their very first recording session.
Q 20AC/DC's 'Highway to Hell' is said to be named for a road past Bon Scott's favourite pubs in which city?
Perth
Perth's Canning Highway led to the Raffles, a rock pub Scott frequented; Angus Young has also called 'highway to hell' his name for the band's gruelling tours.
Q 24Santana's 1970 hit 'Black Magic Woman' was originally written for Fleetwood Mac by which British guitarist?
Peter Green
Peter Green wrote and first released it with Fleetwood Mac in 1968; Santana's cover, sung by Gregg Rolie, climbed far higher and became the version most people know.
Q 25Why is Ozzy Osbourne's 1983 album Bark at the Moon unusual in his catalogue?
He is the only credited songwriter
He is the only credited songwriter, yet guitarist Jake E. Lee and bassist Bob Daisley both say they wrote most of it and went uncredited under agreements signed at the time.
Q 26Which New York band released the 2009 dance-punk single 'Heads Will Roll'?
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Yeah Yeah Yeahs singer Karen O said that if the band was going to write a dance song, it should be about heads bouncing on the floor; an A-Trak remix then took it into clubs.
Q 27In 'Ghost Riders in the Sky', what are the damned cowboys doomed to chase across the sky forever?
The Devil's herd
The Devil's herd is their eternal quarry, and the song's cowboy is warned to change his ways or ride with them; park ranger Stan Jones wrote it while working in Death Valley.
Q 28Which Scottish singer-songwriter released 'Season of the Witch' on a 1966 album?
Donovan
Donovan recorded it in Hollywood for his album Sunshine Superman; a dispute with his record company then kept it out of British shops until 1967.
Q 29Which classic Halloween film's soundtrack features Bette Midler's version of 'I Put a Spell on You'?
Hocus Pocus
Hocus Pocus has Midler's witch Winifred take over the stage at a Halloween party and use the song to bewitch the adults into dancing until they drop.
Q 30Which Hollywood film director made the music video for 'Thriller' in 1983?
John Landis
John Landis got the call after Jackson saw his An American Werewolf in London; in 2009 the result became the first music video chosen for the US National Film Registry.