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95 free Halloween Trivia for Adults trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
25 free Halloween Trivia for Adults questions with answers. If your Halloween quiz gets solved in four minutes, it was written for children. These 95 questions go after the harder stuff: the Salem trials and what actually happened to Giles Corey, the budget John Carpenter shot Halloween on, the count Murnau had to rename, and where the silver-bullet rule really came from. Every answer carries a linked source, so the arguments end quickly. Bring a drink.
30 of 95 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In Edgar Allan Poe's best-known poem, a raven perches above a grieving man's door and repeats which single word?
Nevermore
Nevermore became the most quoted line Poe ever wrote, and the poem that carried it was published in January 1845.
Q 02Who leads the group that hunts the vampire in Bram Stoker's novel?
Abraham Van Helsing
Abraham Van Helsing, a Dutch doctor from Amsterdam, organises the hunt after Lucy Westenra's death and directs Harker, Seward, Holmwood and Morris all the way to Transylvania.
Q 03In which year was Stoker's Dracula first published?
1897
May 1897. Stoker was working as a theatre manager in London at the time.
Q 04Dracula is told through letters, diary entries and newspaper clippings. What is that form called?
Epistolary
The scattered documents let Stoker withhold information from his own characters, which is where much of the dread comes from.
Q 05What is the subtitle of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein?
The Modern Prometheus
The Modern Prometheus: Prometheus stole fire from the gods, and Victor steals the power to create life. The first edition appeared anonymously on 1 January 1818.
Q 06What name does the novel give to Victor Frankenstein's creation?
The novel never names him
He is called wretch, monster, creature, demon, fiend and 'it' — but never given a name of his own.
Q 07What did F. W. Murnau's unauthorised 1922 Dracula adaptation rename the count?
Count Orlok
Nosferatu turned Dracula into Count Orlok, played by Max Schreck, and moved the story to the German town of Wisborg; the renaming did not save it, since Stoker's widow Florence sued and won.
Q 08How did the court rule in the copyright case brought against that 1922 vampire film?
All copies were to be destroyed
Prints survived anyway, scattered across Europe, which is the only reason the film can still be watched.
Q 09Between which years did the Salem witch trials take place?
1692 and 1693
The panic ran from February 1692 to May 1693 in colonial Massachusetts, and collapsed almost as fast as it started.
Q 10How many people were executed by hanging as a result of the Salem trials?
19
Fourteen women and five men were hanged. Contrary to popular belief, nobody at Salem was burned at the stake.
Q 11Giles Corey, an 81-year-old farmer, died at Salem under which punishment?
Crushed under piled stones
He refused to enter a plea, so the court applied peine forte et dure, stacking stones on his chest until he could not breathe.
Q 12Salem Village, where the accusations began, was renamed what in 1752?
Danvers
Salem Village was set off from Salem as the district of Danvers in 1752; neighbouring Salem, the port where the trials were held, draws the tourists for a panic that started elsewhere.
Q 13Roughly what budget did John Carpenter have for Halloween in 1978?
$300,000
Between $300,000 and $325,000, which it repaid many times over and which is why every studio wanted a slasher franchise.
Q 21Which schoolmaster is chased by the Headless Horseman in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow?
Ichabod Crane
Ichabod Crane, the lanky Connecticut schoolmaster, vanishes after the horseman hurls a pumpkin at him; his rival Brom Bones goes on to marry Katrina Van Tassel.
Q 22Which feast day commemorating the faithful departed falls on 2 November?
All Souls' Day
All Souls' Day, 2 November, closes Allhallowtide, the three-day season that opens with Halloween on 31 October and All Saints' Day on 1 November.
Q 23In Mexican tradition, why are marigolds placed on graves and altars for the dead?
To guide the souls home
Q 14Carpenter co-wrote the 1978 film Halloween with which producer?
Debra Hill
Hill co-wrote and produced, and is credited with much of the film's convincing teenage dialogue.
Q 15In the 1978 film Halloween, Jamie Lee Curtis made her film debut as which babysitter stalked by Michael Myers?
Laurie Strode
Laurie Strode was her first film role, and the part that made her the decade's defining scream queen.
Q 16In which fictional Illinois town is the 1978 film Halloween set?
Haddonfield
Haddonfield, Illinois borrowed its name from the New Jersey town where the film's producer grew up; Springwood belongs to A Nightmare on Elm Street, while Derry and Castle Rock are Stephen King's.
Q 17Which actor wore the mask as the killer credited only as 'The Shape'?
Nick Castle
Castle was a film-school friend of Carpenter's and did it for pocket money. Wallace was the crew member who modified the mask.
Q 18The English word 'werewolf' is built from Old English elements meaning what?
Man-wolf
Old English wer meant man, giving 'man-wolf'. The Greek-derived lycanthropy means the same thing.
Q 19Which Roman poet's Metamorphoses tells of King Lycaon being turned into a wolf?
Ovid
Ovid's Metamorphoses opens with Jupiter turning the Arcadian king Lycaon into a wolf for serving him human flesh, one of the earliest werewolf stories in Western literature.
Q 20What did sociologist Joel Best conclude after reviewing decades of Halloween candy-tampering reports?
No stranger poisonings were proven
Best examined reports from 1958 to 1983 and found no proven case of a stranger killing a child with poisoned Halloween sweets.
The colour and scent are believed to draw the dead back to the offerings left out for them.
Q 24Roughly how much did the 1978 film Halloween gross worldwide on original release?
$70 million
Halloween grossed about $70 million worldwide on its original release against a budget of a few hundred thousand dollars, making it one of the most profitable independent films ever.
Q 25Which 1973 film was the first horror movie ever nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture?
The Exorcist
The Exorcist earned ten nominations at the 1974 ceremony, including Best Picture, and won two, for Adapted Screenplay and Sound.
Q 26Which film was the first horror movie to win the Academy Award for Best Picture?
The Silence of the Lambs
The Silence of the Lambs won Best Picture for 1991 and swept the Big Five awards, a feat matched only by It Happened One Night and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Q 27What was Boris Karloff's real name?
William Henry Pratt
Born William Henry Pratt in London in 1887, he adopted the stage name Boris Karloff while acting in Canada, two decades before Frankenstein (1931) made him a star.
Q 28What was Bela Lugosi buried wearing?
His Dracula cape and costume
He was laid to rest at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California, ring and all.
Q 29On which date did Orson Welles's War of the Worlds radio broadcast air?
October 30, 1938
The Mercury Theatre on the Air broadcast went out on CBS on Sunday evening, October 30, 1938, billed as a Halloween episode; Welles signed off comparing it to shouting boo from behind a bush.
Q 30Who wrote The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and in what year?
Washington Irving, 1820
Washington Irving published it in 1820 in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., having written it while staying with his sister's family in Birmingham, England.