Traditional Halloween Games: Eight Old Ones, Played Today

A traditional Halloween game is one that grew out of the harvest and the old belief that Halloween night showed you the future. Most of the eight games below were played with apples, nuts, a mirror or a rhyme. Each entry says where the game comes from, how it was played, and a version that suits a party in this century.

1. Bobbing for apples, the Roman harvest game

Players kneel at a tub of water with floating apples and try to catch one in their teeth, hands behind them. The first player to bite an apple wins. It is the game most people name first.

The Library of Congress says the game traces back to a courting ritual that was part of a Roman festival honoring Pomona. It adds that young men and women predicted their future relationships by it. The University of Miami also lists bobbing for apples and carving them to know your fortune among the old Halloween customs.

For a party now, use a shallow tub, give every child a turn on their own, and drain the tub between guests. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration advises you to rinse apples thoroughly under cool running water. If your group wants no water, the FDA suggests cutting paper apples from red construction paper. Write an action such as "do 5 jumping jacks" on each one.

2. Snap-apple, the string and stick game

An apple hangs from a string or a stick at head height. Players keep their hands behind their backs and try to bite it as it swings. Some old versions hung the apple on a stick with a candle at the other end, so nobody should copy those.

Snap-apple belongs to Britain and Ireland, where the same night was sometimes called Snap-Apple Night. Each house played it a little differently, so you are free to pick the height and the rules.

Hang the apple from a doorway frame or a tree branch, with the string long enough that a child can reach it on tiptoe. Rinse the apples and use a clean one for each child. Give the youngest children a mini donut instead, which swings and is easier to catch. Allow about 10 minutes for six players.

3. Apple-peel fortune, the one-piece peel

Peel an apple in one long ribbon, swing the peel three times around your head and drop it over your shoulder. The shape it lands in was said to spell the first letter of a future love's name.

The game needs only an apple, a knife and a floor, so it works for a quiet party. Let an adult do the peeling for children, and ask each guest to read their own letter aloud. If the peel breaks, the guest "gets a fresh start" and tries again.

Peeling takes about two minutes per guest, so run it as a corner station for a few players at a time. Keep a bowl of wet wipes close by. A peeled apple also browns fast, so peel each one as its guest takes a turn.

4. Nut fortunes, from Nutcrack Night

In the old version, pairs of nuts were set on the hearth, named for two sweethearts and watched. If both nuts burned quietly together, the pair would stay together. If one cracked and jumped, the match was doomed. The night in some places had the name Nutcrack Night.

Open flame and hot nuts are no game for a living room, and fire is the part to leave behind. The same idea works with a bowl of unshelled walnuts and a pair of players. Each picks a nut, and the pair cracks them and reads a rhymed fortune from a folded slip inside the shell.

Check for nut allergies before the party. If any guest has one, use a bowl of wrapped candies with fortunes taped on, or skip this game. Allow 10 minutes.

5. The mirror charm, a ghost story at the glass

The Library of Congress describes a 1914 newspaper column. In it, a girl walks backward in the moonlight with a mirror and recites a verse, hoping to see her future love. The Evening Public Ledger of October 31, 1914 printed several such charms for readers.

Today the mirror is a prop for a story, not a charm. Dim the lights and hand a guest a small hand mirror and a flashlight. Have them read the old verse aloud while the others watch. Nobody should walk backward in the dark, so everyone stays in a chair.

The mirror charm suits older guests and teens, and it fits a vintage party well. Allow five minutes for a pass around a circle of eight.

6. Rose and hair charms, the 1914 rhymes

The same 1914 column lists two more charms. In one, a girl twines the stems of two roses together while reciting a rhyme. In the other, she plucks a lock of hair, lets it go outdoors and asks the wind to show which direction her love lives.

Rhymes matter more than moves here, so treat the pair as a reading round. Print or write three short rhymes on cards, pass them around the table and have each guest read one in their best spooky voice. No roses or hair are needed.

A reading round works for a mixed-age group, since the readers can be children, older adults or both. It fits a vintage party that wants old-fashioned activities with no running and no water.

7. The ring in the cake, a Halloween food charm

In Ireland, a tradition bakes small tokens into a Halloween fruit loaf, called barmbrack. Each token meant something for the person who found it in their slice, such as a ring for a wedding.

A modern version swaps the baked-in tokens for a safer game. Hide a wrapped candy under one of six upturned cups, and let each guest lift a cup to find a fortune slip. Never bake a hard object into food that guests will bite, since a ring or coin can break a tooth or be swallowed.

Run it at the snack table in about five minutes. Write the fortunes on slips in advance, and keep a note of who has an allergy before you hand out any food.

8. A ghost story circle by lantern light

Telling ghost stories on Halloween night is the quiet end of every old party. Guests sit in a ring and the lights go low. Each person adds a sentence to a story that starts with "On the night of the harvest moon...".

Use a battery lantern in the middle, never a candle. A story circle works for any age that can sit still, and it is the best fit for a guest list of older adults. Cap it at 15 minutes and end with a loud shout of "Boo!" so the room wakes up.

How to choose traditional Halloween games for your guests

Look at who is coming, then at how much mess you can take. Games with apples and water need a hard floor and towels. Fortune games and rhymes need only chairs and a dim room.

The table lines the eight games up. The minutes are our own estimates for a group of about eight, and the "today" column shows the safer version.

The second table matches the games to the guest list.

An old game survives because it needs no skill and ends in a laugh.

For a guest list with older adults, put the seated games first. Picture bingo on the printable Party Games Bundle is a classic that needs no kneeling and no water. Halloween Picture Bingo has 10 picture cards, 24 calling cards and 36 candy-corn markers. It is the wrong choice if you want a purely old-fashioned evening with no printed paper. Every file in the bundle is a PDF you print before the party.

Free printables exist, and a single bingo sheet from anywhere can be good enough. The paid bundle adds a matching set of eight games in one design, both US Letter and A4 pages, and nothing to redraw. The files are PDFs that open in any PDF reader, so you need no other app. The PDF comes by email after checkout, so you can print it the same day. Print at actual size as often as you need for your own party.

At a festival or a larger crowd, the same rule holds. Give each old game its own table with one helper, and keep apple tubs on a hard floor, away from the food.