I love this time of year. I love it when the first few leaves start changing, putting pumpkins on every available surface of my house, sweaters and soup and crisp mornings, and the fact that I can finally turn the oven on without making the entire house feel like the surface of the sun. And I REALLY love Halloween. So, naturally, I made Halloween Mad Libs. Actually, I made nine of them, because apparently once I start making ridiculous stories with strategically removed nouns, there is no reasonable stopping point.
You might also like my scary pumpkin stencils, which brought me sheer joy to draw for you!
Free Printable Halloween Mad Libs
Mad Libs are kind of perfect for fall and Halloween get-togethers because almost everyone can play them. Kids can do them. Teenagers can do them. Adults can do them. Your mother can do them. Your slightly drunk sister-in-law can do them, although you may regret asking her for a body part.
They’re also wonderfully low effort. You don’t need to explain a complicated game, nobody has to download an app, and there are no tiny plastic pieces to lose under the couch. Just print them out, grab some pencils, and start yelling random nouns and adjectives at each other.
I made a mix of Halloween Mad Libs for this printable set. Some are perfectly appropriate for kids, while a few are a little more PG-13 for teenagers and adults who appreciate their Halloween humor with a tiny bit more darkness. Nothing horrifying, but maybe don’t hand the whole stack to a room full of second graders without looking at them first. You know your second graders better than I do.
Print Some for Your Halloween Party
These are easy to tuck into a Halloween party, classroom celebration, family night, fall get-together, or one of those October evenings when you’ve already watched three horror movies and need something stupid to do. You can print one for everybody, or designate one person as the keeper of the Mad Lib and have the whole group supply words.
And if you’re having an adults-only Halloween party, definitely break out the PG-13 ones. Children may be the traditional audience for Mad Libs, but I refuse to believe we’ve somehow outgrown the entertainment value of making our friends supply random body parts and then forcing them to listen while we read the results aloud. Some things are timeless.
Download the free printable Halloween Mad Libs below, grab a pencil, and go make something ridiculous.
Wait. What the Hell Is an Adverb Again?
Here’s the other fun thing about Mad Libs: they will very quickly reveal that most of us have forgotten approximately 87% of what we learned in elementary-school English class. Noun? Easy. Verb? Sure. Adjective? Uhhhh…describing word?
Adverb? *Shit.*
Unless you’re a teacher, in which case of course you know your shit and may feel free to skip this entire section. For the rest of us, here’s the extremely quick refresher.
Noun: A person, place, thing, or idea. Examples include *witch, cemetery, pumpkin, Steve,* and *existential dread.*
Plural noun: More than one person, place, thing, or idea. Think *witches, cemeteries, pumpkins,* or *Steves.*
Verb: An action word, such as *run, scream, dance,* or *explode.* If the Mad Lib asks for a **verb ending in -ing**, that’s exactly what it sounds like: *running, screaming, dancing,* or *exploding.*
Adjective: A word that describes a noun. *Slimy, enormous, purple, haunted,* and *suspicious* are all adjectives, which means you could have a suspicious pumpkin or an enormous Steve. Both are concerning for entirely different reasons.
Adverb: A word that describes a verb, adjective, or another adverb. A lot of them end in **-ly**, such as *quietly, violently, awkwardly,* and *enthusiastically.* So Steve didn’t just run away from the enormous haunted pumpkin. Steve ran away **awkwardly**, which is obviously much better.
Body part: I have faith that you can handle this one.
The Secret to a Good Mad Lib Is Not Trying Too Hard
If you haven’t played Mad Libs in approximately 30 years, there’s really only one thing you need to remember: don’t try to make the words fit the story. You’re not supposed to know the story yet. That’s the whole point.
If someone asks you for an adjective, don’t sit there trying to think of a suitably Halloween-ish adjective. Say the first ridiculous thing that comes into your head: hairy, moist, tiny, suspicious. The weirder and more completely unrelated the words are, the better the finished story usually is.
This is also why playing in a group is more fun. One person can read off the prompts and write down everyone’s answers without revealing the story, and once all the blanks are filled in, read the whole thing aloud. Preferably with as much unnecessary dramatic flair as possible. And possibly accentuated with alcoholic beverages – ONLY with adults, of course! I’m not gonna be on the hook for any underage shenanigans.
