Four Halloween games that need nothing more than apples, flour and a torch

There is a particular kind of Irish childhood Halloween that involved a bin liner for a costume, face paint that would never clear a safety inspection today, and a trick-or-treat haul that could include actual pennies and a handful of peanuts. The games that went with it cost almost nothing and still work, from biting apples off strings with your hands behind your back to passing a torch around a darkened circle while everyone adds a line to a ghost story.

I was lucky that my mother was always up for a party, so we always had a Halloween celebration when I was growing up. Even though we lived on a street with no other children, we’d go trick or treating (and we’d come back with a strange variety of ‘treats’ from literal pennies to actual peanuts).

I don’t know where they come from, if my mother and her sisters had played them when they were young, or if she’d seen them on Live at 3, but we used to play these traditional Halloween games.

They are relatively easy to set up, tech-free, cheap, and safe to do – but we recommend supervision!

Bobbing for apples

You’ll need:

• A deep basin
• Apples
• Water
• Fill a basin full of water and drop in some apples.

Everyone takes a turn to grab an apple with their teeth – it’s not as easy as it sounds!

Floor mountain

You’ll need:

• Flour
• A blunt knife
• A grape
• With the flour, create a mountain or pyramid shape.

Pop the grape at the very top.

Everyone takes turns slicing the flour away.

Whoever knocks the grape down loses.

Swinging apples

You’ll need:

• String
• Somewhere to tie a string in a line
• Apples

Halloween games love apples!

Make a line across the room with a string.

Tie apples to more strings of varying lengths and hang them from the line.

Everyone runs to a hanging apple and, with their hands behind their backs, tries to bite the apple. The winner gets to choose the Halloween movie!

Ghost story

You’ll need:

• A torch
• Some imagination!
• Turn off the lights and sit in a circle.

The person who starts the story lights a torch under their face in a spooky way.

Everyone takes turns adding one sentence to the story. It will end up being pretty strange and scary!

* This article was originally published on Rollercoaster.ie.

** This article was originally published in 2024 and updated in 2026.