Halloween is the easiest night of the year to run an escape room at home. The decorations are already up, half the players are in costume, and nobody needs the story explained: something in this house is haunted, and they have until midnight to get out.
The hard part is deciding how scary to make it. Five year olds want spooky the way they want a funny monster. Fifteen year olds want to be properly unsettled. Set it wrong in either direction and the game is over in ten minutes, with tears at one end and eye rolls at the other.
Set the scare by the youngest player
- Five to seven: silly spooky. A friendly ghost who lost her things, a witch whose potions got mixed up, pumpkins with faces. Lights on, and nothing jumps out.
- Eight to twelve: mysterious. A house where things have moved, a scientist's lab with notes left behind, a tomb with a warning on the door. Dim lamps are fine. Still no jump scares: at this age the fun is the feeling that something might happen.
- Thirteen and up: creepy. One lamp, a low soundtrack, a story told through old letters and a diary, and a house that seems to answer back. Creepy rather than gory. Gore feels cheap, and a room that gets under their skin is much harder to shrug off.
A mixed group plays at the level of its youngest member. One frightened six year old ends the game for everybody, and the older ones would rather have a slightly silly game than no game at all.
Five to seven
The potion
Three small bottles of food coloring, red, yellow and blue, and a cup of water. The witch's recipe card shows the potion she needs, a splash of orange, and nothing else. They have to work out which two colors make it. Mixing is the whole puzzle, and it is the part they will talk about afterwards. The Escape Master pours the water, holds the bottles, and puts a towel under everything.
The spider web
Crisscross yarn through a hallway and hang paper spiders from it. One spider carries the next clue on its back. Getting through the web without touching it is half the fun. Tie the yarn at knee and shoulder height, never at ankle height, where it trips somebody running.
The ghost's lost things
Five things the ghost has lost around the house: a sock, a spoon, a key, a toy and a hat. Draw them on a card, so nobody needs to read. When all five are back, the ghost hands over the candy. The ghost is the Escape Master in a sheet, if you are brave.
Eight to twelve
Writing on the bathroom mirror
Clean the bathroom mirror, then write a word or a number on it with a fingertip, pressing firmly. Nothing shows. When they solve the puzzle before it, send them into the bathroom, run the hot shower for two minutes and close the door. The message appears in the steam.
Rub your fingertip lightly on a bar of soap first and it shows much more strongly. Test it the day before, then wipe the mirror clean and write the real message on the day. When it works it is the best moment of the night, and when it does not, you want to know before a room full of children is watching.
The gravestones
Four cardboard gravestones, each with a name and two years, and a single digit on the back. The clue: they rose from their graves in order of how long they lived, shortest life first. Working out each age, putting the stones in order and turning them over gives the code. It is subtraction dressed up as a curse, and nine year olds do it happily.
The number in the dark
Glow-in-the-dark stickers from a dollar store, stuck to a pale wall in the shape of a number. With the lights on they are easy to miss. When the Escape Master switches the lights off, the number appears. Shine a flashlight on them for a minute beforehand, or they glow too faintly to read.
Thirteen and up: a house that answers back
The best effect for this age costs nothing. The Escape Master sits in the next room and plays the ghost, and the rule is announced at the start: the house answers by knocking. One knock for no, two for yes. Whenever the players say a correct answer out loud, two knocks come through the wall.
The only hard part is hearing them. A baby monitor works, or a phone left in the room on a call. They know perfectly well who is knocking, and it does not matter. The first time a correct answer gets two knocks through a wall, the room goes quiet.
Around that, build it like any escape room for this age: several puzzles live at once, locks on boxes, and a story told through documents, such as a letter, a page from a diary, or a photograph with something written on the back. How to Build an Escape Room in Your Living Room covers the structure.
Four things that go wrong in the dark
- Clues nobody can read. Atmosphere and reading pull in opposite directions. Test every clue in the light the room will actually have, by flashlight if that is how it will be played. Print in black on white: dark paper looks spooky and cannot be read.
- Masks. A mask cuts off the edges of vision and makes small print impossible. Masks off for the game, back on for the photograph.
- Real flames. Use LED candles. Stretchy fake cobweb catches fire easily and belongs nowhere near a bulb or a flame, and a fog machine will set off a smoke alarm.
- Things on the floor. A dark room full of excited people is where somebody trips over a cable. Clear the floor, and tape down anything that has to cross it.
Fitting it around trick-or-treating
Halloween night is busy, and the game fits best in one of two places. The first is a party on the weekend before. The second is straight after dinner on the night itself, with their empty candy bags locked in a box as the treasure. Nobody goes trick-or-treating until the box is open, which is the strongest motivation you will ever give a nine year old.
Twenty to thirty minutes for the youngest, forty to forty-five for eight to twelve, and a full hour for teenagers.
The free Adventure Starter Pack has a decoder wheel, clue cards and a torn map that work for any theme. For thirteen and up, The Haunted House Escape is already built, and it ends with a name rather than a scare.
