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A Very Alice Halloween: Books, Easy Costumes, Screen-Free Activities & Curious Finds
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items Halloween books, printable activities, easy costume ideas, non-candy treats, reusable decor and screen-free fun for kids and adults. Think literary costumes, friendly monsters, vintage postcards, LEGO, odd little October finds and free Halloween rabb...
Sections
6
Easy Costumes, Barely
Print, Make & Play
Non-Candy Treats
Spooky Books
October Things Worth Keeping
Free Halloween Rabbit Holes
Easy Costumes, Barely
Easy Halloween costume ideas made from T-shirts and clothes you can wear again - literary, low-effort and zero polyester regret.
Technically a T-shirt. Add a white collar, braids and the emotional availability of a locked filing cabinet and suddenly it’s a Halloween costume. Conveniently, the shirt still has a job in November.
Wednesday Mood Fitted T-Shirt
A witch costume for people who refuse to buy a witch costume. Black clothes, boots, a wide-brim hat and perhaps an unnecessarily serious expression. On November 1st, it becomes a hat again. Remarkably efficient.
Faux Felt Embellished Band Fedora Hat - Universal Thread™ Black L/XL
Possibly the lowest-effort literary costume on this list. Wear black, add a raven pin, carry Poe and occasionally say “Nevermore” with unnecessary gravity. The pin goes back on your jacket when Halloween is over.
Nevermore Raven Enamel Pin – Edgar Allan Poe Quote Badge – Gothic Literature Gift – Book Lover Witch Pin – Halloween Gothic Accessory
A literary Halloween costume for people who do not believe in buying a costume you will wear once. Wear the T-shirt, throw a towel over your shoulder, look mildly existential and you are suddenly somewhere in the general vicinity of The Hitchhiker’s ...
Total Perspective Vortex Premium T-Shirt
Possibly the easiest Halloween costume here: wear it oversized with bare legs or sheer tights, add boots, messy hair and a red lip. A little haunting, a little pop-culture, and sexy without looking like you bought a “sexy Halloween costume.”
Pop Icon Haunting Impression Oversized T-Shirt
Print, Make & Play
Printable Halloween activities, screen-free crafts, LEGO builds and strange little things to keep hands busy.
A Halloween decoration that gives you something to do before it gives you something to hang. Bats, pumpkins, a ghost, a spiderweb - and 617 tiny reasons not to look at your phone for a while.
LEGO Iconic Halloween Wreath 40825
Print it once, deploy when necessary. Halloween puzzles, coloring and activities for small humans with approximately three minutes of patience and very strong opinions about October.
My First Halloween Activity Book with Cute Kawaii Animales. For Kids 2-5. Printable PDF (Colorful pages)
A printable excuse to make monsters stranger. Draw, change, invent, add unnecessary limbs and give perfectly respectable creatures questionable accessories. Halloween-friendly, but weird enough to survive the rest of the year.
Be Creative. Activity Book with Friendly and Cute Monsters. Printable PDF (Black and White)
Black paper makes everything approximately 40% more mysterious. Add metallic pens, draw moons, monsters, bad poetry or unusually elegant ghosts. Also useful after Halloween, which is increasingly becoming a requirement on this list.
D.I.Y. Sketchbook - Large Black Paper
For drawing ghosts on black paper, obviously. Gold, silver and bronze show up beautifully on dark pages and make even a deeply average doodle look suspiciously intentional.
Sharpie 3pk Permanent Markers Fine Tip Metallic Gold/Silver/Bronze: Quick Drying, Durable, Water-Resistant, Art & Stationery
Halloween-adjacent rather than Halloween-only. Friendly monsters for coloring, tracing and talking about feelings - useful in October, but thankfully not condemned to a drawer on November 1st.
Monster Moods, Emotions and Feelings. Coloring, Tracing and Drawing Book to Explore Emotions. Printable PDF (Black and White)
Tiny stamps for making ordinary paper unnecessarily spooky. Ghosts, bats and black cats for journals, postcards, gift tags and envelopes. Small enough to justify buying several, unfortunately.
Mini Bat Rubber Stamp: Halloween Craft Stamp (14x5 mm)
A Halloween project with considerably more commitment than coloring a pumpkin. Crochet a tiny witch house, bat and pumpkin, then keep the evidence on a shelf long after October ends.
Wizardi Little Witch House with Bat. Halloween Amigurumi DIY Crochet Kit F07N8-M103
For when you invited twelve children over and are now dealing with the consequences. A make-your-own Halloween tic-tac-toe kit with ghosts, pumpkins and approximately one activity’s worth of peace.
Tic-Tac-Toe Halloween Game Craft Kit - Makes 12
Non-Candy Treats
Small Halloween gifts, stickers, sensory toys and analog treats for trick-or-treaters who already have enough sugar.
For trick-or-treaters who may eventually need to find their place in a book. 144 spooky bookmarks, considerably less sticky than candy.
JOYIN 144 PCS Halloween Bookmark Rulers Party Favor Pack (6 Designs) with Halloween Themed Prints for Holiday Decorations, Goodies, Classroom Rewards, Goodie Bag Stuffer and Kids Trick or Treat Prize
Fifty tiny stamps for children who would genuinely prefer ghosts and pumpkins to their nineteenth piece of candy. Also excellent for paper, journals and questionable envelope decoration.
Tinymills Halloween 50 Piece Stampers Assortment for Kids Parties Non Candy Treats Trick or Treat Handouts
A non-candy Halloween treat for children who do not actually need a seventeenth miniature chocolate bar. Ghost cats, tic-tac-toe, zero sugar. Civilization survives another year.
Halloween Tic-Tac-Toe with Ghostly Cats Sticker
Sugar-free, tiny, temporary and slightly more interesting than another miniature chocolate bar. Glow-in-the-dark Halloween tattoos for the win.
Joyfy 300+ Halloween Temporary Tattoos,Glow in The Dark Tattoos for Kids,Halloween Toys Bulk,Halloween Trick or Treat Toys,Halloween Party Favor
Tiny tin, excellent October energy. Black-and-orange glitter, glow-in-the-dark putty and something for restless hands to do while everyone else is carving pumpkins, watching a spooky movie or pretending they are not eating the Halloween candy early.
Pumpkin Patch 2" Mini Halloween Thinking Putty
Halloween before group chats. Eighteen wonderfully odd vintage postcards to actually mail, tuck into a journal, use in a collage or leave somewhere for another human to find. October ephemera at its best.
Vintage Halloween Postcard Set
Spooky Books
Halloween books for kids and adults - eerie classics, curious stories and not-too-scary reads for October.
Poe, illustrated by Gustave Doré, for free. Considerably more atmosphere than another plastic skeleton.
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Raven, by Edgar Allan Poe.
Come for Halloween. Accidentally learn about ancient rituals, gargoyles and why humans have always been slightly obsessed with the dead. Very much my kind of rabbit hole.
The Halloween Tree
Leave Halloween behind but keep the strange houses, impossible worlds and slightly unsettling atmosphere.
Keep It Strange: Books Like Piranesi
For the child who is more interested in what the witch is driving than in the witch herself. Tiny, cheerful Halloween chaos with candy cars, scarecrow vehicles and exactly the right amount of spooky.
Richard Scarry's Halloween Cars and Trucks
The original Headless Horseman rabbit hole, free. Read it online, put it on your Kindle and discover that Ichabod Crane is significantly stranger than whatever version you remember.
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving
October Things Worth Keeping
Reusable Halloween decor, mugs, totes and odd little objects that still have a job after October 31st.
For collecting Halloween candy now and carrying books, groceries and unnecessary small objects later. The bag survives October. Your self-control around the candy may not.
Trick or Treat. Stamps instead of Halloween Candy. Tote Bag
For October mornings when coffee is doing considerably more work than you are. Slightly spooky, appropriately caffeinated, and unlike most Halloween decor, still useful after October 31st.
Creepin It Real Coffee Mug
Shakespeare, but unfortunately he has access to modern dating vocabulary. A slightly ridiculous piece of Halloween wall art for people whose preferred form of haunting is literary.
You Shall not Ghost Me in Shakespeare Style Poster
Free Halloween Rabbit Holes
Free Halloween printables, spooky science, vintage images, folklore and public-domain reads for anyone who wants to keep going.
A useful reminder that space is objectively stranger than most things we invented for Halloween. Free posters, masks, pumpkin stencils and genuinely alarming astronomy.
Sinister Solar System - NASA Science
Come for the vampire bats. Accidentally learn comparative anatomy. Smithsonian shows real museum specimens and turns spooky-season drawing into actual science.
Webinar: Spooky Collections and Spectacular Bat Adaptations!
Start with Halloween. Somehow end up with Samhain, Houdini, Edward Gorey and century-old ghost stories. A proper rabbit hole.
Research Guides: Halloween & Día de Muertos Resources: Introduction
Vintage Halloween images you are actually allowed to use. Print one, make a collage, put it in a journal or simply marvel at how October managed to be weird long before Pinterest.
Free to Use and Reuse Autumn and Halloween Photographs and Prints