Scary Games to Play in the Dark

Touch Scary Things

• Fill a sandbox or large tub with sand. Hide scary feeling objects like plastic spiders, toy eyeballs or wax lips. Add scary feeling fruits such as kiwi, ugly tomatoes or hairy peaches. Roll up old socks, wash cloths or nylon pantyhose. Add plastic bottles, kitchen tools or any old plastic object around the house that feels strange or funny. Hide these objects under the sand. Blindfold each child and spin them around a time or two and lead them to the sandbox area. Give each child a sack to collect items, set the egg timer for three minutes, and tell them to gather items for their bags. Watch and laugh as the children scream in scary delight. When the time is up, allow the children to share the contents of their bags.

Hunt for Treats

• Hide wrapped candy, small packaged toys, and small bags of snack chips in an outdoor yard area. Also add scary items such as rubber snakes and bugs. Decorate the perimeter area with skeletons, ghosts and other scary hangings. Give each child a container to collect treats and a small flashlight. Tell the children to stay within the ghostly decorated area. Shut off all of the yard lights and release the children to collect treats. After five minutes, ring a bell to stop the game. The children with the most items wins a prize, but all off the children keep their treasure containers as a take home gift.

Escaped Convict

• Select child to play the part of an escaped convict. Blindfold the convict and turn on some sound effects or eerie music. The other children find a place to hide. Remove the blindfold and replace it with a gruesome rubber mask. Turn off the lights and allow the masked child to find the other children. When he locates one, he says, “You are dead”! Take the “dead” children to another room, the “morgue.". The last person caught is the winner of the game.