Halloween Alphabetics Trivia Quiz

Answer: All Hallows' Eve

All Saints' Day or All Hallows' Day was celebrated on November 1 as the start of the Celtic New Year and beginning of winter. The night before, called All Hallows' Eve, witches and other evil spirits were believed to roam the Earth playing tricks on humans.

Answer: bat

Bats are the only winged mammal and are members of the order Chiroptera. Most bats eat tiny insects or fruit. Only one bat species - one of three species of vampire bats - actually drinks blood.

Answer: costumes

Some standard Halloween costumes include ghost, witch, princess, mummy, doctor and clown. Other costumes are based on movies or books, like "Ghostbusters" in the 1980s, and "Harry Potter" in the 2000s.

Answer: demon

In 1589 a demonologist named Binsfield listed the following major demons and their particular evils: Lucifer (pride), Mammon (avarice), Asmodeus or Ashmodai (lechery), Satan (anger), Beelzebub (gluttony), Leviathan (envy), and Belphegor (sloth). (From Encyclopedia.com)

Answer: eerie

Eerie is defined as: a) inspiring inexplicable fear, dread, or uneasiness; strange and frightening. b) suggestive of the supernatural; mysterious (from Dictionary.com).

Answer: Frankenstein

"Frankenstein" is a novel by Mary Shelley. Dr. Frankenstein created a monster who was basically gentle, but was ultimately killed by a frightened mob. Today, many people assume the monster was called Frankenstein.

Answer: ghost

Other words for ghost include the following: apparition, appearance, banshee, eidolon, ethereal being, haunt, incorporeal being, kelpie, manes, phantasm, phantom, poltergeist, revenant, shade, shadow, soul, specter, spirit, and wraith.

Answer: haunted houses

Haunted Houses are prevalent in many Halloween movies and stories. In October, many towns host spook alleys or haunted houses with people dressed up as monsters and scary decorations designed to scare children and adults alike. Haunted mazes are also fun because they are scary and you can get lost.

Answer: Ichabod Crane

Ichabod Crane encounters the legendary local ghost, the Headless Horseman, while leaving the town of Sleepy Hollow on Halloween.

Answer: Jack O'Lantern

Traditional Jack O'Lanterns are carved with faces: eyes, nose, mouth, etc. Also, neat are pumpkins carved with pictures, like a black cat on a picket fence or a witch flying across the moon. You can be very creative when carving pumpkins. Jack-o'-lantern is also the common name for the mushroom species Clitocybe illudens.

Answer: Legend of Sleepy Hollow

"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" was written by Washington Irving in the 1800s and has been the basis for many movies, including 1999's "Sleepy Hollow" starring Johnny Depp and 1922's "The Headless Horseman" starring Will Rogers.

Answer: moon

A full moon is a wonderful sight. Legend has it that werewolves come out when the moon is full, yet another spooky addition to Halloween.

Answer: Nightmare Before Christmas

This great movie from 1993 is about Jack Skellington, the King of Halloween who accidentally discovers Christmas Town and decides to take over Christmas for that year. This movie features the voice talents of Danny Elfman as the singing voice of Jack Skellington.

Answer: orange

Orange is used as a Halloween color mostly because pumpkins are traditional Halloween decorations.

Answer: pumpkin

Jack O'Lanterns are a traditional part of Halloween, but many people decorate with uncarved pumpkins and other gourds. Every year Linus (from the "Peanuts" cartoon) spends the night in a pumpkin patch waiting for the "Great Pumpkin" to come and bring him gifts.

Answer: skeletons

A skeleton is defined as "the internal structure composed of bone and cartilage that protects and supports the soft organs, tissues, and other parts of a vertebrate organism" (from Dictionary.com). There is something spooky about a creature with no organs, muscles or skin.

Answer: trick or treat

A simple idea, you tell people to give you a treat, or you will play a trick on them. The origins of this tradition date back to Celtic times when people made offerings of foods and sweets to the spirits on All Hallows Eve. People would dress up as roaming spirits to avoid being haunted by real spirits.

Answer: vampire

Vampires are creatures of myth and legend. The most famous is Dracula, the character of a novel by Bram Stoker. Vampires have also become literary characters in Ann Rice's "Interview With a Vampire" (also a 1994 movie starring Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and Kirsten Dunst).

Answer: weatherman

These terms are defined as follows: Witch: a woman claiming or popularly believed to possess magical powers and practice sorcery.
Warlock: a male witch, sorcerer, wizard, or demon.
Wiccan: a polytheistic Neo-Pagan nature religion inspired by various pre-Christian western European beliefs, whose central deity is a mother goddess and which includes the use of herbal magic and benign witchcraft.
Weatherman: a man who reports and forecasts the weather (no magic involved). (All definitions from Dictionary.com)

Answer: zombies

Zombies are just one more scary Halloween monster. Some of the greatest are from Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video, where they all start dancing around.