With Halloween right around the corner, now is the perfect time to plan a holiday get together for you and your team. Holiday parties are a great way to bond and get to know each other in a casual and relaxed atmosphere. If your team is remote, hybrid, or if you are looking for an affordable and accessible solution, try organizing your spooky soiree virtually.
To make hosting a virtual Halloween party easy for you, we’ve created a list of 18 engaging virtual Halloween activity ideas to make your event fun and festive. Each of them is simple to pull off and will work well in Preciate or any other virtual event software that you typically use.
If you’re interested in the team building benefits of a work Halloween party but are not sure how to make it fun without meeting in person, keep reading.
Top 18 Virtual Halloween Party Ideas & Activities
1. Halloween Ice Breakers
Ice Breakers are a great way to kick off any social gathering, and virtual Halloween parties are no different. Get everyone comfortable conversing and sharing personal stories with some Halloween-themed questions. Questions ranging from, “Would you rather be a vampire or a werewolf?” to, “What is the best thing you received while trick or treating?” are likely to teach you some new things about your coworkers, even the ones you’ve known for years.
2. Halloween Costume Contest
Encourage your attendees to go all out by announcing contest categories like “Funniest,” “Scariest,” and “Most Coordinated” ahead of time. You do not need to limit this activity to just your company; if some people have family members or pets around, include them in the fun. Mingle with your coworkers (and their families), and then vote for the winners of each category. Or you can add some team building to the mix with a team costume contest where different team members join forces for a themed costume. There is no denying that this is a hilarious photo-op, so be sure to capture the costume clad moment all together.
3. Halloween Themed-Trivia
A topic like Halloween is a sure way to level the playing field in virtual trivia. Choose a couple categories like “Scary Movies,” “Halloween History,” “Candy,” or “Costumes” to test people’s knowledge of a range of facts. Split the room up into teams. Remember to have a few extra questions on hand in case teams need to square off in a tie-breaker. Award the winning team a prize.
4. Virtual Trick or Treating
Send team members goodie bags with candy ahead of time, or encourage them to bring their favorite to the party. Spend time socializing in costume and enjoying your treats together. Beware: stealing candy from your kids can be a risky thing to do. (*Note – this is a good activity to combine with #9 – Candy & Alcohol pairings)
5. Ghost Stories
Do you believe in ghosts? Someone on your team probably does. Take turns telling scary stories, fictional or real. Let your team know you will be doing this activity in advance so that they can come prepared with their most chilling story. Not everyone is required to tell a story, so allow excited volunteers to go first. At the end, you can all vote on whose story was the best.
6. Monsters and Martinis
This Halloween Virtual Happy Hour is an adult favorite. Guests create their creepiest cocktails at home and sip on them together in a virtual room. Maybe it’s as simple as adding food coloring to your typical drink of choice, or topping your cocktail with a Halloween garnish (eyeballs and spiders?). That’s up to you!
7. Seasonal Cocktail Class
Kick it up a notch and invite a mixologist to join the party to teach everyone how to make a few Halloween themed beverages. You can also assign one person from your team to teach the rest of the room how to make one speciality cocktail. If you have the budget, you can send guests a cocktail making kit ahead of time, or provide them with a list of ingredients they will need to create the cocktails from scratch.
8. Pumpkin Beer Tasting
For the beer lovers (or those wondering what pumpkin beer is), ask everyone to buy their own pumpkin beer and show up with 1-2 to taste together. You can leave it up to each person to pick them, or assign one to each person to try. And yes, there are that many options of pumpkin beer available.
9. Wine & Candy Pairing
Grab your favorite Halloween candy and test it out with some beverages. We know chocolate pairs well with Cabernet, but what goes best with sour skittles? You can provide a list of things to buy beforehand, or allow guests to invent their own pairings. The drink pairings do not need to be alcoholic! For example, Sweet Tarts go great with Reisling, IPA, and apple juice, while KitKats are better with Syrah, Porter, or milk. The possibilities are endless.
10. Pumpkin Carving Contest
Enough with the drinking – let’s get back to Halloween party activities that your family members can join you in. Everyone carves or decorates their own pumpkin together while socializing virtually, and then the group votes on a winner. If you’re worried about flinging pumpkin guts on your computer, you can decorate the pumpkins ahead of time and use this moment to show off your creation. Prizes are definitely encouraged.
11. Split the Room
Now’s the time to ask crazy hypothetical questions and see where everyone stands. Ask any question relating to topics of Halloween, and then ask people to move to a particular side of the room based on their answer. Then chat among yourselves until the next question is asked. “Do you believe ghosts are real?” Find out what your co-workers believe!
12. Never Have I Ever (on Halloween Night)
We know the classic game of ‘Never Have I Ever,’ now make it all about Halloween. Take turns with one person going into presenter mode, and saying one thing they’ve never done on Halloween night. “Never have I ever handed out so much candy that I had to go buy more from the store.” “Never have I ever dressed up as a character from a movie on Halloween”. Anyone who has done this thing before must either turn off their camera or identify themselves. People get really creative with this one, and you’ll learn some interesting things about your colleagues!
13. “Yes, and!” Halloween Edition
‘Yes, and!’ is a classic improv game that helps us practice accepting each other’s ideas and building on them with our own. Begin by making a simple statement related to Halloween or something spooky. For example, “A vampire walked into a 7/11…” or “I approached the old mansion not knowing if anyone was home…” Then, each person to follow will say, “yes, and” adding to the statement and further developing it. This game can be played in pairs or groups!
14. Halloween Snapshot
Any Halloween fanatics? Let’s find out! Have everyone send a picture (if they have one) from a past year on Halloween. Upload these as a collage and share with the group to get to know your team a little better.
15. “Most likely to….”
If your team knows each other pretty well, superlatives can be a fun way to recognize each other. Come up with a list of Halloween-themed “most likely to’s”, and then have everyone vote on who that sounds most like.
16. Guess the Scary Movie
Break your group into small teams and spread out around the Preciate room. Show screenshots, quick clips, quotes from, or even the basic plots of 10 scary movies, and have teams name them and then submit them to the organizer. The team who gets the most right wins.
17. Murder Mystery
This is also fun for smaller groups, and requires a bit of advanced planning. Each person is assigned a character, and everyone is expected to show up dressed the part and “in character.” Usually best played with the help of a professional team to organize.
18. Halloween Bingo
Mail cards in advance, or provide a digital version for play. Even better if you’re offering prizes to the winners! If you want to take this one up a notch, hire a Drag Queen to host your bingo!
Conclusion
Whichever activities you choose, your virtual Halloween party will be an opportunity for your team to bond and grow deeper, more meaningful relationships. Think of it like a team building event, but more fun. By making it virtual, everyone is able to join no matter where they are.
With holidays being infrequent, the important thing to remember is that team building, employee engagement, and recognition shouldn’t be limited to just those occasions. Regardless of whether your team is still meeting in person, is all remote, or some combination of the two, you can still make time once or twice a month to get together outside of your normal business meetings.
Virtual Socials in Scoot
Looking to move past lackluster team-building events and boost the excitement of your virtual parties? How about adding music, mingling and movement to your virtual space? If your current virtual meeting and event platform isn’t fun enough for your holiday parties and happy hours, you may want to try Scoot.
Our users prefer Scoot over other static virtual meeting platforms, especially when it comes to virtual social gatherings. Here are a few of the ways it’s different:
- Move freely from one conversation to the next, just like real life
- Customize your room background to match the event or holiday
- Add background music to fit the mood
- See each others faces as you actually enjoy virtual gatherings again
Scoot is the leading choice for hosting dynamic, interactive meetings and events. Innovative team leaders, event planners, and marketers choose Preciate because of our unwavering commitment to delivering delightful experiences and helping people build stronger relationships.
If you’d like to see a demo of the Scoot platform or test out the free version, contact us.
Happy Halloween!
