Tips

A lot of people invite their friends to Halloween parties, where they do things like watching a horror

film or telling each other scary ghost stories.

If you are frightened by films or stories of this kind, you can say that they give you gooseflesh or

goosebumps — little bumps that form on your skin when your hairs stand on end.

A popular Halloween game is apple-bobbing, when people try to get apples out of a bucket of water using only their mouths.

Children often dress up and play trick or treat.

They might, for example, wear a costume to look like a wicked witch with a broomstick. Zombies, crazy doctors or vampire bats are other popular costumes. The costumed children go from house to house and ask for “treats”, usually sweets, and threaten to play a little trick on people who don’t give them any.

People also like to decorate their home to look like a

haunted house — for example, with spiders’ webs

— to make it look old and empty.

Very popular are jack-o’-lanterns, which are lanterns made from hollowed out pumpkins. You cut a scary face into a hollow pumpkin and put a candle inside — and you can use the pulp to bake a pumpkin pie.

Other things associated with Halloween are

black cats and the full moon — both of which are connected to various superstitions.