The fall is such a fun and festive time of year. Apple picking, cider sipping, and trips to the pumpkin patch. It’s hard to beat! It’s also a great time for thrills and scares, which is why we’ve come up with this list of spooky Halloween poems for kids of all ages. Share these to bring some fright (and delight) to your classroom!
Halloween Poems for Elementary Students
1. Halloween Fun by Ada Clark
“Dressed up like ghosts and witches bad…”
2. Spooky Halloween by Julia Martin
“Jack o’lanterns yellow glow.”
3. Nothing to be Afraid of by Clara Denton
“I hear them tell that witches run…”
4. Boo by Emma Walsh
“Here you are dressed up for the night…”
5. Ghost Bus by Joe Wayman
“Underneath the lamp post, in the middle of the night…”
6. My Next Door Neighbor Is A Witch by Samiya Vallee
“And she lives way down in a ditch.”
7. Hallowe’en by Joel Benton ***
“Pixie, kobold, elf, and sprite…”
Pixie, kobold, elf, and sprite
All are on their rounds to-night,—
In the wan moon’s silver ray
Thrives their helter-skelter play.
Fond of cellar, barn, or stack
True unto the almanac,
They present to credulous eyes
Strange hobgoblin mysteries.
Cabbage-stumps—straws wet with dew—
Apple-skins, and chestnuts too,
And a mirror for some lass
Show what wonders come to pass.
Doors they move, and gates they hide
Mischiefs that on moonbeams ride
Are their deeds,—and, by their spells,
Love records its oracles.
Don’t we all, of long ago
By the ruddy fireplace glow,
In the kitchen and the hall,
Those queer, coof-like pranks recall?
Every shadows were they then—
But to-night they come again;
Were we once more but sixteen
Precious would be Hallowe’en.
8. Spooky Halloween Night by Jacey Vantimmeren
“It’s very spooky on Halloween night.”
9. Halloween Chills by Denise M. Cocchiaro
“On this night of spooks and gnomes…”
10. Homecoming by Anne Pollock
“Shiver me timbers, rattle me bones.”
Halloween Poems for Middle School Students
11. I Wouldn’t Live In A Haunted House by Rick W. Cotton
“It’s something I just wouldn’t do.”
12. Black Hood by Amy Pan
“You know you’ve seen it around before…”
13. Mystic Magination Night! by Patricia L. Cisco
“On one mystic, magic night…”
14. November 2: Día de los muertos by Alberto Ríos
“It is not simply the Day of the Dead—loud, and parties.”
15. Will-O’-The-Wisp by Madison Cawein ***
“There in the calamus he stands…”
I.
There in the calamus he stands
With frog-webbed feet and bat-winged hands;
His glow-worm garb glints goblin-wise;
And elfishly, and elfishly,
Above the gleam of owlet eyes,
A death’s-moth cap of downy dyes
Nods out at me, nods out at me.
II.
Now in the reeds his face looks white
As witch-down on a witches’ night;
Now through the dark old haunted mill,
So eerily, so eerily,
He flits; and with a whippoorwill
Mouth calls, and seems to syllable,
“Come follow me! come follow me!”
III.
Now o’er the sluggish stream he wends,
A slim light at his finger-ends;
The spotted spawn, the toad hath clomb,
Slips oozily, slips oozily;
His easy footsteps seem to come–
Like bubble-gaspings of the scum–
Now near to me, now near to me.
IV.
There by the stagnant pool he stands,
A fox-fire lamp in flickering hands;
The weeds are slimy to the tread,
And mockingly, and mockingly,
With slanted eyes and eldritch head
He leans above a face long dead,–
The face of me! the face of me!
16. Haunted Houses by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“All houses wherein men have lived and died…”
17. Ghosts and Fashion by Elaine Equi
“…the ghost must still consider fashion—”
18. Hallowe’en Charm by Arthur Guiterman
“Fern seed, hemp seed, water of the well…”
19. All Hallows’ Eve by Dorothea Tanning
“Be perfect, make it otherwise.”
20. The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary…”
Halloween Poems for High School Students
21. Ghost Music by Robert Graves
“Gloomy and bare the organ-loft…”
22. The Demiurge’s Laugh by Robert Frost
“I was running with joy on the Demon’s trail…”
23. Dusk in Autumn by Sara Teasdale
“The moon is like a scimitar…”
24. Halloween in the Anthropocene by Craig Santos Perez
“Darkness spills across the sky like an oil plume.”
25. Samhain by Annie Finch
“In the season leaves should love…”
26. “This living hand, now warm and capable” by John Keats
“This living hand, now warm and capable…”
27. To Live in the Zombie Apocalypse by Burlee Vang
“The moon will shine for God knows how long.”
28. Ghost Prisoner by Heid E. Erdich
“The ghost prisoner, a murderer…”
29. Macbeth, Act IV, Scene I [Round about the cauldron go] by William Shakespeare
![Macbeth, Act IV, Scene I [Round about the cauldron go] by William Shakespeare](https://www.weareteachers.com/wp-content/uploads/Halloween-Poem-29-553x1024.png "Halloween Poems")
The three witches, casting a spell.
30. Lamia [Left to herself] by John Keats
“Left to herself, the serpent now began…”
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