Halloween might be a little different this year, but that doesn't mean you can't have a ton of fun at home with the family. Especially if your kids like gross things, and what kid doesn't?
When I was younger, I remember playing this exact game at a Halloween party and it has stuck with me all these years! It's called the "Haunted Halloween Mystery Box" game and parents can do it at home with everyday objects. The idea is to create spooky and gross body parts that your kids have to reach their hands in to identify. However, it's in a mystery box and they can't see what they're touching. This is where your storytelling as a parent comes in and leads them to believe what they're touching is really gross, rotten body parts. You caneither use one box and just keep rotating bowls of gross stuff out or make several boxes and label each one with its contents. The labels can read things like eyeballs, intentines, brain and so on. So, how do you get these gross parts?
Peeled grapes are eyeballs, slimy pasta covered in olive oil is intestines, a head of cauliflower with a little Vaseline on top is a brain and so on. Just make sure they're wither blindfolded or they can't see in the box to catch a glimpse of what they're really touching.
If you have older kids and you really want to freak them out, you can add a little red food coloring or fake blood to one of the ingredients so when they pull their hand back, it has a little bit of red tint to it.
The very last "Mystery Box" item that freaked all the kids out was the 'Dead Man's Hand.' Keep in mind, this again is if you have older kids, cause you don't want to freak out the little ones. But one of the Dads had his hand in a bowl if ice water to make it freezing cold and only one kid got to feel the dead man's hand at the very end of the game. The Dad was hiding behind the box so the kids couldn't see him and when my friend put his hand in the box, he felt the ice cold, stiff hand. He felt around for a few seconds and then the hand grabbed his. Well, you can imagine the scream he let out, which in turn scared every single other kid and of course the lights turned off as soon as he screamed. Just one more idea to take it to the next level of fright for the night!
Happy Halloween!
Here's a video of an example of the game and how it's played: