Halloween poems are poems about October 31, its folk customs, witches, ghosts, and haunted rooms, and the best-known early example is Robert Burns’s ‘Halloween,’ written in 1785 and published in 1786.
The porch light flickers, the doorbell rings at exactly the wrong moment, and the small figure on your step in a plastic skeleton mask is either your neighbor’s kid or something that followed them home.
Poets have been playing with that shiver for more than two centuries, and they were not always joking.
Below are ten poems, eight public-domain classics and two modern ones, for reading aloud by candlelight. For the darker side, see our creepy poems collection.
What Makes a Poem a Halloween Poem
A Halloween poem is any poem that draws on the holiday’s customs, its supernatural figures or its autumn atmosphere.
Some describe the night directly, like Burns’s account of Scottish nut-burning games, where neighbors read their love lives in the sparks.
Others never name the holiday at all and borrow only its witches, ghosts and haunted houses, as Shakespeare’s cauldron chant and Dickinson’s ghost do.
A third group simply catches the mood of late October, the early dark and cold air that make an ordinary porch feel strange.
All three belong on a Halloween reading list, and the autumn mood has its own page in our collection of autumn poems.
Classic Halloween Poems From the Folk Tradition
1. “Halloween” by Robert Burns
Written in 1785 and published in 1786, this 252-line poem in Scots and English follows Ayrshire neighbors playing fortune-telling games with nuts and kail stalks.
Below are the first three stanzas, where nits are nuts, pou means pull, and haud means hold.
Upon that night, when fairies light
On Cassilis Downans dance,
Or owre the lays, in splendid blaze,
On sprightly coursers prance;
Or for Colean the rout is ta’en,
Beneath the moon’s pale beams;
There, up the Cove, to stray an’ rove,
Amang the rocks and streams
To sport that night;
Amang the bonie winding banks,
Where Doon rins, wimplin, clear;
Where Bruce ance rul’d the martial ranks,
An’ shook his Carrick spear;
Some merry, friendly, countra-folks
Together did convene,
To burn their nits, an’ pou their stocks,
An’ haud their Halloween
Fu’ blythe that night.
The lasses feat, an’ cleanly neat,
Mair braw than when they’re fine;
Their faces blythe, fu’ sweetly kythe,
Hearts leal, an’ warm, an’ kin’:
The lads sae trig, wi’ wooer-babs
Weel-knotted on their garten;
Some unco blate, an’ some wi’ gabs
Gar lasses’ hearts gang startin
Whiles fast at night.
Credit: Robert Burns, “Halloween,” written 1785, first published in the Kilmarnock edition (Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect), 1786. Public domain; stanzas 1 to 3 shown.
2. “Song of the Witches” by William Shakespeare
This chant from Act 4, Scene 1 of Macbeth gave us the cauldron-and-spell image most people picture for a witch. Its short lines stress the first syllable, so it sounds like a spell.
Two of the third witch’s ingredients reflect the prejudice of Shakespeare’s era, so skip them when reading to children.
First Witch
Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison’d entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Swelter’d venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot.
All
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
Second Witch
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg and howlet’s wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
All
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Third Witch
Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witches’ mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock digg’d i’ the dark,
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse,
Nose of Turk and Tartar’s lips,
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-deliver’d by a drab,
Make the gruel thick and slab.
Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron,
For the ingredients of our cauldron.
All
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Second Witch
Cool it with a baboon’s blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.
Credit: William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 1 (lines 4 to 38), first printed in the First Folio, 1623. Public domain.
3. “Hallowe’en” by Joel Benton
Benton (1832 to 1911) first published this poem in Harper’s Weekly on October 31, 1896. Elves run the fortune-telling games here, and the last stanza turns to the adults who remember them.
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?
Eery shadows were they then–
But to-night they come again;
Were we once more but sixteen
Precious would be Hallowe’en.
Credit: Joel Benton, “Hallowe’en,” Harper’s Weekly, October 31, 1896; reprinted in The Book of Hallowe’en (1919). Public domain.
Short Halloween Poems to Read Aloud
Short Halloween poems run under about thirty lines, which makes them easy to read at a party, memorize for a class, or share at a doorstep.
The three below are Sandburg’s talking pumpkin, de la Mare’s unanswered knock, and Millay’s well-mannered ghost. Each can be read aloud in about a minute.
4. “Theme in Yellow” by Carl Sandburg
From Chicago Poems (1916), this fifteen-line poem is spoken by a pumpkin who becomes a jack-o’-lantern at a children’s ring dance. The children know the fright is play.
I spot the hills
With yellow balls in autumn.
I light the prairie cornfields
Orange and tawny gold clusters
And I am called pumpkins.
On the last of October
When dusk is fallen
Children join hands
And circle round me
Singing ghost songs
And love to the harvest moon;
I am a jack-o’-lantern
With terrible teeth
And the children know
I am fooling.
Credit: Carl Sandburg, “Theme in Yellow,” Chicago Poems (Henry Holt and Company, 1916). Public domain.
5. “Some One” by Walter de la Mare
From Peacock Pie (1913), this sixteen-line poem is about a knock with no one behind it. Only harmless night sounds answer, and that is what unsettles.
Some one came knocking
At my wee, small door;
Some one came knocking,
I’m sure – sure – sure;
I listened, I opened,
I looked to left and right,
But naught there was a-stirring
In the still dark night;
Only the busy beetle
Tap-tapping in the wall,
Only from the forest
The screech-owl’s call,
Only the cricket whistling
While the dewdrops fall,
So I know not who came knocking,
At all, at all, at all.
Credit: Walter de la Mare, “Some One,” Peacock Pie (1913). Public domain in the United States.
6. “The Little Ghost” by Edna St. Vincent Millay
From her first book, Renascence and Other Poems (1917). A ghost in a ruffled white hat admires the speaker’s garden, then leaves through a gate the wall no longer has.
I knew her for a little ghost
That in my garden walked;
The wall is high–higher than most–
And the green gate was locked.
And yet I did not think of that
Till after she was gone–
I knew her by the broad white hat,
All ruffled, she had on.
By the dear ruffles round her feet,
By her small hands that hung
In their lace mitts, austere and sweet,
Her gown’s white folds among.
I watched to see if she would stay,
What she would do–and oh!
She looked as if she liked the way
I let my garden grow!
She bent above my favourite mint
With conscious garden grace,
She smiled and smiled–there was no hint
Of sadness in her face.
She held her gown on either side
To let her slippers show,
And up the walk she went with pride,
The way great ladies go.
And where the wall is built in new
And is of ivy bare
She paused–then opened and passed through
A gate that once was there.
Credit: Edna St. Vincent Millay, “The Little Ghost,” Renascence and Other Poems (1917). Public domain in the United States.
Haunted Rooms and Autumn Nights
7. “One Need Not Be a Chamber to Be Haunted” by Emily Dickinson
Written around 1863 and published after her death, where early editors titled it “Ghosts.” Its point is that the ghost worth fearing is the self. The text follows that early printing.
One need not be a chamber to be haunted,
One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place.
Far safer, of a midnight meeting
External ghost,
Than an interior confronting
That whiter host.
Far safer through an Abbey gallop,
The stones achase,
Than, moonless, one’s own self encounter
In lonesome place.
Ourself, behind ourself concealed,
Should startle most;
Assassin, hid in our apartment,
Be horror’s least.
The prudent carries a revolver,
He bolts the door,
O’erlooking a superior spectre
More near.
Credit: Emily Dickinson, “One need not be a chamber to be haunted,” written c. 1863; first published as “Ghosts” in Poems, Second Series (Roberts Brothers, Boston, 1890s). Public domain.
8. “Haunted Houses” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
From Birds of Passage (1858). Here the ghosts are polite guests that only the speaker can see, and the poem ends on the moon’s path across the sea as a bridge between worlds.
All houses wherein men have lived and died
Are haunted houses. Through the open doors
The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,
With feet that make no sound upon the floors.
We meet them at the doorway, on the stair,
Along the passages they come and go,
Impalpable impressions on the air,
A sense of something moving to and fro.
There are more guests at table, than the hosts
Invited; the illuminated hall
Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts,
As silent as the pictures on the wall.
The stranger at my fireside cannot see
The forms I see, nor hear the sounds I hear;
He but perceives what is; while unto me
All that has been is visible and clear.
We have no title-deeds to house or lands;
Owners and occupants of earlier dates
From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands,
And hold in mortmain still their old estates.
The spirit-world around this world of sense
Floats like an atmosphere, and everywhere
Wafts through these earthly mists and vapors dense
A vital breath of more ethereal air.
Our little lives are kept in equipoise
By opposite attractions and desires;
The struggle of the instinct that enjoys,
And the more noble instinct that aspires.
These perturbations, this perpetual jar
Of earthly wants and aspirations high,
Come from the influence of an unseen star,
An undiscovered planet in our sky.
And as the moon from some dark gate of cloud
Throws o’er the sea a floating bridge of light,
Across whose trembling planks our fancies crowd
Into the realm of mystery and night,–
So from the world of spirits there descends
A bridge of light, connecting it with this,
O’er whose unsteady floor, that sways and bends,
Wander our thoughts above the dark abyss.
Credit: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Haunted Houses,” Birds of Passage, Flight the First (1858). Public domain.
Modern Halloween Poems
9. “Her Kind” by Anne Sexton
Written in 1959 and collected in To Bedlam and Part Way Back (1960), this three-stanza poem gives its speaker three roles: A possessed witch, a cave-dwelling housekeeper, and a survivor of the flames. Each stanza ends on the refrain “I have been her kind.”
I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.
Credit: Anne Sexton, “Her Kind,” To Bedlam and Part Way Back (Houghton Mifflin, 1960). Under copyright.
10. “The Pumpkin Tide” by Richard Brautigan
First published in the magazine J, issue 4, in 1959 and collected in The Octopus Frontier (Carp Press, 1960), this five-line poem reports a night when thousands of pumpkins float in on the tide and bump against the rocks and beaches.
Its last line turns the sight into a joke about Halloween reaching the sea.
I saw thousands of pumpkins last night
come floating in on the tide,
bumping up against the rocks and
rolling up on the beaches;
it must be Halloween in the sea.
Credit: Richard Brautigan, “The Pumpkin Tide,” The Octopus Frontier (1960). Under copyright.
How to Choose and Read a Halloween Poem Aloud
Pick the poem to fit your audience. Sandburg’s pumpkin and de la Mare’s unanswered knock are quick and fun for kids, since one ends in a wink and the other in a shiver.
Millay’s friendly ghost and Benton’s mischievous elves suit a mixed crowd at a party, while Dickinson, Longfellow and Sexton are better for a quiet, candlelit evening, because their ghosts and witches are meant to be thought about as well as heard.
Give the Macbeth chant to three readers and have everyone shout “Double, double toil and trouble” together.
Say Burns’s Scots words as spelled, and keep your voice low for “Some One.”
Whichever of these Halloween poems you choose, read it aloud before the first trick-or-treater arrives. Then, when you want pure dread, read our creepy poems collection next.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where Does the Word “Halloween” Come From?
The word is Scottish. It was first recorded in print in 1556 in an almost unrecognizable spelling, and it comes from “All Hallows’ Eve,” the evening before All Saints’ Day. Burns’s 1785 poem is one of the earliest English-language poems on the subject.
Why Is Halloween Spelled “Hallowe’en” in Older Poems?
The apostrophe stands for the missing “v” in “even,” an old word for evening, so Hallowe’en is a contraction of “Hallow even.” Benton and other writers of his era kept the apostrophe, while the one-word form is standard today.
Is “The Raven” a Halloween Poem?
Not strictly. Poe’s 1845 poem is set in a “bleak December” and never mentions the holiday, but its midnight visitor and gloomy mood have made it a seasonal favorite. Poets.org lists it among its popular classic poems for Halloween.
