COVID or no COVID, the Halloween season is one of the best times of the year to host a spooky trivia party! Sure, in person, you can carve pumpkins, walk through haunted houses, and drink exotic potions, but there's still a ton of fun to be had virtually over Zoom or any other hosting platform.

Here are 5 quick ways you can spice up this year's virtual Halloween event!

1. GHOUL UP YOUR VIRTUAL BACKGROUND

This may seem like an obvious choice, but with most new laptops/computers, you can select virtual backgrounds to scare your party guests! On Zoom, just click the up arrow next to your video settings icon to dive into some surreal still images of castles, graveyards, Michael Myers's house, etc to add some quick ambiance to the virtual call. You can even select videos now for some motion-based backgrounds. Steal this one that I've been using! And find some more spooky still frames over at this blog from The Bash, a site I use for lots of yearly virtual bookings.

2. DRESS IN COSTUMES OR DECORATE AT HOME

Halloween is obviously a great time for dressing up, but sometimes people forget you can don a costume for these macabre Zoom calls! Throw on a mask, wig, or a full outfit and talk your guests into doing the same. And hey, they only need a costume from the waist up, right? Work in a quick costume contest at the start or end of the show and award a prize for the best dressed. You can conduct a great digital poll with an app like Crowdpurr, which doubles as a fantastic marketing tool and trivia suite.

3. ENCOURAGE SPOOKY TRIVIA TEAM NAMES

This one doesn't take much effort, and you can even just mention it in the invite, but scary team or individual team names always make for more fun, and the punnier, the better! Give your players the goal of creating some fun names to sign up with in advance or day-of. Here's a quick batch of some new ones you can use for 2020!

• Bazooka Joe Exotic

• The Murder Charlotte Hornets

• QuaranTina Belcher

• COVIDeo Killed the Radio Star

• Schitts Creeky Door

• 6 Feet Apart Of Your World

• Disneyland's Still Closed

• Netflix and Got Chills

• Kanye 4 President

• Avada COVIDavra

4. SCARE UP THOSE QUESTIONS

Remember, your virtual trivia night should have some scare-tastic themes, so think outside the coffin and concoct some truly ghostly rounds and questions! Use PowerPoint to display images from scary movies and have your players guess the titles. Play a scary song by sharing your audio over Zoom and have players write down the decade the song came out, or the artist, or the title. Challenge your team to list a different type of candy for every letter of the alphabet! It seems easy, but throw a 5 minute time limit on there and put them in breakout rooms to watch the struggle!

And feel free to use any of these fun ideas for rounds in your question writing:

• Witches and Werewolves: Who taught potions at Hogwarts? (Severus Snape) What movie features The Sanderson Sisters? (Hocus Pocus) An American Werewolf in _________ came out in 1981. (London)

• Halloween: What state do the Halloween films take place in? (Illinois) What country originally started carving jack-o-lanterns? (Ireland) What was the highest selling Halloween candy of 2019? (Reese's Peanut Butter Cups)

• Scary Movies: Who played Freddy Kruger in A Nightmare on Elm Street? (Robert England) What decade did Silence of the Lambs come out? (1990s) What type of dog was Cujo? (Saint Bernard)

• Ghosts: What is the name of the ghost ship from Pirates of the Caribbean? (The Black Pearl) Unchained Melody plays in what famous Patrick Swayze movie? (Ghost) What network aired the kids series Ghost Writer? (PBS)

• Scary TV: Who was the original host of Unsolved Mysteries? (Robert Stack) Who played Scully on the X-Files? (Gillian Anderson) What was Michael's costume on Season 7 of The Office? (MacGruber)

5. GIVE AWAY A SPINE-TINGLING PRIZE

Get creative with your team or individual prizes! Since it's Halloween, you can send someone a 5LB bag of gummy worms. Or the box set for all the Leprechaun movies. Or a gift certificate to Wine.com to buy some Walking Dead bottles of wine with interactive labels! Go big and make sure your guests know this was the funnest virtual trivia party they've ever attended. And hey, you can even hand out death certificates to the losers! OK that's a but much, but in the right office, it could be a big hit.

Whatever you decide to do for your virtual trivia party for ANY holiday, remember, it's going to be tons of fun. Everyone's working from home in 2020, and they just want a break from the usual Zoom call. You can plan this whole bash yourself, or hit up Trivia With Budds anytime with questions or booking requests. Have a Happy Halloween! 🎃 👻 🍬