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My sister dropped her kid off the first Saturday of October and said, keep her busy, do not let her near the good scissors. Fair. So I set up the kitchen table with a stack of ghost prints and a fresh box of markers and we went feral for about two hours.
Ghosts are the gateway. Skulls scare some little kids, witches feel like a lot, but a wobbly white blob with two dots for eyes? Every four-year-old is on board. I keep a folder of ghost files on my desktop now, half of them coloring pages, a couple of them laser cut signs I do not actually own a machine for but bought anyway because I have a problem.
These are the ones below. Some I printed and used, some I just stared at longingly. A few links are affiliate links, so if you grab one I get a tiny cut and you get a ghost. Even trade.
The Activity Pack That Bought Me Twenty Minutes of Peace
This one is the workhorse. Mazes, a little word search, connect-the-dots, the kind of thing you hand a kid and then go drink your coffee while it is still warm. I printed the whole pack on regular copy paper because nobody needs heavy cardstock under a crayon, and that was the right call.
My niece did the maze three times and then started inventing her own rules for it, which is its own kind of activity I guess. The pages are dense, which is good value, but a couple of the puzzles run small. If your kid is on the younger side you might be reading the instructions out loud and pointing. Print extra copies of the maze. They will want the maze again.
Round One of the Ghost Coloring Showdown
There are two of these in the lineup and I genuinely could not pick, so I printed both and let the kid decide, which is how I lost an afternoon. This version has the chunkier ghosts. Big open shapes, thick outlines, very forgiving if your coloring partner goes way outside the lines.
We did these in purple and lime green instead of the usual orange because I was out of orange. Happens every year. The thick lines held up fine even when she pressed hard with the marker and it bled a little on the back of the page. One small thing: the white space inside the ghosts is generous, so a four-year-old will be coloring for a while. That is either a feature or a problem depending on how badly you need a break.
Round Two, For When They Want More Ghosts
Same family, different pages. This set has a bit more going on in each scene, little pumpkins and bats tucked around the ghosts, so it kept her busy longer than the simpler one. Older kids will like these better. My niece is on the young end and skipped the tiny background bits entirely.
I printed these on the back of some leftover copy paper and the marker did soak through, so if you are framing the finished art for the fridge gallery, go slightly heavier on the paper. Otherwise no notes. She made one ghost completely black and called it a shadow ghost and honestly that slaps.
A Welcome Sign I Bought With No Laser Cutter
Look, I do not own a laser cutter. I bought this file anyway because the ghost shape is so clean and friendly that I wanted it by the door, and there is a maker space across town that charges by the hour. So this is aspirational for me, but my neighbor has a Glowforge and owes me a favor after I watered her plants in August.
The design is simple enough that it should cut without a million tiny bridges snapping off, which is where these files usually go wrong. The lettering is the part I would test first on scrap. If you do have a machine, this lands on a porch or beside a front door perfectly. If you do not, well, join me in staring at it.
The Soft Pink Ghost That Does Not Belong With the Kids
This one snuck into a kids list and I am leaving it because I love it too much. It is a vintage coquette ghost, all soft bows and faded pink, more grown-up scrapbook than crayon party. I printed it small, slid it into a thrifted oval frame, and it sits on the shelf by my bedroom window.
It is a transparent PNG, so it drops onto whatever background you want, which I used to make a little gift tag for my sister. The faded look means it prints best on a printer that has not run its color cartridge into the ground. Mine had, and the first pass came out streaky and ghostlier than intended. Swapped the cartridge, tried again, much better.
The One I Stitched Instead of Printed
Different beast. This is an embroidery file, so it skips the printer entirely and goes into a hoop. I do not have a fancy embroidery machine either, but I traced the ghost outline onto a tea towel and hand-stitched it over two evenings while watching a bad slasher movie marathon.
The design itself is clean and the ghost is plump and cheerful, exactly what you want. My stitching was the weak link, not the file. One corner pulled the fabric and now my ghost has a slightly squished head, which I have decided is character. If you actually own a machine this will be effortless. If you are doing it by hand like me, pick a smaller spot to start.
Tiny Ghosts to Slip Into a Library Book
I made a stack of these as little favors for my niece to hand out at school. The bookmark size is forgiving, small enough that flaws hide and big enough that a kid can actually use it without losing it under the couch in a day. We did them in a rainbow of cardstock scraps I had been hoarding.
It is an SVG, so if you have a cutting machine the edges come out crisp. I do not, so I printed the outline and cut by hand with regular scissors, which works but the curves of the ghost got a little jagged where my hand wobbled. Punch a hole at the top, loop some ribbon, done. They were a hit and three of them came home in my coat pocket anyway.
Ghost Holding Coffee, Aka My Personality
A little ghost clutching a coffee cup next to a pumpkin, and yes I felt seen. This is a PNG so I slapped it on a mug design for myself and printed a sticker sheet version for the kids, who do not drink coffee but loved the ghost regardless.
The colors are warm and autumn-y, lots of that toasty pumpkin orange, which printed true on my home printer for once. The detail is fine but small, so blowing it up too big shows a little softness at the edges. Kept mine around four inches and it stayed sharp. My partner stole the sticker version for his laptop, so make extras.
The Whole Ghost Family in One Download
This is the bundle, a pile of different ghost clipart in one go, and it is the one I reach for when I am making invitations or labels or whatever the party demands this year. Loads of poses and little expressions, so nothing ends up looking repetitive across a project.
They are transparent PNGs, which means you can scatter them across a banner or a goodie bag tag without fighting white boxes. I used a handful to make place cards for the kids table and the variety carried it. If I am nitpicking, a few of the ghosts in the set are nearly identical, so the count looks bigger than the actual variety. Still plenty to work with.
Ghost and Bats, For the Friend With the Fancy Machine
Another laser cut file I have no business owning, but the composition got me. A ghost with a little swarm of bats around it, the kind of layered scene that looks expensive when it is done well. This is the one I am bringing to my neighbor with the Glowforge as my next favor cash-in.
The bats are the risky part. Small cutouts like that can be fiddly and snap if the material is too thin, so I would run this on something with a bit of body to it rather than flimsy stock. As an SVG it scales clean, which I checked by zooming way in until my screen was just ghost. Sized for a shelf or a window ledge, it would throw a great shadow with a tea light behind it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is my printer printing ghost images?
Funny enough this has nothing to do with Halloween. Ghost images, those faint repeated copies on your page, usually mean a tired drum or fuser in a laser printer, or low ink smearing on an inkjet.
I got faint double ghosts on my coloring pages one year and it was just my cartridge running dry. Swapped it and the streaks went away. If it keeps happening, run a cleaning cycle and check the drum.
Does ghost affect ghost?
If you mean stacking ghost images on top of each other in a design, sure, transparent PNGs layer just fine and you can overlap as many ghosts as you like. I do it on banners all the time.
If you mean the printer kind of ghosting, then one faint pass can absolutely smear into the next line and make a mess. That is a hardware problem, not a haunting.
What is ghost printing?
It is the technical name for those faint duplicate images that show up where you did not want them, like a shadow of the line above. The print equivalent of an echo.
With these files you want the opposite, crisp and solid, so if you see ghosting check your ink levels first. Cheap nearly-empty cartridges are the usual culprit at my house.
Does every ghost house have a secret exit?
In the movies, always. In real life, no, and please do not let your kid go hunting for one behind the drywall.
For a craft afternoon the only secret exit you need is the one where you sneak off to refill your coffee while the kids are deep in a coloring page. Works every time.
Before You Print
We ended that Saturday with a fridge covered in ghosts, two of them shadow ghosts, and a kitchen table I am still finding marker on. My sister picked her kid up and the first thing the kid did was hold up a purple ghost like a trophy.
Start with one coloring set and a fresh box of markers. Print extra mazes. Keep the orange ink topped up because you will run out, you always run out, and a pink ghost is a perfectly good ghost anyway.