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I started coloring again the autumn my sister moved away and our Sunday calls got quiet. I needed something to do with my hands while we talked. So I printed a sheet of bats, found a tin of pencils older than my marriage, and colored badly for an hour. It helped more than I want to admit.
Now it is a whole September thing. I keep a folder of files on my desktop, print a few each weekend on the cheap 65 lb paper because markers feast on the thin stuff and bleed straight through, and color while a bad horror movie plays in the background. Some pages end up framed on the hallway wall. Most end up smudged and folded in a drawer, and that is fine too.
These are the sets I keep coming back to. Each one I bought from an indie design shop online, printed at home or snuck onto the library printer when my ink ran dry, and colored at least one page of myself. A couple of the links below are affiliate links, so if you grab a set I might earn a small cut. Costs you nothing. Grab a pencil.
The set that got me back into coloring
This is the one I printed first. Detailed but not insane, which matters, because the super-fine ones make my hand cramp by the second page. Ravens, gnarled trees, a few lanterns. The line weight is thick enough that colored pencil sits inside the lines without me holding my breath.
I did the cover page in deep purple and one rusty orange and stuck it on the fridge with a magnet shaped like a witch. My partner walked past, stopped, and said it looked like a real book page. High praise from a man who counts pumpkins.
One nitpick. A handful of pages have these dense crosshatched shadows that eat a pencil alive. I switched to fine markers for those and let them dry flat overnight so the paper would stop curling at the corner.
For the nights your brain is fried
Some evenings I do not have the patience for a thousand tiny leaves. This set knows that. Bigger shapes, more open space, the kind of page you finish in one sitting with a cup of tea going cold next to you.
I handed a few of these to my mother-in-law over Thanksgiving once, the year Halloween bled into November because we were all too busy. She has shaky hands now and the wide lines meant she could color a friendly ghost without frustration. She kept it.
The only thing I would flag is that a couple of the simpler pages feel a touch empty if you color flat. I fixed mine by adding a wash of background with the side of a pencil. Took two minutes and the pumpkin stopped floating in white space.
All pumpkins, all the way down
I have a weakness for pumpkins, so this one was never not getting bought. Patch scenes, single carved faces, vines curling off the edge of the page. If you only love one autumn thing, this is the set that lets you marathon it.
My favorite page is a fat heirloom pumpkin with a stem like a question mark. I colored it that pale blue-green you see on the weird fancy gourds at the farm stand instead of orange, framed it in a thrifted gold frame, and now it lives on the kitchen windowsill year round. Nobody questions it.
Nitpick. The vine details on two pages are thin enough that a regular marker tip smothers them. Use a fine liner or a sharp pencil there, or just accept the vines as suggestions like I eventually did.
Spooky but make it soft
Big eyes, round little monsters, ghosts that look like they want a hug. This is the set I print when my niece comes over and we color side by side at the kids’ table, even though it is sold for grown-ups. The cute factor is dangerous.
We did a whole afternoon on these last fall. She picked the most violent colors imaginable for a sweet little bat and I let her, because that is the point. Mine are on the fridge. Hers are taped to her bedroom door at her house, slightly torn from the tape.
The one drawback is that the cute style leaves a lot of big open shapes, so if you are a pencil person you will be filling large areas and your pencil will get a workout. I keep a fat marker around just for the backgrounds on these.
Round two of the adorable little horrors
Yes, there are two Creepy Cutie sets in this list, and yes I bought both, because the second one has different critters and I have zero self-control in September. Pumpkin cats. A skeleton holding a balloon. The kind of thing that makes you go aww at something technically dead.
This one I printed on slightly heavier paper, 110 lb, because I wanted to actually frame a couple instead of stuffing them in the drawer. The thicker stock holds marker without a single ghost of bleed coming through the back. Worth the extra forty cents a sheet.
Nitpick, and it is small. A few of the line files are saved a little soft, so if you blow them up to fill a full sheet you can see the edges fuzz a touch. At normal print size you will never notice. I only saw it because I am annoying about it.
Two hundred witch cats and I regret nothing
This is an absurd number of cats in pointy hats and I am completely at peace with it. Two hundred pages means I will be coloring witch cats until I am old. Black cats on brooms, cats in cauldrons, a cat clearly plotting something.
I keep this file as my default. Bad day, print a cat. Phone call with my sister, print a cat, color while we talk, hold it up to the camera so she can judge my color choices. She always judges. The volume here means I never run out of a fresh page to ruin.
The honest catch with any giant pack is that not every page is a winner. A few of the two hundred are clearly filler, repeated poses with a tiny tweak. I just skim the thumbnails and print the good twenty. Still a steal for what you pay.
Skeletons for the moody coloring nights
When I want something a little less cute and a little more bones, this is the file I open. Sugar-skull style florals, rattling dancers, skeletons doing very human things like reading and gardening. It scratches a different itch than the round monsters.
I colored a skeleton couple slow-dancing in greys and one shock of red, printed it on the matte 65 lb so the pencil would grab, and gave it to a friend who hangs Halloween art up in February out of spite. He loved it. It is still on his wall, last I checked.
The nitpick here is the sheer density on the sugar-skull pages. All those tiny petals and dots will eat an evening. That is sort of the appeal, but go in knowing one page is a project, not a quick warm-up before bed.
Where Halloween meets the meditation kind of coloring
Mandalas with bats and pumpkins and webs folded into the symmetry. This is the set for when I want the slow, almost trancey kind of coloring where an hour vanishes and my tea goes fully cold again.
I do these on the porch in early October when the light is still good at six. Pencils only, no markers, because the rings are so fine a marker would just murder them. The repetition is the whole point. Pick four colors, rotate them around the ring, let your brain go quiet.
Fair warning, this one is not relaxing if you fight the symmetry. The first time I tried to freestyle the colors it looked like chaos and I was annoyed for no reason. Once I leaned into the pattern it became the most peaceful file in the folder.
The grab-bag pack I dip into all month
Two hundred pages of a bit of everything cute. Ghosts, candy, friendly spiders, little haunted houses. This is less a themed set and more a whole month of options, which is exactly why I keep it pinned in my folder.
Last October I printed a stack of these and left them on the kitchen table with a jar of markers for whoever wandered through. A party guest who claimed he never colors sat down and did a haunted house for forty minutes and missed half the party. We still tease him.
The nitpick is the same as any mega-pack. The styles wobble a little from page to page, some chunky and bold, some finer, so it does not feel like one cohesive book. I do not care, but if you want a matched look for framing, cherry-pick from one style and skip the rest.
The three hundred page monster of a file
Three hundred pages. I will be honest, I have not colored even a quarter of them and I have owned this file two autumns now. It is the deep well I draw from when nothing else in the folder is calling to me. Spooky scenes, ornate borders, the occasional genuinely creepy face.
The range is the selling point. There are simple nights and there are intricate ones, and one PDF holds both, so I do not have to go hunting through five files to match my mood. I printed a detailed graveyard gate page on the library printer once because my home ink died, and the heavier toner actually made the lines crisper than my own machine ever does.
Nitpick. At three hundred pages the quality is uneven, naturally. Some pages are clearly the stars and some are padding. Treat it like a buffet, not a book you finish front to back, and you will get your money’s worth and then some.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do kids get halloween off school?
No, Halloween is not a school holiday in the US, so kids are usually in class right up until the trick-or-treating starts. That is part of why I love having a coloring stash ready. The after-school hours before it gets dark are restless, and a sheet of friendly monsters at the kitchen table buys everyone some calm.
Schools sometimes do a costume parade or a class party on the day, but the building is open and the buses still run.
Do kids celebrate halloween in japan?
Sort of, but differently. In Japan Halloween leans more toward costumes, street gatherings and big themed displays than the door-to-door trick-or-treating I grew up with. It is more of a young-adult and city event than a neighborhood kid tradition.
Coloring pages travel fine anywhere though. A pumpkin is a pumpkin in any language, and I have mailed printed sheets to a friend in Osaka who colors them with her students.
Do kids have halloween off?
Generally no. Halloween falls on whatever weekday it lands on and school carries on as normal, with the fun packed into the evening once everyone is home. Plan the messy crafts and coloring for the afternoon and the candy run for after dark.
The exception is when the 31st lands on a weekend, which is its own kind of glorious because the whole day opens up.
Do kids get halloween off?
No, kids do not get the day off for Halloween. It is a normal school and work day for almost everyone, which honestly makes the evening feel more like a treat earned after a regular Thursday.
If you want to stretch the fun, that is where printables earn their keep. I start putting coloring sheets out the first week of October so it feels like a season and not just one frantic night.
Before You Print
I print most of these on whatever cheap cardstock is in the tray, color one page badly, frame the rare good one, and lose the rest in a drawer until next September when I find them again and smile. That is the whole ritual. No skill required.
Pick one set that makes you grin in the thumbnail, print a single page tonight, and color it while something spooky plays. Mine is a witch cat right now, half finished, propped against the toaster where I keep forgetting it.