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Every October I set up what my sister calls the goblin station. It is just the kitchen table with the good lamp dragged over and a coffee can of markers that have seen things. The kids show up, they color for nineteen minutes, then they vanish to fight over candy corn. So the pages have to earn their printer ink fast.
I used to buy a fat coloring book at the drugstore and watch the kids ignore four-fifths of it. Now I print single sheets from files I grab online, and I only print the ones I know will get touched. A skeleton for the boy who is in his bones era. A fat cat in a hat for the toddler who eats more crayon than she uses. Cheaper, and I am not storing a book I will lose by November 3rd.
The ones below are the files I keep coming back to. A couple are for me, honestly, after bedtime. Some of the links are affiliate ones, so if you grab a set I might get a few cents. Costs you nothing. Markers out.
The Creepy-Cute Set My Six-Year-Old Guards
This is the one my nephew calls his. Little ghosts with worried eyebrows, a vampire that looks more shy than scary, a bat doing a tiny wave. Wide open shapes, thick outlines, exactly what a kid with a death grip on a marker needs. He did the pumpkin first, every time, in a green I would not have picked.
I run these on plain copy paper, 20 lb, nothing fancy, because they get folded and stuck to the fridge within the hour. The black lines come out crisp even on the cheap stuff.
One gripe. A few of the designs pack in a lot of background detail near the edges, and a four-year-old just scribbles a brown cloud over the whole bottom third. Not the file’s fault. I just hand the busier sheets to the older kids and keep the simple ghost for the little one.
Round Two of the Friendly Monsters
Same cozy-spooky energy as its sibling above, different lineup. More smiling skulls, a candy bucket scene, a witch who looks like she bakes. I printed a stack of these for my kid’s class party last fall and the teacher texted me a photo of the whole back wall covered in them. Twenty-two crooked purple cats.
For a group I batch these on the library printer because mine would weep at thirty copies. Bring your own paper if you do that. The library stuff is thin and the markers bleed straight through onto the table.
The only thing I would change is the page margins sit tight, so if your printer eats a quarter inch like my old Canon does, you lose a toe off the bottom ghost. I bumped the print scale to 96 percent and it stopped clipping.
Two Hundred Witch Cats, Or, I Will Never Print Them All
This is a whole stash. Black cats in pointy hats, cats on brooms, cats glaring out of cauldrons. Two hundred of them, which is frankly absurd and also exactly why I bought it. One file, and I am set for three Halloweens of rainy afternoons.
What I do is pull six or seven pages the night before, print them, and leave the rest in the folder. My partner thinks owning two hundred cat pages is a personality flaw. He is not wrong.
The range is uneven, which is the honest knock on any giant pack. Some cats are fine detailed line work for a patient adult, others are blocky toddler stuff. No labels telling you which is which, so I flip through the preview first and dog-ear the page numbers I want. Five minutes of sorting saves a kid the frustration of a page that is way too fiddly.
Skeletons For The Kid In His Bones Era
My neighbor’s son went through a phase where everything had to be skeletons. Skeleton on the lunchbox, skeleton drawn on his arm. So this pack was a gift to her, and a gift to me, because it bought me a quiet evening at her kitchen counter while he colored a skeleton riding a skateboard.
Another two-hundred-page giant. Skeletons dancing, skeletons in costumes, a few anatomical-ish ones that are weirdly soothing to fill in with a mug of cider nearby. I print the calmer ones for myself.
Same caveat as any mega-bundle: the file is heavy and my phone choked trying to open the preview, so do that part on a real computer. Once it is on the laptop it prints page by page with no fuss. I just wish it numbered the cute ones separately from the spooky ones.
Halloween Mandalas For When The Kids Finally Sleep
These are not for the goblin station. These are for me, ten at night, the one lamp on, a true crime podcast going. Spiderwebs and bats and pumpkins folded into those symmetrical mandala patterns that suck you in for an hour without noticing.
I print these on the heavier 65 lb cardstock so I can use gel pens without the page warping into a taco. Regular paper buckles the second you layer ink. Worth the extra cost for the ones you actually want to keep.
My one honest complaint is the line weight gets very thin in the densest sections, so if your printer is low on toner like mine perpetually is, the tiniest petals come out as ghost lines you have to guess at. I reprinted one page after swapping the cartridge and it was a different sheet entirely.
The Big Cute Book I Lean On For Mixed-Age Chaos
When my sister brings all three of hers over and they range from two to nine, I need a pack with a little of everything. This one delivers. Simple jack-o-lanterns for the baby, busier haunted house scenes for the big kid who thinks she is too cool to color and then colors for forty minutes straight.
I keep this folder on the desktop and just print to taste based on who walked in the door. No commitment, no wasted book.
The knock here is the cute factor is real but a few pages repeat motifs you have seen in the other packs, so if you already own a couple of these bundles you will hit some deja vu. Not a dealbreaker at the price, just do not expect two hundred fully unique drawings.
A Hundred Grown-Up Pages For The Wine Night Table
Every year a few friends come over the Sunday before the 31st, we put on the old Halloween specials, and everybody gets a clipboard and a page. This is the pack I print from for that. Detailed enough to keep an adult busy, not so insane it feels like homework.
Intricate witches, layered pumpkin patches, a beautiful haunted manor that my friend Dana spent the entire movie shading. Cardstock, definitely. Markers bleed and you want both sides usable for the next guest.
The one thing is the detail density jumps around, some pages are a relaxed twenty-minute color and others are a commitment. I sort them into easy and hard piles before people arrive so nobody gets stuck with the manor unless they want it.
The Moodier Adult Set I Print On Purple Cardstock
Slightly darker vibe than the hundred-pack above. More gothic, more deep-shadow scenes, the kind of thing you fill in with metallic gel pens and feel a little smug about. I did one on a sheet of deep purple cardstock once instead of white and the silver ink looked incredible. Glitter regret is real but metallic on dark paper is a free win.
I hang the finished ones on the kitchen window with washi tape. They catch the porch light at night.
My nitpick is a couple of designs have huge black-fill areas, and coloring a giant solid black space with a marker is a wrist workout and an ink drinker. I leave those sections empty and let the cardstock show through. Reads as intentional. Mostly.
Easy Adult Pages For People Who Say They Cannot Color
There is always one guest who insists they are bad at this. My brother-in-law. This pack is for him. Adult themes, pretty designs, but with breathing room in the shapes so nobody feels like they are defusing a bomb. He finished a whole bat scene and acted like he had not enjoyed it.
These print clean on plain paper, no cardstock needed, since the open areas mean less bleed worry. Good for a casual table where you do not want to fuss.
The trade is they can feel a touch plain if you are a serious colorer chasing tiny detail. Know your crowd. For the nervous beginner they are perfect, for the friend with the eighty-pen case they will be done too fast and asking for the manor.
The Properly Spooky Volume For The Horror Crowd
Not for the kids’ table, this one. Creepier imagery, the genuinely unsettling end of the spectrum, made for the friend who only watches slashers in October. I printed a few for my movie-night sister and she colored a haunted graveyard scene in greys and one shocking red and it ended up framed in her hallway.
These want cardstock and a steady hand. The line work gets fine in the shadowy parts and you will want decent pens, not the dried-up coffee-can markers.
My gripe is it is volume four, so it assumes you might own the earlier ones, and a couple of scenes echo themes you would find in those. On its own it stands fine. I just went looking for the rest after, which I suppose is the point of numbering them.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do kids get halloween off school?
In most of the US, no. Halloween lands on a regular school day unless it falls on a weekend, so the costumes and the sugar crash happen after the bell. That is exactly why I keep a stack of these pages ready for the afternoon. The kids come home wired and a coloring sheet at the table buys me twenty minutes to deal with the candy mountain.
Some districts do a classroom party or a costume parade during the day, but actual time off is rare. Check your kid’s school calendar in early October so you are not the parent surprised by a half day.
Do kids celebrate halloween in japan?
Sort of, but not the way we do. Trick-or-treating door to door is not really a thing there. Halloween in Japan grew up more as a costume and street-party event for teens and adults, big in places like Shibuya, with way less of the kids-and-candy-at-the-neighbor’s-house tradition.
Coloring pages travel fine anywhere though. A pumpkin is a pumpkin. I have a friend teaching English over there who prints my goblin-station sheets for her students just for the language practice and the fun of it.
Do kids have halloween off?
Same answer as the school question, basically: usually not. The day itself is a normal one for most kids, school in the morning, candy heist at night. The fun is squeezed into the evening.
Which is the whole reason I batch-print coloring pages the weekend before. When the actual night is a rushed school-day scramble, having the spooky stuff ready ahead of time is the only thing that keeps the afternoon from falling apart at my house.
Do kids get halloween off?
No, in general kids do not get Halloween off as a holiday. It is not on the official calendar the way Thanksgiving is. Expect a regular school day with maybe a party squeezed in, then the real event after dark.
If you want the daytime to feel festive anyway, that is where printables earn their keep. I tuck a coloring sheet in my kid’s backpack for the bus ride and print a few extra for whoever ends up at our table after the candy is sorted.
Before You Print
So that is the folder. The friendly ghosts for the little hands, the two-hundred-page cat and skeleton stashes I will be working through until I am old, the mandalas and the moody adult sets for after the kids crash. I do not print them all. I print the six I know will get colored that week and leave the rest waiting.
Last year my niece colored the same shy vampire three nights in a row and refused to do any other page. He is taped to my fridge right now, in June, in a yellow cape she chose herself. Print the ones your people will actually touch. The rest just sit in the folder, patient, ready for next October.