Halloween’s joy is upon us. Our kids are excited and the spooky fun is everywhere including in our classrooms. There are numerous educational Halloween activities and games to help you create meaningful learning experiences in your class without sucking the Halloween joy out of them. 


There are also Halloween apps kids and students can use to learn and develop their Halloween vocabulary and facts. The pedagogical purpose is to seize these events that kids love and turn them into fun learning opportunities in and beyond class.

In today’s post, I am sharing with you some very good platforms where you can search for and access free Halloween pictures and images to use with your kids and students. You can search for spooky Halloween pictures, scary Halloween backgrounds, vintage Halloween images, Halloween posters, and many more. 


To be on the ethical and safe side, always make sure you go through the licenses of the images you want to use and make it a rule of thumb to include proper attribution to original creators. This is the least you can do (if you can’t give a donation ) to compensate those who  labour to create that amazing work.

1. Halloween pictures, Pixabay

Pixabay, the popular royalty free stock media platform, offers tons of Halloween pictures and HD images for free. Simply type in Halloween in the search box and choose images in the drop-down menu and there you go. 


Click on the Halloween image you are interested in and make sure to read the license it comes under. Most of the materials you will find are free to download and some of them dot no even require attribution (but I recommend you add proper attribution).

You can also search Pixabay for free halloween GIFs, videos, illustrations, and more. The site also offers access to a wide variety of high resolution Halloween background images that you can use in your Halloween activities in class. Last time I searched for Halloween background images the search turns over 800 free Halloween background images.

Image by Larisa Koshkina from Pixabay

2. Halloween Images, Freepik

Freepik also features a huge collection of quality Halloween pictures to use for different purposes including using them on your classroom blog, inserting them as Halloween background images in presentations or as Zoom backgrounds, and many more.

When you search for Halloween images use the search filters on the left hand side to further narrow down your search. For instance, you can filter your search by license (e.g., free or premium), by colour, file type (e.g., JPG, AI, EPS, PSD files), and more. You can even activate the Quick Edit filter in order to find Halloween images that you can edit and customize online using Wepik or Storyset.

3. Halloween Pictures, Unsplash

Unsplash offers access to a large library of free spooky Halloween pictures and scary Halloween background images. You can download images in different sizes (e.g., small, medium, or large) and you can also share them on social media websites using the generated links. In all events, always make sure you appropriately credit the source of the image.

4. Halloween Images and Pictures, iStock

iStock by Getty Images offers over 600.000 Halloween stock photos and images including Halloween background images and Halloween party photos. You can use iStock’s editor to customize Halloween images the way you want. You can add filters, change or add text fonts, crop and resize, and many more. However, to use any of iStock’ s photos you need to sign up and select a subscription plan. iStock’ s free trial offers 10 free images.

5. Halloween Pictures, Pexels

Pexels, another popular provider of free stock photos and videos, has this huge collection of halloween pictures and videos to choose from. You can filter your search by categories (such as Halloween background, scary, pumpkin, trick or treat, Halloween party, spooky, horror, etc), by orientation (e.g., horizontal, vertical, square), by size, and more. While photos are free users are urged to help creators by giving donations.



Image by callmetak on Freepik

6. Halloween pictures, Adobe stock

Adobe Stock has this huge library of Halloween pictures and videos to browse through. You need to get a subscription with Adobe Stock in order to download any of their materials. There is a 30 day free trial period that offers 10 free standard assets and the ability to cancel subscription before free trial ends. If you choose to go on with subscription you will be charged $29.99 per month on annual plan.

This post originally appeared in Educational Technology and Mobile Learning ( www.educatorstechnology.com ).