21 Scary Bible Costume Ideas for Holy-Ween

When your church’s alternative to Halloween prohibits ghosts and ghouls, you can dress as a Bible character and still have scary fun!

Woman draped in white cloths — Image by LonelyMinds on Stockvault

Should Christians Celebrate Halloween?

While many Christians object to celebrating Halloween, it has always been one of my favorite holidays. One of the churches I served used to open up their parking lot for Trunk or Treat every year. It was one of the biggest annual outreaches to our community because it reached such a diversity of people. It was a lot of fun seeing all the kids in costumes, and the adults as well.

Of course, many churches object to celebrating Halloween, saying it is the Devil’s holiday. I address this in an article, “Should Christians Celebrate Halloween?” While I can’t tell you what you should do, this article gives a perspective you should consider.

Alternatives to Halloween

Some churches offer alternative activities that are still fun for families. A lot of churches schedule these events sometime in October, but not on October 31 itself. Many churches offer hayrides, pumpkin carving, and other activities. They rebrand these events as Fall Festival, Holy-Ween, or some other creative name.

No matter what you call the event, it’s always fun to dress up. Some churches encourage their folks to wear anything they want as long as it’s not ghosts, murder clowns, and vampires. Others want the kids to come dressed as Bible characters or other heroes of faith. Here are a few costume ideas for Holy-Ween that can meet your church’s biblical costume requirements, but still are scary fun. With a little glue, red paint, mannequin parts, and a lot of ingenuity, you can dress as a Bible character and still scare your pastor! Here’s a list of ideas:

Female Costumes:

Put on a typical Bible-woman costume and carry around a bloody hammer and spike. You’ll be the best Jael at the party!
You could put on a typical female Bible character costume, but add a breastplate, helmet, and sword. This would make you the prophetess Deborah. Her costume isn’t so scary, but her existence is terrifying to those who insist on male leadership!
Try out a Jezebel costume by splashing your biblical outfit with blood and gluing dog stuffies all over your body.
Queen Esther is an amazing costume. Just dress in a lavish ancient dress with plenty of eye makeup and a lovely veil. Then carry a Haman doll impaled on a long stick.
Put on a mumu, red beehive wig, false eyelashes, and thick blue eye shadow. Then, get a crystal ball, you could be the witch of Endor. (Get it? Endor…Endora…Oh, never mind!)
You could be Mary Magdelene. No—this doesn’t mean you dress like a sex worker because she wasn’t one. Instead, dress like any other female Bible character, and go around telling everyone that Jesus has risen. Carry a miniature lectern around with you—that’s what makes it scary!

Couples Costumes:

Two male friends could both don fig-leaf loincloths and really terrify conservative churchgoers as Adam and Steve.
Try a Samson and Delilah One requires a muscleman outfit with a bald cap and Ray Charles sunglasses. The other simply needs a long wig and a pair of scissors.
Salome and John the Baptist will be a hit. She wears a belly dancer costume. He gets a large plastic platter, cuts a hole in it, and sticks his head through.
Two friends might get together (one in front and one in back) in a golden calf
With some paper mâché twinkle lights, you could be fire and brimstone.

Male Costumes:

If you’re going for the headless theme but don’t want to be John, you might try the apostle Paul or St. Bartholemew. Think “headless horseman” but with a toga.
A Judas costume could involve a simple noose around your neck. Or, if you want to get more elaborate, you could open your robe, revealing intestines spilling onto the ground.
Go to the hardware store and buy a crosscut handsaw. Cut off the blade and stick the handle to your body. Add some fake blood and (voila!) you can be the prophet Isaiah, who was sawn in two.
You might decide not to go as one of the saints or martyrs, and instead dress as David, with a slingshot and a necklace of two hundred Philistine foreskins.
Get a bunch of those fake vomit splatters and glue them all over yourself. Add some seaweed around your neck and go around telling everyone to repent. Instant Jonah!
If you want to really cheap out, just put on a standard biblical character outfit and go around talking to folks, keeping your tongue stuck to the roof of your mouth. Probably nobody will guess that you are John the Baptist’s dad, Zechariah.

Non-Gendered Costumes:

With a lot of glue and extra body parts, you could be an angel from the book of Ezekiel 1:5-9: “And from the midst of it came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance: they had a human likeness, but each had four faces, and each of them had four wings. Their legs were straight, and the soles of their feet were like the sole of a calf’s foot. And they sparkled like burnished bronze. Under their wings on their four sides they had human hands. And the four had their faces and their wings thus: their wings touched one another.”
With little more than a cardboard box and a couple of poles, you can become the Ark of the Covenant, one of the more terrifying objects in the biblical narrative. Maybe put a plasma globe between the cherubim to depict its deadly power.
Try your hand at carving, and you might be the tablets of the law. This is scary because nobody can keep the whole law!
You can dress up as an ESV Bible (Click here to see why that’s scary.)

A Hallowed Scream

Just because your church says you must dress like a Bible character, that doesn’t mean it can’t be scary. With a little ingenuity, you can turn any Holy-ween into a hallowed scream. Have a great holiday!