Scary Games for a Teenage Sleepover Party

Although teenagers are sometimes content to simply talk through the night at a slumber party, preparing scary party games can keep them engaged and make for a memorable sleepover. At sleepovers large and small, teenagers love to scare themselves. These versatile games can be modified to fit multiple ages.

With a square cardboard box, white paint and markers, guests can create scary do-it dice. Make sure the box is taped and perfectly square. After painting the box—this can be done beforehand for convenience—guests can write scary commands on each side of the box. Some examples might include, "stay in the basement by yourself for five minutes," "walk around the block in the dark by yourself" or "sit in the attic for ten minutes." Directives can vary depending on the ages and location of the guests. For instance, in a more rural environment, more of the commands can take place outside. Guests take turns rolling the dice for their directives.

Sleepovers with many guests can play Murder. To play this, write the word "murderer" on a small sheet of paper, and place it in a hat with enough blank sheets of paper so that each guest will get one. Each partygoer chooses a piece from the hat. The player who chooses the piece with "murderer" on it, has a goal to "kill" the other players by winking at them. As the players walk around, the murderer winks at players, one at a time. Once a player has been killed, he should count to three and sit down so the other players know he is out of the game. If a player suspects that someone is the murderer, he can say that he knows who the murderer is. If he is wrong, though, he's dead. If he's correct, he wins. If the murderer is able to successfully kill all of the other players, he's the winner.

Teenagers love to scare themselves with scary stories, and party planners can allow time for a collaborative scary story that can also be turned into a game. To do this, have the party-goers sit in a circle. One teenager starts out as a narrator. She can create an elaborate scary story. To make it more interesting, she should include names and places the guests are familiar with. Then, when she gets to a critical part of the story, she stops and lets the person to her left continue the story for about a minute. That person elaborates as he chooses, stops and then lets the person to his left continue. Game play continues until all of the guests have contributed to the story. To make it competitive, the guests can do more than one round, with different storytellers starting. At the end of the rounds, guests vote on which story was the scariest or most creative.