Originally published in 2014. Updated by Tina Sieber in October 2017.

Booo! It's that time of year again. Either be scared or stuff the neighbor's kids with candy.

Get into the mood now by placing a creepy wallpaper on your desktop. It's easy, we show you how at the bottom of this article. Meanwhile, we've got a horrible selection right here for you to pick from.

Discover Wallpapers

Ready to be spooked? Instead of merely throwing randomly selected wallpaper images at you, I'll also show you where to find more of them yourself. Time to gather your Halloween costume, so you'll match your desktop.

GoodFon

On GoodFon you can search wallpapers by keyword in a specific category, sort by relevance, downloads, rating, or comments, and crop results further by picking from a resolution, including widescreen, full-screen, or multi-monitors. This is what a search result looks like:

GoodFon Search Result

Below are my Halloween picks from GoodFon. All are available in a number of different resolutions. The one best matching your screen is selected automatically. To download another resolution, pick from the Select Resolution drop-down menu or manually change the size; both options are available in the bottom right corner.

Girl with Crows [No Longer Available] 

GoodFun Halloween

Burning Scare Crow

Burning Scare Crow

Castle and Night Owl

Castle and Night Owl

Zastavki

Poor on features, but rich in content! Search by keyword, then sort by date, downloads, rating, or randomly. The results page is relatively plain, but the selection makes up for that. All images come in various resolutions, which are listed in the bottom right of the wallpaper page.

Halloween Celebration

Halloween Celebration

Ghost Bride

Ghost Bride

Since it's marked on the Ghost Bride wallpaper above, let me say that Dark Wallz is a terrible resource. Their Halloween set is beautifully gruesome, but they offer no sort options or resolution selection whatsoever. Very disappointing because their overall collection is impressive.

Desktop Nexus

This used to be one of the better resources for wallpapers. While their selection still is grande, the download options seem convoluted. Pick a wallpaper you fancy, then either click Enlarge Wallpaper (bottom right of image) or Download Now! (right-hand sidebar). If the automatically detected resolution isn't right, click Options (top of new windows) to select the right size.

Desktop Nexus Halloween

Unfortunately, some images are automatically blown up in size, even though the original resolution is much smaller. To avoid a blurry wallpaper, make sure the original resolution isn't smaller than what you'd like to download. You can either hover over the thumbnail in search results and wait for a neat tool-tip with vital stats to pop up or check the resolution under Wallpaper Statistics on the image page.

Since the site doesn't offer great sort options, I went out and looked for the best and most recent Halloween-related downloads to share with you. These are my picks.

Pumpkin

Desktop Nexus Pumpkin

Skull Moon

Skull Moon

Wallpapers Wide

This site offers a vast selection of high resolution wallpapers. You can browse by categories, latest, top rated, or keyword. The best way to download a wallpaper, is to hover over the thumbnail, click the title area (red frame in screenshot below), and pick a resolution from the list. Your own screen resolution is easy to spot because it's highlighted.

Wallpapers Wide Download

Watching You

Watching You

Blood Splash

Blood Splash

Wallpapr

This is a wallpaper search engine using wallpaper groups on Flickr. Results are limited to 100, which is plenty. Wallpapr's best feature is the lack of annoying ads.

Fried Brain

This one looks great on the Windows 8 and 10 Start Screen, if you only have apps listed on the left-hand side.

Fried Brain

How to change Your Windows Wallpaper

After you've downloaded your wallpaper of choice, you have two options. The lazy way is to open the folder it downloaded to, right-click it, and choose Set as desktop background from the menu.

Set Desktop Background

If you would like to rotate between different wallpapers, I recommend another route. Search for desktop background.

  • Windows 7: Press Windows key and type away.
  • Windows 8: Press Windows key + S, make sure to search Everywhere or Settings, and type your query.
  • Windows 10: Press Windows key +  Q, and type your query.

In Windows 7 and 8, open Change desktop background from the results. Here you can switch the picture location of your wallpaper to a dedicated folder, filled with your favorite Halloween or other desktop backgrounds.

Change Desktop Background

Below the frame displaying your selection of wallpapers, you can set the picture position and choose how often your desktop background should change.

Custom Wallpaper Settings

In Windows 10 (Fall Creators Update), select Choose background, slideshow, or color as your background mode, which will open the respective page in the Settings app, rather than the Control Panel.

From the drop-down menu under Background, pick Picture or Slideshow, then Browse for the wallpaper you downloaded. To run a slideshow, you have to define a folder that holds all images you'd like to rotate through. Under Change picture every... you can pick a time and you can also set Shuffle and battery options for your slideshow.

Extend the Wallpaper to the Start Screen

One quick trick to make the Windows Start Screen feel more integrated, is to extend the desktop wallpaper.

Right-click your Taskbar, click Properties, and switch to the Navigation tab. Check the option Show my desktop background on Start, click OK, and you're done.

Taskbar and Navigation Properties

Are You Ready for Halloween?

With this selection of wallpapers, your desktop is ready for Halloween. But how about yourself?

Have you decorated the house or carved a pumpkin, yet? What else do you do to prepare for the upcoming nightmare? Remember to keep the lights on!