Animal Crossing: New Horizons (ACNH) Guides

Jack’s Halloween Event 2023 Guide & Rewards

Halloween Night with Jack is a holiday on October 31st in Animal Crossing: New Horizons with trick or treating and plenty of spooky prizes to collect! Learn how to get Candy, Lollipops, and all of the exclusive Spooky Set item rewards.

This event was originally introduced in the Version 1.5 Fall Halloween Update for Animal Crossing: New Horizons, but has returned for 2023 and all other years in largely the same form. Learn more about everything you can enjoy during October for Halloween here.

Jack’s Halloween Event Start Time & Date

The Halloween Night event with Jack is held in Animal Crossing: New Horizons on October 31st every year beginning in the evening at 5PM until Midnight! This date is the same for islands in both the Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere of course.

When the clock hits 5PM on your island, the Halloween event will begin with the following changes:

• Jack the Pumpkin Czar appears outside on your island near Resident Services.
• Villagers will either put on a costume and roam outdoors seeking Candy or move into their homes for the evening to give Candy.
• Halloween themed music begins to play with a spookier atmosphere in the sky.

Jack’s Halloween Event Activities — What To Do

Once the Halloween Night event begins at 5PM on October 31st in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, a variety of different spooky activities can be enjoyed on your island! We’ve summarized every activity in the list below, with more details on each one throughout this complete guide.

• Get Candy from villagers inside their homes repeatedly, and from villagers outside once.
• Get Lollipops from villagers outside by giving them Candy.
• Collect two Jack costume items from Jack by giving him Candy.
• Collect five different exclusive Spooky Set items from villagers outside by giving them Candy.
• Collect two different exclusive Spooky Set items from Jack by giving him Lollipops.
• Unlock two new Halloween Reactions by giving Candy to Jack and villagers outside.
• Get tricked with Halloween Face Paints by failing Trick or Treat with villagers outside.

Learn more about all of the fun Halloween activities listed above in the sections below, including specific details on how to get every item reward available in this event.

Find & Meet Jack To Get Started

The best way to get started with the Halloween event held in the evening on October 31st is to find and meet Jack near the Resident Services plaza on your island. He’ll introduce himself as the reigning czar of Halloween and ask you to help fetch him some Candy.

If you’ve been purchasing Candy from Nook’s Cranny throughout the month of October, you should already have some Candy to give him, which we suggest you do immediately!

Give Candy To Jack To Get His Costume Items

You can give Jack a piece of Candy twice to receive the Jack’s Robe and Jack’s Face costume clothing items shown below. After that, he will only give sets of Pumpkins, so we don’t recommend bothering with a third piece of Candy and beyond.

Candy #1

Jack's Robe

Candy #2

Jack's Face

Candy #3+

Set of 5 Random Pumpkins

Don’t have any Candy? Find a nearby villager outside dressed in costume and speak with them to get a one-time bonus of three pieces of Candy!

Give Candy To Villagers To Get Spooky Items & Lollipops

After greeting Jack and giving him a couple pieces of Candy to get the Jack’s Robe and Jack’s Face clothing items, it’s time to focus on your villagers!

Throughout the Halloween evening, you can find a selection of your island’s villagers roaming the outdoors in adorable costumes. Talk to them to trigger a Trick or Treat interaction when you can give them a piece of Candy for a reward!

When you give villagers Candy, you will get one of five different Spooky Set items, one of two Spooky Set DIY Crafting Recipes, or a delicious Lollipop. It’s random exactly which of these items you’ll get each time though.

Here are all of the items you can get exclusively during the Halloween Night event in Animal Crossing: New Horizons from villagers by giving them Candy:

You can also get other Spooky Set items besides the ones above, however if it’s not listed, it can obtained outside of October 31st through other methods like Balloons and Nook’s Cranny. We kept this table to exclusive items you can only get in the event.

In particular, you’ll want to keep an eye out for any Lollipops that villagers give you as Jack will be hunting for them! From our experience, you can expect to get a Lollipop about 25% of the time when giving Candy to villagers.

If you’ve been stocking up on Halloween Candy throughout at least half of October, you should have enough to get everything you need. But if you do run out of Candy, you can easily get more by visiting villagers in their homes or scaring villagers as Jack outside! Head down to the bottom of this guide for details.

Give Lollipops To Jack To Get Spooky Items

When you’re lucky enough to get some Lollipops back from villagers on your island, head back near Resident Services to find Jack and give him one.

Jack loves Lollipops so much that he offers a few additional Spooky Set items that can only be obtained by giving him Lolipops on Halloween Night!

When you exchange your Lollipops to Jack in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, he’ll give you the following exclusive Spooky Set items in this order:

Lollipop #1

Spooky Carriage

Lollipop #2

Spooky Carriage

Lollipop #3

Spooky Wand

After getting the Spooky Wand DIY Recipe item, further Lollipops will only give duplicates of the Jack’s Robe and Jack’s Face items, which you should already have from giving Candy.

Unless you want extra copies of Jack’s Robe and Jack’s Face, you only need to exchange 3 Lollipops to get all of the exclusive items from Jack!

Unlock New Halloween Reactions

In addition to the Spooky Set items, there are two Halloween themed Reactions you can unlock exclusively during this event giving you new spooky options for expressing yourself in Animal Crossing!

The Haunt Reaction can be learned by giving a piece of Candy to Jack, and the Scare Reaction is unlocked by giving a piece of Candy to a dressed up villager outside during Halloween.

Halloween Night Complete Item Rewards List

Want to make sure you’ve gotten absolutely everything you need to from the Halloween Night event in Animal Crossing: New Horizons before stopping? Check out the checklist table below for a summary of every item exclusive to this event and how to get it.

Use the interactive checkboxes next to each item to keep track of what items you’ve gotten throughout the evening and what you’re still missing! Data will be saved to your browser’s storage and retained if you come back to this page.

You can also get other Spooky Set items besides the ones above, however if it’s not listed, it can obtained outside of October 31st through other methods like Balloons and Nook’s Cranny. We kept this checklist to exclusive items you can only get in the event.

How To Easily Get More Candy On Halloween

If you run out of Candy during the Halloween event, or if you didn’t purchase much beforehand in October leading up to the big day — don’t worry! It’s easy and infinitely repeatable to get more pieces of Candy while playing the event on Halloween Night.

Simply wear a scary Halloween themed costume, including the Jack’s Robe or Jack’s Face items, and find a villager inside their home during the event. Enter their house and speak with them to Trick or Treat getting a free Candy from them!

Once you get the hang of it, you can easily get into an easy repeating cycle of getting Candy from villagers inside and turning around to give it to villagers outside for rewards! In our experience, the timer on getting repeat Candy from a villager resets about every 5 minutes.

In addition to the repeatable method mentioned above, there are two more ways you can get Candy from villagers, but only once:

• Get 3 Candy the first time that you talk to a villager outside when your inventory has no Candy in it.
• Get 1 Candy the first time you talk to each villager inside or outside when wearing Jack’s Robe and Jack’s Face.