Spooky Halloween D&D One-Shot · Level 3–4 · 5e Compatible
Free Halloween D&D One-Shot: The Harvest of Hollow Creek
A spooky Halloween D&D one-shot for 3–5 level 3–4 characters
Searching for a free D&D one-shot with a Halloween mood and no prep required? The Harvest of Hollow Creek is a printable, ready-to-run 5e adventure for 3–5 level 3–4 characters, built to fit a tense 3-hour session. It gives the DM a missing-child hook, a haunted festival, four fairy-tale horror scenes, quick NPC stat blocks, a d20 festival encounter table, rewards, and an ending hook. Use it for an October game, a spooky side quest, or any night when your group wants a complete D&D adventure you can read once and run immediately. It also works as a printable seasonal backup for Halloween parties, convention slots, or any table craving cozy horror.
Wand Mail — Free Weekly One-Shot
Get a free one-shot every Sunday →
New complete D&D adventure delivered to your inbox every week. Scenes, NPCs, encounters, rewards — run it the same night.
The Hook
Every October in the village of Hollow Creek, the Lantern Harvest celebrates the last pumpkins. This year, the festival lanterns refuse to go out — they burn through water, smothering, and dawn. The village elder's granddaughter went missing at sunrise. The old women by the creek say the Harvest Hag has come early, and the lanterns are her counting stones: one for every soul she means to take before the pumpkin moon sets.
The party arrives to find the festival in full swing but quietly terrified — cancelled was never an option, because the old custom says stopping invites worse luck. The mayor meets them in a panic: his granddaughter Pip ran into the old pumpkin maze at the creek's edge at dawn and hasn't come out. Three adults tried to search it and turned back at the edge, unable to say what turned them around. Old Elder Mosswick presses into the party's hands a lantern carved with a ward symbol: 'It won't protect you. But it'll keep her from adding you to the count before you're ready.'
GM brief: Run this as fairy-tale horror — the Hag is ancient, hungry, and playing by rules she invented. The players should feel like they've wandered into a story that doesn't care whether they survive. Keep the stakes small and human: one missing girl, one hag, one pumpkin moon. Everything else is dressing.
Scene 1 — The Festival Grounds
Goal: Establish the dread, gather information, and feel the wrongness lurking inside the celebration.
- Every carved pumpkin at the festival wears the same face: hollow eyes and too many teeth — carved by different hands at different times.
- Old Mosswick admits the Hag hasn't been seen in thirty years but knows the signs; he has seen them before and will not say what he did last time.
- A fortune-teller booth is staffed by someone too still; DC 13 Insight reveals it's a scarecrow with a lit lantern inside — one of the Hag's counting stones.
Challenge: DC 13 History or local knowledge (DC 11 for characters from rural areas) reveals the Hag's bargain: she sleeps through harvests where every lantern is extinguished before midnight. This year, the lanterns won't go out. Something woke her early — and that something is in the village right now.
Scene 2 — The Pumpkin Maze
Goal: Navigate the shifting maze, find Pip's trail, and resist the Hag's misdirection.
- The maze redraws itself when no one is watching — passages close and new ones open between glances.
- Carved pumpkin faces in the walls track the party's movement, rotating slowly to watch them pass.
- Pip left a trail of orange thread tied to pumpkin stems; it leads deeper but frays and disappears near the center.
Challenge: Navigate the maze with 3 successes (DC 13 Investigation, Survival, or Arcana) before 3 failures. Failures expel the party to the entrance and extinguish one of the village's unlit protective lanterns — reducing the buffer against the Hag's counting stones in Scene 4.
Scene 3 — The Hag's Garden Under the Oak
Goal: Find the Hag's domain, locate Pip, and discover the contractual loophole before Osylla returns.
- At the maze's center grows a dead oak with hollow knots full of lit lanterns; Pip floats inside a shell of woven pumpkin vine, sleeping but unharmed — the Hag is fattening her for the harvest.
- The Hag's contract is scratched into the bark in Old Elvish: 'First fruit of the festival is mine by ancient tithe. Wake me early and I wake hungry.'
- The loophole is there for the finding: the Hag's claim requires the first fruit to be offered willingly. Pip was taken, not offered.
Challenge: DC 14 Arcana or Religion to read the contract and identify the loophole. DC 13 Investigation of the garden floor finds Pip's footprints showing she was chased, not led — physical proof of the unlawful taking that can be presented in Scene 4.
Scene 4 — The Harvest Hag Osylla
Goal: Defeat or outmaneuver the Hag before the pumpkin moon sets and her count becomes permanent.
- Osylla emerges from the oak roots — enormous, laughing, carrying a carved lantern the size of a cauldron. She acknowledges the loophole if the players present the evidence, but calls it a technicality and demands a wager: a game of riddles, three questions each.
- A combat solution works; Osylla won't fight to the death (she can never truly die, only be driven off), and will bargain from half HP.
- Extinguishing her counting lanterns before she can relight them is the party's tactical priority — each one extinguished removes 10 HP of her regeneration per round.
Challenge: Combat: Defeat Osylla (AC 17, HP 110, Counting Lanterns regeneration). Riddles: Three DC 14 Intelligence checks; each success reduces her damage by 1d6/round, each failure ignites a counting lantern (1d6 psychic to the whole party). Loophole argument: three successful contested Persuasion checks (DC 14) if the party has the footprint evidence.
Elder Mosswick
Village patriarch with old knowledge and a guilty secret
AC 10, HP 20, Speed 25 ft. (uses a cane), Passive Perception 14
STR 8, DEX 9, CON 11, INT 15, WIS 17, CHA 13
Traits
- Old Lore: Once per scene, Mosswick can answer one question about the Hag, the Hollow Creek traditions, or fey bargains with reliable accuracy (DC 14 equivalence).
- Secret: He lit the sunrise lantern six days ago as an offering to 'old luck,' not knowing it was the invocation that woke Osylla early. He will confess if confronted with the contractual evidence.
Actions
- Cane Strike: +1 to hit, 1d4 bludgeoning damage.
Pip (when found)
The village elder's granddaughter — resourceful and observant
AC 10, HP 8, Speed 30 ft., Passive Perception 15
STR 7, DEX 14, CON 9, INT 13, WIS 15, CHA 12
Traits
- Small and Quick: Pip can move through enemy spaces without triggering opportunity attacks and can hide as a bonus action.
- Hag-Taught Riddle: Pip overheard Osylla reciting her favorite riddle to the lanterns while she slept. If freed before Scene 4, she can whisper the answer to one riddle to the party.
Actions
- Rock Throw: +4 to hit, range 20/60 ft., 1d4 bludgeoning damage.
Harvest Hag Osylla
Ancient seasonal fey-hag — hungry, amused, and playing by rules she made
AC 17 (natural armor), HP 110, Speed 30 ft., Passive Perception 17
STR 18, DEX 12, CON 16, INT 17, WIS 16, CHA 14
Traits
- Counting Lanterns: Osylla has 5 lit counting lanterns at the start of the scene. At the start of each of her turns, each lit lantern restores 10 HP. Players can spend an action to extinguish one (DC 14 Arcana or Religion).
- Magic Resistance: Advantage on saving throws against spells and magical effects. Eternal Harvest: If reduced to 0 HP, she laughs, dissolves into pumpkin flesh, and retreats below the oak — she will return next October, angrier.
Actions
- Harvest Claw: +7 to hit, 2d6+4 slashing damage; target must succeed on DC 14 Constitution save or be poisoned until end of their next turn.
- Pumpkin Lantern Toss (Recharge 5–6): Ranged attack, +6 to hit, range 60 ft., 3d6 fire damage; the impact area is lit (counts as a counting lantern) until extinguished.
d20 Festival Encounter Table
Roll at any point during the festival to add atmosphere — or use entries as seeds for NPC interactions and side-beats.
- A candied apple vendor has run out of apples but keeps selling empty sticks, insisting they taste wonderful.
- A game booth offers carved jack-o-lanterns as prizes; every winner gets the same lantern with the same face.
- A child's mask slips to reveal another mask underneath. And another.
- The festival bonfire refuses to light until someone accidentally drops a love letter into the kindling.
- A pumpkin-carving contest judge has been staring at the same entry for three hours without blinking.
- Orange thread is found tied to every door handle in the village.
- A clog dancer keeps counting the beat aloud but arrives at thirteen every time.
- Festival bunting spells out a different message depending on which angle you read it from.
- A corn-husk doll hangs upside down from the village sign; no one will touch it to take it down.
- The prize pig has been given a pumpkin carving of its own face and is walking toward the maze.
- A game of bobbing for apples reveals one apple contains a tightly rolled note: 'Don't win.'
- A troubadour's instrument only plays minor keys tonight no matter what song he begins.
- Three different vendors claim to have won the Harvest Hag's favor 'fair and square, years ago.'
- The village clock stopped at the exact moment the lanterns first refused to go out.
- Festival food tastes different to every person who eats it — always the flavor of something they miss.
- An old woman in the crowd is knitting; the pattern in her yarn is the pumpkin maze viewed from above.
- Every reflection in the creek shows the festival from last year, before anything went wrong.
- A fortune-teller's cards are blank except for one: the same face carved on every pumpkin.
- A bat is caught inside one of the counting lanterns, perfectly unburned and unable to escape.
- At exactly midnight, every lantern blinks once in unison and a new pumpkin appears at the maze entrance.
Rewards
- Osylla's Counting Bead: One of the extinguished counting lanterns shrinks to bead-size when Osylla retreats. Once per day, the bearer can speak a creature's name and learn its current HP — as if reading a harvest count.
- The village's harvest gift: 200 gp in festival coin, a wheel of cheese, and a keg of spiced cider (worth 30 gp to any tavern).
- Pip's Gratitude: Pip sketches a map of the inside of the pumpkin maze from memory, marked with three features that have no mundane explanation — each one is a question for a future adventure.
Ending Hook
When Osylla retreats into the oak, the counting lanterns all go dark at once. All except one: a lantern carved with a face no one in the village recognizes — not the Hag's work, not the villagers'. It stays lit through morning and smells faintly of brimstone. The fortune-teller's cards all flip face-up simultaneously, showing the same image: a figure standing at a crossroads between the Feywild and somewhere with no name. Someone, somewhere, has already paid Osylla in advance for next year's harvest. And they paid in a currency that isn't gold.
Wand Mail — Free Weekly One-Shot
Get a free one-shot every Sunday →
New complete D&D adventure delivered to your inbox every week. Scenes, NPCs, encounters, rewards — run it the same night.