Halloween Emojis With Code Points, Versions and Phone Support
56 Halloween emojis checked against Unicode's emoji data, each with code point, Emoji version and year, which ones turn into boxes on older phones, what two misreading studies found, and 12 original combos.
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- • 🎃 jack-o-lantern (U+1F383), 👻 ghost (U+1F47B) and 💀 skull (U+1F480) have been emoji since 2010, so they show on practically every phone.
- • 7 of the 56 Halloween emojis here date from 2021 to 2025; distorted face arrived on iPhone only with iOS 26.7, and Android 11 or lower cannot update its emoji font.
- • 🐈⬛ black cat is a 3-part sequence from 2020; a phone without it shows a cat followed by a black square.
- • In a 2016 study of 304 people, two readers of the identical emoji picture disagreed on its sentiment 25% of the time.
- • 48.3% of shared SubhSandesh pages are opened on a phone, so the recipient's phone, not yours, decides how your emoji look.
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Halloween Emojis With Code Points, Versions and Phone Support
The core Halloween emojis are 🎃 jack-o-lantern (U+1F383), 👻 ghost (U+1F47B) and 💀 skull (U+1F480), all emoji since 2010, followed by 🦇 bat (2016), 🧛 vampire (2017) and 🐈⬛ black cat (2020). That age matters because the recipient's phone draws the emoji, not yours: 48.3% of shared SubhSandesh pages are opened on a phone (27,725 of 57,456 views), and 48.4% of views come from a touch device of some kind.
Below are 56 Halloween emojis checked against Unicode's own data, oldest first. Then come the ones that break on older phones, two misreading studies, and 12 original combos for Halloween 2026 (Saturday 31 October) and 2027 (Sunday 31 October).
What counts as a Halloween emoji?
A Halloween emoji is any standard Unicode emoji people use for the 31 October holiday; Unicode itself has no Halloween category. Only 🎃 sits in an "event" subgroup, beside ✨ sparkles and the fireworks, while 👻 is filed as a "face-costume" smiley and the witch is officially named "mage".
Every emoji carries three fixed labels: the code point (U+1F383) identifies the character, the Emoji version (E0.6) records when it became an emoji, and the year comes from the version table in Unicode's Technical Standard #51, version 18.0, dated 28 August 2026. Names and versions below come from Unicode's emoji-test.txt, version 18.0, dated 30 April 2026.
56 Halloween emojis with code point, version and year
The list runs oldest first, in five release eras. An emoji's age decides whether an older phone can draw it.
1. Released in 2010 (Emoji 0.6): 18 emojis
The pumpkin, candy and autumn set sits here with the ghost and skull. It suits children, family chats and anyone who dislikes gore.
- 🎃 jack-o-lantern: U+1F383, E0.6, 2010
- 🍬 candy: U+1F36C, E0.6, 2010
- 🍭 lollipop: U+1F36D, E0.6, 2010
- 🍫 chocolate bar: U+1F36B, E0.6, 2010
- 🍂 fallen leaf: U+1F342, E0.6, 2010
- 🍁 maple leaf: U+1F341, E0.6, 2010
- 🍄 mushroom: U+1F344, E0.6, 2010
- 👻 ghost: U+1F47B, E0.6, 2010
- 💀 skull: U+1F480, E0.6, 2010
- 👹 ogre: U+1F479, E0.6, 2010
- 👺 goblin: U+1F47A, E0.6, 2010
- 👽 alien: U+1F47D, E0.6, 2010
- 🎭 performing arts: U+1F3AD, E0.6, 2010
- 🐺 wolf: U+1F43A, E0.6, 2010
- 🔮 crystal ball: U+1F52E, E0.6, 2010
- 🌕 full moon: U+1F315, E0.6, 2010
- 😱 face screaming in fear: U+1F631, E0.6, 2010
- 👀 eyes: U+1F440, E0.6, 2010
2. Released in 2014–2015 (Emoji 0.7 and 1.0): 15 emojis
Most of these end in U+FE0F, the emoji presentation selector. It asks for the coloured picture instead of the default flat text style.
- 🕷️ spider: U+1F577 U+FE0F, E0.7, 2014
- 🕸️ spider web: U+1F578 U+FE0F, E0.7, 2014
- 🕯️ candle: U+1F56F U+FE0F, E0.7, 2014
- 🗝️ old key: U+1F5DD U+FE0F, E0.7, 2014
- ⛓️ chains: U+26D3 U+FE0F, E0.7, 2014
- 🌫️ fog: U+1F32B U+FE0F, E0.7, 2014
- 🏚️ derelict house: U+1F3DA U+FE0F, E0.7, 2014
- ☠️ skull and crossbones: U+2620 U+FE0F, E1.0, 2015
- ⚰️ coffin: U+26B0 U+FE0F, E1.0, 2015
- ⚱️ funeral urn: U+26B1 U+FE0F, E1.0, 2015
- ⚗️ alembic: U+2697 U+FE0F, E1.0, 2015
- 🐀 rat: U+1F400, E1.0, 2015
- 🦂 scorpion: U+1F982, E1.0, 2015
- 🌚 new moon face: U+1F31A, E1.0, 2015
- 😈 smiling face with horns: U+1F608, E1.0, 2015
3. Released in 2016–2017 (Emoji 3.0 and 5.0): 8 emojis
The bat and the classic monsters arrive here. The 🧙 mage is gender-neutral; 🧙♀️ woman mage is a joined sequence, U+1F9D9 U+200D U+2640 U+FE0F.
- 🖤 black heart: U+1F5A4, E3.0, 2016
- 🤡 clown face: U+1F921, E3.0, 2016
- 🦇 bat: U+1F987, E3.0, 2016
- 🦉 owl: U+1F989, E3.0, 2016
- 🧡 orange heart: U+1F9E1, E5.0, 2017
- 🧙 mage: U+1F9D9, E5.0, 2017
- 🧛 vampire: U+1F9DB, E5.0, 2017
- 🧟 zombie: U+1F9DF, E5.0, 2017
4. Released in 2018–2020 (Emoji 11.0 to 13.0): 8 emojis
The witch kit is younger than it looks: Unicode had no broom until 2018 and no magic wand until 2020. 🐈⬛ is a sequence of cat, zero-width joiner and black large square.
- 🦴 bone: U+1F9B4, E11.0, 2018
- 🧹 broom: U+1F9F9, E11.0, 2018
- 🧪 test tube: U+1F9EA, E11.0, 2018
- 🩸 drop of blood: U+1FA78, E12.0, 2019
- 🪦 headstone: U+1FAA6, E13.0, 2020
- 🪄 magic wand: U+1FA84, E13.0, 2020
- 🪞 mirror: U+1FA9E, E13.0, 2020
- 🐈⬛ black cat: U+1F408 U+200D U+2B1B, E13.0, 2020
5. Released in 2021–2025 (Emoji 14.0 to 17.0): 7 emojis
Check the recipient's phone before sending these. 🐦⬛ black bird, the nearest thing to a crow or raven, is bird, joiner and black square.
- 🧌 troll: U+1F9CC, E14.0, 2021
- 🫣 face with peeking eye: U+1FAE3, E14.0, 2021
- 🫥 dotted line face: U+1FAE5, E14.0, 2021
- 🐦⬛ black bird: U+1F426 U+200D U+2B1B, E15.0, 2022
- leafless tree: U+1FABE, E16.0, 2024
- hairy creature: U+1FAC8, E17.0, 2025
- distorted face: U+1FAEA, E17.0, 2025
Which Halloween emojis show as a box on older phones?
An emoji newer than the recipient's emoji font appears as "tofu", a small empty box, or as broken pieces. The Android emoji2 developer guide, last updated 16 October 2026, says Android 11 and lower cannot update the emoji font, so apps on those phones must bundle newer emoji themselves.
Joined sequences fail more gently. Unicode's standard says a system without the combined glyph ignores the zero-width joiner and shows the separate parts, so 🐈⬛ arrives as a cat followed by a black square.
On iPhone, Apple's About iOS 26 Updates page says iOS 26.7 added 8 emoji, including an orca, landslide and distorted face. Apple does not say whether hairy creature came with them. This table sums up the five groups above; newer rows miss more phones.
| Era (versions, years) | Count of the 56 | Examples | Older-phone risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| E0.6, 2010 | 18 | 🎃 👻 💀 🍬 | Shows on almost any phone in use |
| E0.7–E1.0, 2014–2015 | 15 | 🕸️ ☠️ 🕯️ | Shows on almost any phone in use |
| E3.0–E5.0, 2016–2017 | 8 | 🦇 🧛 🧡 | Low |
| E11.0–E13.0, 2018–2020 | 8 | 🧹 🩸 🪦 🐈⬛ | Low; 🐈⬛ may split into cat plus square |
| E14.0–E17.0, 2021–2025 | 7 | 🫣 🐦⬛ | Box on fonts older than the version; needs iOS 26.7 |
For a grandparent on an old Android, stay in the first three rows. The 2021–2025 row is where a Halloween message turns into empty squares.
Why the same Halloween emoji can read differently: 2 studies
Meaning drifts even when both people see one picture. In a 2016 ICWSM study by Miller and colleagues, 304 participants rated emoji from -5 to 5; two people rating the identical rendering disagreed on positive, neutral or negative 25% of the time, and 44 of 110 renderings (40%) averaged a gap of 2 points or more.
Platform differences add to it. The same study found misreading slightly larger across platforms than within one, and a participant reported that faces sent after an iPhone update arrived on his wife's phone as aliens.
Age shifts meaning as well. Zhukova and Herring's 2024 Language@Internet survey of 273 adults found Gen Z rated messages carrying 🔥 as friendlier than older generations did, while Baby Boomers rated them significantly more threatening; every group read the 💣 bomb negatively. Neither study tested 🎃 or 👻, so treat this as a caution for 🔪 and 🩸 with older relatives, not a measured Halloween result.
12 original Halloween emoji combos, with the year each needs
We wrote these for this page, each a tiny story. The year is when the newest emoji in the combo entered Unicode, and phones usually receive fonts a little later.
- Doorbell dash 🔔🚪🏃🍬 (2010): knocked, grabbed, ran
- Late carving 🎃🔦🕯️ (2014): still carving by torchlight
- Witch's commute 🧹🌕🐈⬛ (2020): broom, full moon, cat on board
- Potion gone wrong 🧪🫧🐸 (2021): the spell made a frog
- Mirror check 🪞👀👻 (2020): something is behind you
- Graveyard shift 🪦🕰️🧟 (2020): clocking in at midnight
- Costume crisis 🧛❓🧟❓🧙 (2017): still deciding on 30 October
- Candy swap 🍫🔁🍭 (2015): trade you
- Couch marathon 🛋️🍿😱📼 (2015): old tapes, loud screaming
- Wolf hour 🌕🐺🏃 (2010): full moon, everybody inside
- Spider landlord 🏚️🕸️🕷️ (2014): rent is paid in flies
- Haunted latte 👻☕🍂 (2010): cosy-spooky morning
For an older phone, swap ⚰️ in for 🪦 or drop the 🫧. Graveyard shift then needs 2017, not 2020, and Potion gone wrong 2018, not 2021.
Sending a Halloween emoji to one person, or a whole page
A combo is redrawn by the other person's phone and can arrive as boxes. When one person deserves more than a row of symbols, a page carries your photos and words instead.
The interactive Halloween card with photos and a carved pumpkin takes up to six photos, a letter and the word to carve on a jack-o'-lantern, takes about 5 minutes to make, and opens in any phone or laptop browser. The premium Halloween page with a voice note and unlock time adds a voice note of up to 60 seconds, up to 12 photos, an optional unlock time and a reply box, in about 10 minutes.
Pick the card for a quick surprise, the premium page when your voice matters. Both are one-person greeting pages with partner, bestie, family and kids modes, not group-chat tools; 90.9% of pages started on SubhSandesh are published and shared. If the person lives in another city, the miss-you page for someone far away suits the rest of the year better.
When a Halloween emoji is the wrong choice
Skulls, coffins and headstones read badly near a real loss, and Halloween sits beside All Saints' Day on 1 November and Día de los Muertos on 1–2 November. If someone is grieving, send words, not 🪦.
Skip the knife and blood for anyone who may read them literally. A page is also the wrong tool for a group chat or a quick reply: an emoji costs one tap, while our pages take 5 to 10 minutes and average 11.1 views each, the scale of one private moment.
Sources
- Unicode Consortium, emoji-test.txt, Emoji 18.0, 30 April 2026.
- Unicode Consortium, UTS #51 Unicode Emoji, version 18.0, 28 August 2026.
- Miller et al., Varying Interpretations of Emoji, ICWSM 2016, vol. 10.
- Zhukova and Herring, Benign or Toxic? Emoji Interpretation by Gender and Generation, Language@Internet 22, 20 December 2024.
- Apple Support, About iOS 26 Updates.
- Android Developers, Support modern emoji (emoji2), last updated 16 October 2026.
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Written by
Suyash Agrahari
Founder
Suyash Agrahari is a Software Engineer at HireQuotient and the founder of SubhSandesh and DrawFlow (drawflow.in). He builds AI agents and full-stack products with Next.js, Node.js, and the OpenAI and LangChain ecosystems, having shipped autonomous multi-agent systems, AI copilots, and large-scale outreach platforms — and scaled side projects from a few hundred to millions of users. He writes about AI engineering, web development, and building products that grow through SEO and organic reach.
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