Spooky season’s up against some challenges this year, since traditional Halloween events, like trick-or-treating, haunted house tours, and massive costume parties where you’re almost guaranteed to puke somewhere embarrassing, are most likely out. While that’s definitely a bummer, it doesn’t mean you’re out of ways to celebrate.

For example, if you live with someone, there are plenty of ways to scare the bejeezus out of them every day — hell, every hour up through All Hallows’ Eve. And I’m not talking about brandishing an ax and pulling a “HEEERE’S JOHNNY!” while they’re plucking nose hairs in the bathroom. (Okay, maybe I am, and maybe it was hilarious, but it also may have caused a precarious tweezer-jammed-in-nose situation.) A good scare doesn’t take much — just a little time, creativity, and genuine commitment.

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Here are some basic tricks tailored to 2020 that I may have already tested out on my husband to get you started.

1. Remove all but the last square on your bathroom’s toilet paper roll and claim the local stores have yet to restock.
2. Continuously wear a pore-minimizing sheet mask.
3. Tell them you’re going to remodel the bathroom by yourself.
4. Come back two hours later with a broken hammer covered in paint, lie down on the floor in front of them, and start sobbing.
5. When they sit down on the couch after a long day of work, cough in their face.
6. Start knitting triplet baby clothes.
7. Stop throwing away Amazon boxes and eventually build a wall blocking your partner from the kitchen.
8. Pretend it’s January.
9. Leave an absentee ballot out with Green Party candidates written in.
10. Dress up as Amy Coney Barrett and recuse yourself from making decisions about dinner for the foreseeable future.
11. Change the communal Netflix password on the day the new Great British Baking Show episode airs.
12. Start flossing.
13. Casually mention you’ve been to an indoor gender reveal party with 100 other people, none of whom were wearing masks.
14. While scrolling on Twitter, make increasingly exasperated sounds and exclamations, and when they ask you what happened, throw your phone, run into another room, and slam the door.
15. Keep a pair of scissors handy and occasionally threaten to take a little off the sides.
16. Reach out to several contractors about an extensive kitchen renovation and give them your partner’s phone number.
17. Leave out hundreds of handwritten letters encouraging swing-state voters to vote for Kanye.
18. Text them Zillow listings for three-bedroom ranch houses in the deep suburbs.
19. Turn all the clocks ahead while they play Animal Crossing so it looks like they’ve missed five hours.
20. Tell them you invited their Trump-loving uncle over for an impromptu “politics-free” brunch.
21. Create a recording of murder hornets buzzing and plant a Bluetooth speaker in the bathroom vent. Play it during your partner’s morning bathroom trip. When they ask about it, look at them like they’re nuts.
22. Wake up early on Monday morning and drink the last of the coffee.
23. Suggest a No Sex November to “help us realize we don’t need it.”
24. After they fall asleep, put on a Mitch McConnell mask, stand by their bedside, and quietly whisper, “Filibuster.”

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