Team Fortress has had a few different Halloween events over the past 15 years. But since 2015 the event itself has always been in the same format, only adding contratcs in 2017.

On the 1st of October, Halloween is enabled. That means you can play Halloween maps, and the animation of souls from killed enemies flying into your body is enabled.
Also, all items restricted to Halloween are now shown on your character when you are playing on any server.
Please note that at this point, collected souls do not count towards the number of collected souls displayed by your Soul Gargoyle!

At some later date in October, the actual Scream Fortress event goes live.
It includes missions and new Halloween maps, and will usually run 4 to 5 weeks.
The weekly case drop is also changed to a Halloween themed one.

The event is free for every player, with about 50 free item rewards per year as of 2023.

If you have never played a Scream Fortress event before, you will receive a Soul Gargoyle when you start up TF2 during the event.
This acts as a stat couter, and you can use it to perform Halloween Transmutes.

The Gargoyle can be leveled up following the basic TF2 item description formula, from "Sad" at 0 collected souls up to "Merasmus's Own" at 36.000 or above.
It does also "rank up" all the way to Gold status, which is achieved at 2.000 souls.

Since 2017 every player has access to the ConTracker from the ingame menu. It is located at the top right in the main menu, or at any point in the game via pressing "F2".

There you can pick the Halloween contracts once the event has started. The first mission will always be a general Halloween contract, every other mission is map specific.
Every contract has a basic goal and two extra goals. Each achieved basic goal will reward you with a Halloween Package, which you can open for free.

Also, each fulfilled goal will reward you with a star, which is added to your star counter on the bottom left of your ConTracker.
To unlock a new missions, you need to use one star. You can only unlock missions directly linked to previously fulfilled missions.*
This means it is better to queue for all potentially available contract maps, wait until a match is found, and then activating the corresponding mission.

You can see the active mission on the right side of the HUD. There is a bug when a newly activated mission does not show up in the HUD, thus not being active!
In this case you need to open the contracker again, activate any previous mission, and directly afterwards activate the current mission again. Now it should be visible on your HUD.

Missions will only be counted when you have finished a round of play. Do not leave the sever just because the mission bar is full, wait until the end of the round!


Opening a Halloween Package does reward you with any Halloween item from all previous Scream Fortress events, plus untradable/unmarketable Halloween Cases and pages for your Fancy Spellbook.
Halloween items always come in two rarities, "normal" and "Haunted" (green item border), and can be any level from 1 to 100.

Alternatively, an unused Halloween Package can also be equipped in the Action Slot of any character.

You can do so called "Halloween Transmutes" from the Soul Gargoyle in your backpack.
This is only possible during the actual Scream Fortress event!

There, you can use 3 unwanted items to craft a random Halloween item.

This is useful for getting rid of duplicate Halloween items, farming Halloween Masks as well as collecting all the different Hallowen items.
The cheapest way to do transmutes is to use unwanted/duplicate Halloween items, or by getting Description Tags from the Steam Store.

Keep in mind that every year, Halloween items of last year are now added to the craft pool.

There are 28 Halloween related achievements, and most of them can only be achieved during the Scream Fortress event.

It is still possible to achive all of them, although two stand out in terms of difficulty:


1. "Helltower: Competitive Spirit"

You have to win 142 round on the Helltower map.
This is not feasible during normal play, so here is what you do:

Chose a day where you can stay up really late, preferably a weekday. Start queuing at around 10PM until you find a match on Helltower. Play the match and stay on the server after every game.

At some point, the server will empty until you are the only player left. Pick Scout and farm those round wins. Have fun!


2. "Sackston Hale"

You need to collect the Halloween Mask for every class, and then craft the Saxton Hale Mask from the ingame crafting menu.

Class specific Halloween Masks drop from Halloween Packages, but the more Halloween items are added each year, the more difficult it is to get them. Keep in mind that you can always receive duplicates, meaning you could have multiple masks for one class before getting all required ones.

The solution is Halloween Transmutes, where you can use three items to craft a random Haloween item.
Your cheapest option is to get lots of "Description Tags" from the Steam Store to do that.
Added benefit are all the nice Halloween items you obtain on the way.

There are certain Halloween maps where you can use spells.

In order to do so you need to have the Spellbook or the Magazine equipped, the server will also show a warning to you if you have not.

Pick up a spell located on the map, and use it by pressing "H".


Although you can add pages to your Fancy Spellbook, this does not alter the item in any way.

When the announcer utters this phrase, you have the chance to pick up a green Soul Gargoyle randomly hidden on the map. When collected it grants 10 souls to you.

The location is random for every player, although every map has a set number of fixed spawn locations, so other playes might have the same spot as you.
The Gargoyle can be located deep in enemy territory, or even in the special areas available through timed teleport locations.

Please note that souls are only collected when the animation of flying into your body is complete. If you die between picking up the Gargoyle and the souls flying towards you, none or not all of the souls are collected.
The same is true for souls from killed enemies, especially if you killed them from far away which increases the travel time.

If not picked up, the Gargoyle does dissappear after a set amount of time.

There has been a slight change to the contracker.
For all community missions, you are no longer bound to a specific order. As soon as you have finished the first general mission, you can activate any contract in any of the 5 folders containing community maps.