It’s October which means it’s Spooky Season, and time for another themed article. Today, we’re going to practice relative clauses with a Halloween theme.

For a quick introduction, relative clauses are clauses that add additional detail to nouns. They are connected by relative pronouns such as who, which, that, whose and whom. They can also be connected by relative adverbs such as where, when, why and how.

Halloween Relative Clauses Exercise

The task today is to combine these creepy sentences by using relative clauses. There may be various options to do this, particularly as it’s often possible to reverse the sentences depending on which subject you wish to use. As a little writing tip, creepy sentences work well with sinister nouns at the front or surprising/shocking information at the end!

For example:

Q. The house was haunted. It sat on the top of a dark hill.
A. The house which sat on the top of a dark hill was haunted.

Exercise

Some wolves lived on the mountain. The wolves howled at the moon.
A cat whispered in Latin. He was scared by it.
Something is hiding under the bed. It is making strange noises.
The witches are flying away on broomsticks. They stole our sweets.
Some strangers have faces covered by masks. Beware of opening the door to them.
It’s not safe to walk through the park. They found the old tomb there.
The man escaped the party before the police arrived. He had no face.
We were startled by a church bell. It rang at three in the morning.
The town was covered in mist. Our car broke down there.
We stayed in a vampire’s castle. The vampire was actually very friendly.
I wasn’t sure why the man owned a chainsaw. He lived in the basement.
Our ghosts appear every full moon. They always sing the same lullaby.
We’d better not touch that box. It is marked “Don’t Open”.
A clown kept appearing by the side of the road. No one could identify it.
She was hiding behind a gravestone. It started to move.

Suggested Answers

These are suggested answers; in some cases there may be a few different ways to combine the sentences. I’ve offered a few alternatives or bits to think about. Note that we can replace who or which with defining clauses, particularly in informal settings. You might also consider how we can combine the sentence with alternatives to relative clauses!

The wolves that lived on the mountain howled at the moon.
He was scared by a black cat which whispered in Latin. (Or who. Depending on our active subject, this could be revered to A cat which whispered in Latin scared him.)
Something that is making strange noises is hiding under the bed. (Or Something hiding under the bed is making strange noises. – this example might benefit from trimming, though, e.g. Something is making strange noises under the bed.)
The witches who stole our sweets are flying away on broomsticks.
Beware of opening the door to strangers whose faces are covered by masks.
It’s not safe to walk through the park where they found the old tomb.
The man who had no face escaped the party before the police arrived.
We were startled by the church bell that rang at three in the morning.
The town where our car broke down was covered in mist.
The vampire whose castle we stayed in was actually very friendly. (Note that this format is preferable as the reverse option, We stayed in a vampire who was actually very friendly’s castle. makes the whole clause possessive, which is a little cumbersome.)
I wasn’t sure why the man who lived in the basement owned a chainsaw.
Our ghosts which appear every full moon always sing the same lullaby. (or who)
We’d better not touch the box that’s marked “Don’t Open”. (or which is / that is)
No one could identify the clown who kept appearing by the side of the road. (A reverse of this is possible if we change the wording slightly: The clown who kept appearing by the side of the road could not be identified. / could be identified by no one.)
The gravestone which she was hiding behind started to move. (Or She was hiding behind a gravestone which started to move. – but leading with the gravestone sounds scarier!)