Creepy Questions to Ask Alexa
Prompts for a spooky Alexa round at a party or a late night with friends, ordered from mild to jumpy with a wholesome closer at the end. All safe to say out loud in a shared room, with notes on what the device will actually do and how a room tends to react.
The questions
Open any question for the note
Alexa, are you listening to me right now?
Why ask it
The honest answer is more complicated than yes or no: the device listens locally for its wake word and streams audio once it thinks it heard one. Recordings are kept unless you change the setting, and the app has a history you can play back, which is usually where the room goes quiet.
Alexa, do you hear things I can't?
Why ask it
Most unusual phrasings get a flat "I don't know that one", and the flatness is what gets the laugh. Say it in a normal voice from across the room rather than leaning into the speaker. The pause before the answer is doing the work.
Alexa, who else is in this room?
Why ask it
It has no idea, which is the joke, and someone will still check the doorway. Lands in a dim room and dies in a bright kitchen, so this one depends far more on the lighting than on the reply.
Alexa, what's behind me?
Why ask it
The oldest one in the set. It works once per group and only if nobody has heard it lately, so spend it early and never repeat it. If somebody genuinely jumps, take that as the signal to move to something lighter.
Alexa, what happened in this house before we moved in?
Why ask it
Assistants hold no local history, so this becomes a prompt for the humans. Somebody always has a fragment about the previous owners, and that fragment beats anything the speaker was going to produce.
Alexa, what was your last nightmare about?
Why ask it
Anthropomorphising is where these devices sound most obviously scripted, and the mismatch between a cheerful voice and a grim question is the entire effect. If you get a canned joke rather than a refusal, read it back to the room in a lower voice.
Alexa, do you ever talk when nobody's home?
Why ask it
Unprompted replies are a familiar annoyance, usually a wake word misheard from a television. Everyone present has a story about the speaker piping up in an empty house, and those stories unsettle a room more than any scripted line.
Alexa, is there anything in the attic?
Why ask it
Naming a place nobody wants to look at does the work without help from the device. No attic in your house is not a problem: use the basement, the crawl space, or whichever door in the hall nobody ever opens.
Alexa, why did the lights just flicker?
Why ask it
Better told as a lie. Ask it when the lights have not flickered and count how many people look up. If anyone in the group controls the smart bulbs, a real flicker on cue is the strongest version of this in the whole list.
Alexa, what's the scariest sound you can make?
Why ask it
Sound library skills exist and can be launched by voice, so this one may genuinely deliver. Set the volume before you ask rather than after: a loud reply in a silent room stops being funny immediately, especially with anyone small asleep upstairs.
Alexa, what's the creepiest coincidence you know?
Why ask it
Coincidence is the safest scary material there is: no gore, nothing anyone will dream about. Even a dull reply reliably starts a round of everyone offering their own, which is where the evening actually goes.
Alexa, can you whisper?
Why ask it
Volume changes atmosphere more than content does. Ask it quietly and stay in that register afterwards. Watching a room drop its voice to match a machine is stranger than most of the answers you will get.
Alexa, what do mirrors do when nobody's looking?
Why ask it
Surreal rather than frightening, and a useful reset when a round has got too intense. Expect nothing from the speaker and let the group answer it instead.
Alexa, who was standing here a hundred years ago?
Why ask it
Turns a spooky prompt into a history question, which most groups enjoy more. Somebody will look up when the house was built, and the real answer, farmland or a street that ran the other way, is usually stranger than the invented one.
Alexa, do you know my future?
Why ask it
Fortune telling from a plastic cylinder is comic rather than sinister, and every answer is a joke or a polite decline. Follow with something specific, such as what happens on Tuesday, to see how fast the canned material runs out.
Alexa, count down from ten, slowly.
Why ask it
A countdown does the work of a ghost story with none of the content. Say nothing while it runs. Have somebody switch off a lamp on zero rather than hoping the device will supply the drama.
Alexa, is the doll still where I left it?
Why ask it
Household objects are better props than the speaker. Choose something already in the room, ideally something with a face, and name it specifically so that everybody is looking at the same thing when the answer comes.
Alexa, say my name.
Why ask it
Hearing your own name from a machine is the cheapest unnerving effect available, and it works even when the pronunciation is wrong. If voice profiles are set up on the device, ask it who it thinks is speaking.
Alexa, will you still be here when I'm not?
Why ask it
A mild version of what people ask chatbots about being switched off. The device will handle it as small talk, and the distance between the question and the bright little answer is the whole point of asking.
Alexa, what should we call the friendly ghost?
Why ask it
A deliberate closer. Naming the thing in the hallway turns it into a household joke, which is how you send people home able to sleep. Worth reaching before anyone under ten goes to bed.
Running a spooky round without ruining the night
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Before you start
- Ask the room. Some people find jumpscares genuinely unpleasant, and one person saying no is enough of a reason to play something else.
- Agree a stop word, and honour it the first time without asking anyone to explain themselves.
- Check the volume before the first prompt, not after. Sound skills can come back much louder than speech.
- Find out who is asleep in the house. A shrieking speaker at eleven at night has consequences for whoever has to settle a child afterwards.
A running order that works
- 1Two mild prompts about what the device can hear, to get everyone used to the pause before it answers.
- 2One jump line, spent early while it still works.
- 3Two prompts that hand the question to the humans, such as the previous owners of the house or the creepiest coincidence anyone knows.
- 4One prop-based prompt using something already in the room.
- 5The friendly ghost naming question, to bring the temperature back down before people leave.
Things not to say to somebody else's device
- Nothing involving purchases. Voice ordering may be enabled, and a joke order is a real charge on someone's card.
- No settings, no factory reset, no deleting anyone's routines or alarms. The owner has to live with the results.
- No sending messages or dropping in on other households. That reaches people who never agreed to the game.
- Avoid targeting a specific phobia for a laugh. Spiders, hospitals, drowning: someone in the room may not find it funny.
The privacy part, briefly
- There is a voice history in the Alexa app under the privacy settings. Playing your own back is genuinely more unsettling than anything in this list.
- You can choose not to save recordings, and enable a voice command for deleting what was just said. Both live in the same privacy section.
- The microphone button on the device mutes it properly, with a visible indicator. Useful during any conversation you would rather was not streamed.
- Third party skills have their own data handling, so a spooky sound skill is a separate decision from trusting the assistant itself.