Can ghosts game? This Halloween campaign is dying to find out

Supercell’s mobile farming game Hay Day is looking beyond the living for its latest players, putting the paranormal to the test in a Halloween campaign that asks whether ghosts can game too.

Created with creative agency Forsman & Bodenfors, the campaign sees Hay Day travel to Cogges Manor Farm in Oxfordshire, UK, where paranormal investigator and Most Haunted host Yvette Fielding conducted a séance in an attempt to make contact with the farm’s resident ghost.

Rather than simply using the haunted setting as a backdrop, the paranormal investigation helped shape a new character being introduced to the game for Halloween, dubbed “The red revenant”.

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The campaign brings together Hay Day’s cosy farming world with paranormal entertainment, turning what could have been a traditional seasonal character launch into a ghost investigation-style piece of content.

According to the brand, the idea was informed by audiences’ growing appetite for horror, hauntings and mediumship as entertainment. That interest also influenced the campaign’s creative treatment, which takes cues from paranormal investigation documentaries rather than a conventional advertisement.

The Halloween campaign is rolling out globally across digital and social channels, as well as through in-game activations.

“Hay Day has always been this cosy place where players come to unwind and escape the chaos of everyday life, whether that’s after a long workday, or apparently, after a few hundred years of haunting an English manor farm. It turns out, even the ghosts could use a little cosy in their life,” said Maya Hofree, general manager of Hay Day.

Meanwhile, Julia Holtback Yeter and Karl Risenfors, creatives at Forsman & Bodenfors, said the team saw a natural overlap between Hay Day’s audience and the growing fascination with paranormal entertainment.

“By bringing these two worlds together, we wanted to go beyond a traditional character launch and create an unexpected entertainment experience that players could step into and become part of,” they added.

The campaign comes as brands and attractions closer to home are also ramping up their Halloween efforts with immersive experiences built around horror, nostalgia and entertainment.

Sunway Lagoon, for example, is leaning on horror IP, Asian pop culture and creator-led content to keep its annual Nights of Fright (NOF) festival fresh after 12 years. Its 12th edition, “APE-OCALYPSE”, runs from 25 September to 7 November at Sunway Lagoon in Subang Jaya, with its marketing strategy focused on giving audiences new reasons to return while making the experience increasingly content-driven and shareable.

Meanwhile, Zouk is turning childhood nostalgia on its head with “PLAY DEAD”, its first Halloween weekend since the complex’s full relaunch. Running on 30 and 31 October across four venues, the experience transforms forgotten toys and childhood favourites into immersive worlds, tapping into memories that can feel both comforting and unsettling across generations.

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