Chapter 2, Challenge 6: complete the chapter without alerting anyone
Three targets, no witnesses, and the most-restarted challenge in the game’s 36. People are not failing it because they do not know the route — the routes are all over YouTube. They are failing it because the game never tells them what “alerting” means.
The three targets, and what to wait for
Every failed run in the community threads is a timing failure, not a routing one. Each target has a moment where their back is turned and nobody else is looking, and the rest of their routine is a trap.
Target 1Eric— the hardware store
Wait out his sweeping routine from outside the back door. He picks up the broom, turns his back, and that is the grab — four channels describe the same loop.
Target 2Rachel— the cemetery
Only take her while she is stopped at a gravestone, never while she is walking. Two channels say the walking grab is what botches. Wait, too, for the man relieving himself at the tree to finish and wander off — three channels lose a run to him.
Target 3Tanya— the record shop
Most runs cut the power at the side of the building and take her at the fuse box. Two channels never touch the power and take her inside instead, and players who failed at the box report the inside grab working.
Rachel’s three friends are not targets. Three channels leave them alive and pass; one kills a friend and still passes. They matter only as eyes.
Two orders, and the one the community settled on
The challenge text says nothing about order, yet order is the single thing that changed for most of the players who eventually passed. The write-up that the subreddit keeps pointing newcomers at takes Rachel before Tanya, and its replies are full of people saying the Tanya-first attempts were the problem.
The community method, step by step
- Take Eric through the door behind where he sweeps. Stalk him, wait outside that door, walk in slowly while he is sweeping and grab him from behind. Confirm the surprise line before moving on.
- Go to the cemetery next, not the record shop. Wait for Rachel’s friends to clear off, stalk her to the first tier, and grab her mid-animation — leaning at a gravestone or smoking by the car. Hide her body.
- Cut the power, wait for Tanya to go to the fuse box, stalk to the first tier and grab her before she turns. Leave her body where it falls, shape-jump to Judith Myers’ grave, and the cutscene ends the chapter.
Source: r/TheHalloweenGame — “To anyone who is having trouble with Chapter 2, Challenge 6”, the write-up the subreddit keeps linking. Not hiding Tanya is part of the method, though one player in the replies says hiding her in the dumpster is what finally worked for them.
Why the same run passes for one player and not another
This is the part no video covers, and it is the reason this page exists. The surprise line is necessary in almost every account — and it is demonstrably not the whole rule.
Surprise on all three, and it still failed
The most common report in both threads. One player counted more than seventy attempts and sent the devs a bug video; several describe getting both the surprise and the stealth-kill lines on every target with no completion at the end.
One creator passed without it
SIMPLYAMAZING watched the line fail to appear on Eric, worried about it on camera — I'm kind of worried though that the cuz the first kill Eric didn't say surprise even though I surprised him.
— and completed the challenge anyway at the end of the same run. Whatever the game is checking, the feed is a good proxy for it rather than the thing itself.
A voice line may be what really breaks it
AwakenedVoidX tested it and blames the spoken reaction rather than the detection meter: his runs with surprise and stealth on all three still failed when a target said something before the grab. Jacob Fox contradicts that outright, reporting a surprise kill on a target who vocalised. One of them is describing a different state than the other, and no source can tell which.
Some runs never finish at all
Several players describe the chapter reloading from the start instead of completing when they reach the gravestone — the same story-mode saving problem that has its own note on the challenge hub. Nothing you do in the run affects that one.
One reply under the community method sums the state of it up better than any guide: I think the fact that the community is split between people this works for and doesn't is the most infuriating part.
(thread)
Things you can stop worrying about
- Skipping cutscenes. Three channels skip them and pass; one names it as a rumour he has disproved.
- Shape-jumping to the grave. Same — it is how two of the successful runs end.
- A botched grab animation.JROID’s grab on Rachel visibly fumbles and the challenge still completed.
- The detection diamond flickering. It rises a little whenever you approach from behind; players who passed describe keeping it below half rather than at zero.
Watch a clean run
Uncut, including the waiting
Halloween: The Game - Chapter 2 Challenge 6 Uncut Guide (How I Finally Did It)
Jacob Fox
Uncut matters here. The edited guides cut the waiting, and the waiting is the challenge — this run leaves in the standing around outside the hardware store and the pause at the tree in the cemetery.
For the other order, WEEZYFMAMBA’s walkthrough takes Tanya second and narrates the surprise check on each kill.
Questions people arrive with
What is the surprise prompt in Chapter 2 Challenge 6?
When you grab someone who never saw you coming, the XP feed on the left of the screen adds a line reading surprise. Five separate walkthroughs treat that line as the proof the kill was clean, and restart the chapter when it does not appear.
Which order should you kill Eric, Rachel and Tanya in?
The most-upvoted community write-up goes Eric, then Rachel, then Tanya, and dozens of replies say that order is what finally worked after Tanya-first attempts failed. Several creators do Eric, Tanya, Rachel instead and pass. The order is not in the challenge text.
Do you have to kill Rachel's friends?
No. Three channels finish the challenge without touching them, and one of them kills a friend anyway and still passes. They only matter as witnesses.
Does skipping the cutscene or shape-jumping to the grave break the challenge?
No. Three channels skip cutscenes and shape-jump to the final gravestone and complete it; one of them names both as community rumours he has disproved.
Can you restart from the checkpoint or do you have to restart the chapter?
Reports conflict. Two channels restart from a checkpoint and keep their earlier kill; one creator has never had a challenge complete on a resumed run and always restarts from the menu, and several players say the same. If a run is already shaky, the menu restart is the safer bet.
Is Chapter 2 Challenge 6 bugged?
Partly. Clean runs with the surprise line on all three targets fail often enough that two subreddit threads are mostly people comparing failed attempts, and one player reports the chapter reloading instead of completing. No patch note has addressed it.
Keep going
All six Chapter 2 challenges
The register execution, Slab at the tree, the shelf in the hardware store and the rest.
Chapter 5, Challenge 6
The police car challenge that looks broken because the tick arrives at the exit.
Stalk tiers and executions
What the stalk meter is doing, and which executions need which tier.
Sources: r/TheHalloweenGame — the community method · r/TheHalloweenGame — Chapter 2 Challenge 6 thread · Jacob Fox — uncut Chapter 2 Challenge 6 · WEEZYFMAMBA — Chapter 2 Challenge 6 walkthrough · Save Crystal Gaming — Chapter 2 Challenge 6 · AwakenedVoidX — Chapter 2 Challenge 6 · SIMPLYAMAZING — all Chapter 2 challenges · JROID — Chapter 2 all challenges · EquippedGamer — every Michael story challenge