Where are the party people? If you're throwing a Halloween party, keep these ideas in mind to spook up a great time.
Zombie Apocalypse
Who doesn't love a good zombie party? Blood body parts ripped off and scattered about, groaning noises coming from left and right. Zombie parties are a classic way to spend your Halloween. Create a zombiesque setting by turning furniture on its side, scattering trash, blood, body parts, fake weapons and anything else you deem fit to go along with your zombie apocalypse theme. Give your guests guidebooks of tips and pointers on how to defeat the zombies that may attack during the evening.
You could decide to ask your guests to show up in their finest zombie digs and go out for a night of zombie fun before returning to home base. Another idea for a zombie party is that you could have some of your guests dress as zombies and some dress as zombie hunters. Come up with a maze or some type of game (think flag football or another game where costumed folks would look ridiculous and funny) and make it a zombies vs. hunters tournament. Play on, zombie friends!
Supernatural
This may be a bit more difficult to achieve than say, a zombie party, but a supernatural theme will keep your guests guessing. This is the time to break out your thinking caps. Try attaching fishing wire to rocking chairs, door knobs or light switches and hiding the ends some place where you can control them. Randomly flick the lights on and off, open and close doors, or make your chairs move to give the illusion of ghost-like activity.
Kids can be ridiculously adorable, but when they are in horror movies, no, I can't handle that. Record a child's voice (or your own if you can get it to sound so breathlessly eerie like the little ones in movies) saying something creepy. If you know you have a few party guests that are particularly jumpy, try recording a message to them personally using their names. Whether or not they believe they're hearing an actual spirit depends on how convincing you make it sound and how gullible they are. Chances are though, you can make them believe that what they're hearing is real one way or another.
Journey of Darkness
Keep things dark with this one. Give party guests each a small flashlight to navigate their way around. Please do keep your area safe though (be sure you mark any steps or other tripping hazards well), so as not to hurt your guests. Pull from your trips to haunted houses, mazes, fields, and attics to get ideas on how to decorate and scare your party goers. One great idea to go along with this theme would be to create the look of catacombs or tunnels in your venue. Trick your guests into thinking the walls are closing in on them by lining the walls with dark material of varying thicknesses and textures.
Come up with a soundtrack of creepy noises and have some "unidentifiable" objects flying around or sticking off the ceiling and walls. This idea makes it fairly easy to creep people out, especially those friends of yours that are still afraid of the dark, because they can see very little. Have your 'catacombs' or 'tunnels' lead up to something extra devilish and scary as guests enter the actual party. They might be near fear induced heart attacks at this point, so they might be in need of some extra delicious food and drink to help them come back from the dark side.
Cute Halloween
Go this route for the kids or if you're in the mood for a more adorable Halloween than a scary one. For example, make fuzzy spiders with black pom pom balls, pipe cleaners, and googly eyes for a non-threatening cute spider (the only spider that is acceptable in my opinion). Ghostie Tootsie Pops make for the perfect mix of spooky and sweet. For these, just place a tissue over a Tootsie Pop and tie a piece of yarn at the top of the stem. Add a ghost face and these treats are ready to scare....I mean serve! Place jars of "eyes," "brains" and other squishy, gooey things for party guests to see and touch. These jars of miscellaneous items might be good to get the most squeamish of folks squirming. Get ready to hear lots of "ews," "ahs" and other screams as your guests experience what's in your jars.
The Underworld is your fortress in terms of Halloween festivities. Think about what kind of party would give your guests the biggest fright or delight and plan away.
Sarai Garnett - Sarai Garnett believes that every day brings promise for great experiences. Holding a B.A. in Interpersonal and Organizational ...
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