Bored with the same old Trick or Treat "n" slasher movie nights? Here's some tips to make this year's Halloween party truly terrifying!
Theme
Okay, so your first step is to work out what sort of party you're going to have. Are you going Trick or Treating? Are you going to have a movie night? Are you going to play party games? Are you going to have a particular theme? Even if you don't want a set theme for your party, try to find a “mood”: kitsch or scary, Gothic and ghostly or realistic and gorey? This will help you set up everything else you're going to do, from choosing the films to choosing your costume.
Decorations
A lot of people tend to forget decorations for Halloween, but decorations can really help set your mood. There are plenty of shops and websites offering all manner of strange and wonderful things for you to spook up your home, but if you're strapped for cash, here's some cheap and easy things for you to make:
- Shrunken heads: These can be really effective. Peel an apple and, if you have the time, soak for a day in a mixture of water, salt, vinegar and lemon juice. If you don't have a spare day, just make up the mixture and dunk your apple occasionally to stop it turning brown. Now carve your apple into a grotesque little face and decorate: cloves make great eyes, seeds make great teeth, and wool makes nice straggly hair. Be as creative as you like! Now pop your apple into an oven or an airing cupboard for a while (or if you have the time, leave it on a windowsill for a few days) and hey presto! Your little apple-face will now shrink and become wrinkly, looking like a real shrunken head!
- Giant webs: Take some wool and lay it out in one large spiral. Then cut lengths of wool big enough to stretch out from the centre of the spiral to the outside edge and maybe a foot or so beyond (the number of these will depend on the size of the spiral). Carefully knot these into place each time they cross the spiral. Once you've done this, you'll have a huge web! Use the ends to tie your web over a door, a window, a picture or whatever you like.
- Gravestones: What Halloween party would be complete without a fake cemetery in your back garden? Find some cardboard, preferably thick but any will do, cut into a headstone shape and paint grey with some grizzly epitaphs “carved” onto them (acrylic paints are particularly useful as they're waterproof!)
- Cheap and easy ghosts: screw a sheet of newspaper into a ball. Then take a white plastic bag and drape over the ball. Tie into place with wool, a rubber band or anything else that's handy. Use a marker pen to draw a face on the part of the “ghost” around the newspaper ball (which should form your ghost's head). Now pop some string or wool through the tie around your ghost's “neck” and you can hang him somewhere around the house or the garden.
- Paper chains: Give your house a dungeon feel with black paper chains!
- Spooky portraits: If you have portraits around your home, give them a creepy feel by sticking acetate or cling film over the glass (blue-tack is good for this) then drawing creepy details onto them!
- Deadly dolls: Find the cutest looking doll you can in a thrift store or charity shop. If it's wearing a desperately cute little baby-doll dress that's even better. Now give it a make-over: change the color of its eyes to red or gold, give it sinister eyebrows and an evil smile or whatever you like, with marker pens, makeup or even biros! Now splatter with fake blood (if you're wondering where to get that, never fear, there are instructions of how to make some in the “make-up” section of this guide) and maybe give your doll some form of weaponry!
Costuming
Great! Now your house is suitably terrifying! But now you need to be terrifying too. Choose a costume that fits the mood of your party, it will look more impressive if you've got a costume that fits the décor of your house, a serial-killer would look pretty out of place if you've made your house up to look like Dracula's castle!
As with decoration, there are plenty of ready-made costumes out there, but if you're on a budget there's plenty you can do too. Coating old clothes in fake blood is always effective, and if you've got a white dress you can always go for a “Carrie” look, or even a spooky Japanese ghost look.
