Decorating a Halloween house party

For kids and adults alike, Halloween is a traditional time for the gathering of family and friends, dressing up in homemade costumes, and participating in fun activities. From decorating, to dancing, to fun games, here’s all you need for your Halloween house party.

Deadly decorations

Halloween is simple and easy to decorate for, with spooky surroundings and cliché characters, plus an abundance of affordable adornments stuffing the shelves in high-street shops and supermarkets. Banners, streamers, plastic pumpkins, and fake cobwebs make for garishly appropriate décor.

If your party has a more specific theme than a regular Halloween bash – a murder mystery, vampire gathering, or even Hollywood Halloween, for example – then more specific decorations can be added.

There are plenty of homemade Halloween decorations that can act as a focal point for the event, such as knitted pumpkins, a garland made from felt bats, or ghost balloons – a great one to try with the kids!

Monster mashups

Music is the crux which all good parties balance upon, and Halloween offers a niche sub-genre of tunes only appreciated once a year. Below is a key selection of spooky songs for your party playlist:

• Michael Jackson, Thriller
• Bobby Pickett, Monster Mash
• Creedence Clearwater Revival, Bad Moon Rising
• Mike Oldfield, Tubular Bells
• Richard O’Brien, Time Warp
• Andrew Gold, Spooky, Scary Skeletons
• Rockwell, Somebody’s Watching Me
• Danny Elfman, This is Halloween
• Ray Parker Jr, Ghostbusters
• Warren Zevon, Werewolves of London

Gruesome games

Halloween is a great time to break out a few party games – whether it be to keep the little ones, or the big ones, occupied – as it builds upon the fun of costume wearing and offers some purpose where other seasonal events might traditionally fill time with eating or gift-giving.

Apple bobbing is a timeless Halloween classic and can be made spookier with a good dose of red food colouring. Telling ghost stories seems apt and can be spiced up by making the nominee narrators pull prompts, characters, or keywords from a witch’s hat to include in their on-the-spot scarytales.

Finally, tell your guests ahead of time that there will be a costume competition, with the scariest, most inventive, or most on-theme costumes winning a prize, and the poorest efforts performing a frightful forfeit.