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Create an Ideal Ghoulish Get-together
A strong theme can focus your party and help you get even more creative. Party themes can be as singular as "Aliens" or "Mummies," or conceptual, like a "Come as You Were" party where everyone is invited to dress as their favorite dead person. They can be literature-based-such as an Edgar Allan Poe party. Or activity-based, like a pumpkin carving party or a story party, where guests share Halloween-related stories they've either found or written themselves. And who says you have to host a Halloween party in the 21st century? Halloween has gone through several incarnations over the centuries, and there's no rule against rifling through the past to resuscitate a good idea. Have a truly old-fashioned Halloween party with atmosphere, games, Halloween party decorations, Halloween party supplies, and even food from another time and place. Host one of these 5 spellbinding soirees this year:
This Life-sized Wrapped Mummy Statue will send a tingle up the backs of even the most jaded trick-or-treaters. These life-sized Mummies are so realistic, you might expect them to start walking (and if they do, you're on your own!). An Old World Halloween PartyCome inside: it's the eve of All Hallow's. But leave the door unlatched behind you, for the dead are cold and hungry and need a place to rest. Here they come now — Sit! Come home to us tonight and whisper the secrets of the spirits in our ears.
With an Old World party you can draw on Halloweens long, long ago for ideas; back to when you needed four essential elements to help you celebrate: food, fire, fortune telling, and phantoms. Invitations Snippets of Halloween folklore make evocative invitation greetings. There are plenty of poems, superstitions, and sayings that have been recorded in volumes you can find at your library. Greeting If you hear footsteps following you on Halloween,
Invitation text: Follow the footsteps to our Halloween gathering at...etc. Treats Halloween Dump Cake Tricks On Halloween in the 19th century, girls in the American South put trays of corn meal next to their beds in hopes that ghosts would write the initials of their secret lovers in it. Sometimes they'd wake to find messages: cryptic symbols engineered by worms who'd wiggled through the grain at night leaving trails taken to be letters. You can adapt this game using an apple, as many other girls did, both in the old world and the new. Give each guest an apple and a small paring knife. Have them peel the apple in one long strip, being very careful not to break it as it spirals off the fruit. One at a time, each person stands absolutely still, then throws the apple peel over his left shoulder. According to superstition, it will land in the initial of your future love. (return to top) 
Our menacing Giant Halloween Vampire Bat looks so real, you'll want to cover your neck. Piercing red jeweled eyes add a spine-chilling effect. Romancing the VampireParty invitations set the mood, especially with verses from any of the more moribund poets like Baudelaire, Rrimbaud, Blake, Poe, and Aiken would serve. Here are a few phrases to get you started: Greeting: The skies were ashen and sober; Invitation text: The best party night of the year. Please join us on...etc. Greeting: Something wicked this way comes... --William Shakespeare, MacBeth Invitation text: ...to a Halloween party at...etc. Decorations Rent your favorite vampire movie and check out the sets as inispiration for decoration. The Gothic movie, for example, was all about setting. It showed gloomy forests, leaking cellars, secret passages, tomb-like dungeons, lightning, thunder, fog, and moonlight. Use a party fogger to create a ground-hugging mist to rival the omnipresent fog of Collinswood. Light the party using clusters of votives to give a cathedral-type atmosphere. Use a contemporary gothic band, Gregorian chants, movie soundtrack, or Midnight Syndicate CD as background music. Add a medieval touch by draping lengths of dark, richly colored fabric over your smaller tables. Throw in a few skulls and gargoyles or other evocative Halloween props. Decorate your rooms with clusters of lilies, bouquets of dead roses, or flowers you choose from the deep purple or wine-red blooms available at your florist's shop (you probably won't find black plants, they're extremely rare). Entertainments By the 19th century, Mary Shelley had given us Frankenstein (1818) and Bram Stoker had written Dracula (1897), inspiring generations of horror writers. What better entertainment for a Halloween night than to read aloud something that raises the hair on the back of your neck? You can ask your guests to come prepared to read from their favorite writers (limit the lengths to around 10 minutes so that everyone gets a chance) and have a candlelit story session. Or find one friend who's an excellent reader and have guests gather for the story. (return to top) 
Butler Mortimer can serve the refreshments and greet the guests. Partygoers will be aghast at his unsettling welcome followed with an equally evil chuckle. A Very Victorian HalloweenPeople once sent greeting cards at Halloween with spritely sayings and pretty drawings of cats, witches, and little pumpkin-headed children. These vintage verses, along with Victorian- and Edwardian-era poetry make perfect party invitations. Here is one such example: Greeting: 'Tis the night-the night Invitation text: Please join us at the witching hour of... etc. Fortunes and Favors Victorian Halloween home parties were essentially about romance and divination: who will be your future soul mate? If you have a sit-down dinner at your Halloween party, make sure the guests find a fortune at their place. Using old-fashioned pen and ink, copy a fortune onto a piece of antique-colored paper for each guest. Roll the paper into a scroll and tie with a piece of raffia or fancy ribbon. Try the Victorian fortunes below, or make up your own. Whosoever is to your left The handsome person on your right Look towards the door, who next comes through Close your eyes and count to three Decorations The Victorians found many ways to bring the outdoors inside at their Halloween parties. Make a vase out of a pumpkin (carve a pumpkin and place a real vase inside so that it's concealed) and fill it with big bunches of flowers. Drape your table with colored cloths of the season and decorate with food, in Victorian fashion, that's color-coordinated. Cover the center of the table with bright red crabapples (available at the supermarket only at this time of year!). Place colorful bowls filled to the brim with every yellow, red, and orange food you can think of: bunches of fat red grapes, piles of apples, sweet oranges. Light as many candles as you can and place them throughout the house. Add jack-o-lanterns: three on a tabletop, one in a window, one in a hanging planter, one in an empty birdcage, more of them decorating bookshelves, running up the stairs, a cluster of them in a corner (arrange them in different heights by using upside-down flower pots to elevate some). Wind tiny orange or white lights or electric votives around the pumpkins and keep the rooms lights low. Stolen Kisses: Games for Victorian Halloween Parties Victorian Halloween parties were really for young, single adults. Married people were rarely invited, as the main entertainments were flirting games. Ladies were shown off to their advantage in firelight; men could demonstrate their bravery during Halloween fortune-telling forays into dimly lit rooms and gardens. At its dark little core, Victorian Halloween celebrations were about who was going to end up with who. Set the scene for fortune telling: a crystal ball, a tarot deck (even plain cards will do), elegant candles. A bit of fog never hurts. You also need a wide bowl filled with cold water, a few fat candles, and an imaginative "seer." A guest lights his or her candle and lets it burn until a small pool of melted wax surrounds the wick. Then quickly, with one movement, they dump the wax into the water and blow out the candle. The seer interprets the guest's fate from the shape of the hardened wax. Is it the shape of bird of some kind? Maybe there's travel ahead, or freedom from a hated job. Flowers might mean a wedding, a bountiful garden, or fruition of efforts — the seer decides. (return to top) 
This Martha Stewart Little Spider Costume will arm your toddler to have a spooktacular time this Halloween. Host a Halloween Costume ParadeA Halloween parade is perfect for younger children (3-8) whether 70 kids march or only seven. Here are the tricks you'll need to make it happen:
Fun Parade Destinations for Kids Halloween parades had their heyday in the early 20th century when whole towns got out and marched down Main Street in a costume. There are still a good number of jaw-dropping town-wide Halloween parades left, and most let you march along!
Have A Pumpkin Carving Party!Best held about a week before Halloween, a pumpkin carving party can be fun for everyone from your tiniest three-year-old to your older teen, who is apt to carve some pretty amazing jack-o-lanterns. Here's how:
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