Halloween Intro
ahhhhh, Halloween, all hallow's eve, the night leading us into the day of the dead. this is my favorite hallowday (sorry, couldn't resist) and over the past few years I have had the pleasure of designing a number of Halloween parties. I will share the plans with you here, in case you wish to give one of these a try . . .
Eventually I will get these entries to a point where they read like proper recipes, with easy lists of items to prepare, but that will take a little while. For now, should you wish to ask me anything, please email me at acr@ratula.net.
- acr
1999 party
The First Party
Theme: Surprise Murder Mystery
Location: In-law’s Wisconsin home
Costume: Andy Warhol’s drug-induced hallucination
(to compliment lover’s Andy Warhol costume)
To offer some background: my husband’s family owns a home with a small forest on a lake near a tiny town in the middle-of-nowhere, Wisconsin. Obviously this remote, woodsy location is perfect for Halloween parties. The year before, the women who became my crazy mother-in-law and my crazy aunt-in-law threw a road rally Halloween party, which involved car-fulls of friends, friends of friends, locals, and family members running around town and the backwoods searching for the answers to various clues. Incredible fun was had by all. The following year, my (then) lover and I decided to co-plan a party with his parents at their Wisconsin home. The theme we chose this year was: Surprise Murder Mystery.
It will take much effort to unearth that script, so I am not going to re-print it here. It was far too involved anyway to be worth copying. Instead I’ll just offer highlights.
Good ideas we had:
1) We used the element of surprise. We started out the party by telling guests we were having another road rally. We told everyone they had to walk down to the end of the long, winding driveway in order to open their first clues (we even distributed sealed envelopes supposedly containing road rally clues). As we walked down the driveway we were met my a ‘local police officer’ (friend of the family) who drove up with his lights blazing, sirens wailing, saying he was there to investigate a missing person’s report. He shone his flashlight around and there, in the bushes, was a dead scientologist (we found a copy of Dianetics at the thrift store and planted it with the stuffed dummy). The officer then announced that he was now investigating a murder and everyone at the scene was a suspect – so we all had to return to the house.
This went over very well with the guests. Everyone was surprised to see the officer pull up and seemed to enjoy the change of events. This was a great start to the party, in my opinion.
2) We killed a lot of people. I firmly believe everyone has a little drama queen or king inside of them and wants an excuse to let them reign for a few moments. While some folks were assigned specific tasks, we also offered a couple ‘massive death scenes’ lots of people could participate in. These instructions were all placed in a hat and anyone who wanted to was allowed to draw from the hat. For example, one of the clues was ‘when acr serves the cake she made, take a piece, then fall over dead from poisoning.’ When the time came I boasted very loudly about the cake I had baked, while my lover and his mother criticized my baking ability. Then, a few people went into lovely dramatic fits and threw themselves dead upon the floor. If nothing else, it was a great comic moment.
Note: the rules of our game allowed dead members to continue playing, they just had to wear a sign denoting they were ‘dead’ or ‘terminated’ or ‘deceased’ or ‘expired’ etc.
3) We had a specific prize. The person who correctly guessed both the murderer and the reason for the murders won a ‘how to throw a murder mystery party’ game, and the prize money (all participants were charged $5 to play). We actually had a tie, so one person won the prize money and the other won the game. I learned having an actual prize offers a good way to wrap-up the festivities, and gives the winner/s a nice memento.
4) We covered a lot of ground. Halloween parties should be active and involve (if possible) both indoor and outdoor locations or events. People are in costume! Let them get up and move around and be silly together. No one wants to spend the night dressed as Dracula sitting in the living room like a lump.
A few not-so-good-ideas, and what we learned:
1) Don’t have too much going on. We had approximately 8-10 specific deaths in addition to the massive death scenes. There was way too much action, and it was extremely confusing. Even those of us who planned the mystery were at times confused as to the proper course of events. Although people told us they had fun, I think we ‘lost’ a lot of people after death #3 or 4. In addition, we had a lot of red herrings that many people didn’t even catch, due to the amount of action occurring. While the massive death scenes were fun and funny, the high number of specific murders was not a great idea.
We learned the valuable lesson of KISS – Keep It Simple, Stupid.
2) Don’t overuse props and technology. Among the props we used were a videotape (of me, baking the cake), a gun, an ax, blood pellets, a bloody rock, tarot cards, a dummy, etc etc etc. Again, many people missed some of these things, the blood pellets didn’t burst, the blood on the rock was invisible in the dark, the tarot deck was incorrectly shuffled so it was hard to find the death card, and I think the videotape just plain confused people.
Again, Keep It Simple, Stupid.
3) Keep a sense of humor and perspective. Some of our corpses laughed. Our murderess did not jump up and scream, “I just want to be left alone!!!!!!” on cue. Many people wondered what the hell my costume was instead of paying attention to the instructions (which were overwritten and not necessary anyway). As a party planner, you can not get upset that your masterpiece isn’t being received as the adrenaline-filled extravaganza you expected it to be. Smile, laugh, and get on with it.
4) Do NOT involve the planners directly in the action. It takes at least two people to run any large party event. You need to answer questions, review rules, and keep track of the schedule. It’s difficult to do that when you’re lying in the middle of the woods waiting for everyone to find you with your skull bashed in. As much fun as it is to play a corpse, as a planner you don’t have that luxury. Let someone else do it.
In summary, it was a fun party, and a great experience planning it. However, it will not go down in history as one of the all time great Halloween events, and that is fine. I learned, and people had fun in spite of the mishaps.
2000 party
The First Party – At Home
Theme: Supernatural Scavenger Hunt
Location: Our Apartment
Costume: The Queen of Swords, from my lover’s tarot deck
(to compliment the King of Swords, chosen from my tarot deck)
Any setting works for Halloween, right? I was determined to have a memorable Halloween party at our home on the north side of the city. Since the road rally from 2 years earlier had been so much fun, I decided to plan one of my own. However, we didn’t want to send anyone driving anywhere given how crazy north side streets and parking are, so we needed to design a walking activity. We also couldn’t very well plant clues ahead of time, since they would likely go missing; it would also be very difficult for the players to ‘gather’ anything to bring back with them. So, after much head scratching, we finally figured it out.
We would have a photo scavenger hunt.
We scouted out locations within a mile of our apartment in all directions, and took black & white photos of anything that looked interesting. The one requirement was that the pictures needed to be of public property – no houses lest we get arrested for stalking. This meant we snapped shots of street-signs, bus stops, the very cool cemetery, the window grating on the back side of a local shop, the school, the church, a dedication stone in the local public garden, etc. Our final picture was of the rubble left from a multi-alarm fire our block had enjoyed the previous June. We then selected a few of the most interesting pictures, and began creating stories about each shot.
For example, the bus stop became known as the local run frequented by a spectral passenger on the anniversary of the day she was reported missing. The grated window was called the old county jail, a scene of several suspicious deaths. Some footprints in concrete were said to belong to Frankie no-nose, a member of Capone’s gang whose body was never accounted for. And so on. These stories, with their accompanying photos, were sorted and divvied up between two teams. Each team had both their own unique stories, as well as a few of the same tales.
I numbered the stories 1-9, and then placed them in sealed envelopes complimentarily numbered 1-9. I wrote instructions for each team telling them their mission was to find and duplicate the pictures linked with each of their stories. Each team was also provided with a Polaroid camera for this purpose (I have a Polaroid, and luckily I was able to borrow my sister’s camera too). Teams were instructed to open the envelops in sequential order, and to only open the next envelope once they had taken the picture for their current story. Finally, I gave each team a map (which I hand-drew), with a few of the street names filled in, and indicated by number the approximate location of each of the tales – this way no one would get lost, and no one team would have the advantage of being more familiar with the neighborhood than the other team.
The day of the party both teams were sent off to capture their pictures. Teams were told they would receive extra credit for capturing the image of a ghost on film. To this end, I had one of my sisters dress up as a ghost and walk around the neighborhood – I hoped at least one of the teams would see her and get her on film. The team who returned first with all their photos won.
Overall feedback:
People seemed to enjoy this activity very much. I still occasionally receive compliments on the cool scavenger hunt. Apparently one of the team leaders took his job a wee too seriously and ran across streets against traffic, leaving other team members stranded or in serious jeopardy. But all in all people said they had a very good time. I also kicked off the evening by having people at the party tell ghost stories (I had mentioned on the evite we would be doing this, so folks could prepare a story if they chose). Many guests whole-heartedly joined in this event and we took turns scaring each other, until after awhile I jumped in and said that my neighborhood was filled with several of its own ghosts and urban legends, which lead directly into my explaining the concept of the scavenger hunt (this was a surprise activity). According to my lover I was jumping up and down with excitement while explaining the rules of the hunt, but I have no memory of this.
What we learned:
1) Again, Keep It Simple Stupid. No one got a photo of my sister the ghost, or understood exactly why she was walking around. I also asked 2 different friends to send out an email to all of our collective friends saying they had read about ghostly activity in my neighborhood – I was hoping to get people ‘in the mood’ for the party. This too went way over everyone’s head, and one of my friends repeatedly forgot to send her email out, making me very frustrated. However, in spite of these 2 things, the structure of this activity was streamlined as compared to Halloween 1999.
2) It takes a village to plan a party. In between the photos, the stories, drawing the maps, writing the rules, and getting my costume together, sewing a cape for my partner’s costume, and decorating the house I don’t even know how many hours I logged on this party. It was a LOT of work. I had a lot of fun doing it, but I also realized how glad I am to be a ‘planner’ so that I wasn’t pulling all-nighters the week before the party.
3) People appreciate good decorating. The night before the party my lover, my sister, and I spent a few hours decorating a very large sheet of paper we hung on one wall with spooky images and typical Halloween-type sayings, like “Beware!” etc. In addition, we also spattered two large thrift store-bought sheets with fake blood and red food coloring, making bloody handprints and gory spatter. We also each carved a pumpkin. The next day, we covered the couch with the bloody sheets and placed the three candle lit jack-o-lanterns in the gangway leading into our building. My lover stood guard (dressed in medieval garb and an awesome handmade cape) at the end of the gangway, silently greeting guests and making sure our pumpkins did not get stolen. A few passers-by asked if they could attend the party, since it looked so cool. Ever since this Halloween I’ve put a lot of time and effort into transforming my home into a creepy party-land – and it’s always worth it.
2001 party
In 2001, we got married.
One month and two days before Halloween.
(I had always wanted to get married on Halloween, but that meant waiting until 2007 for a Saturday wedding and, well, we didn't want to wait).
Then we went to Ireland.
We did both dress as rag-dolls for work on the 31st, but other than that, no party.
We made up for it in 2002.
2002 party
Theme: Chat-room Murder Mystery
Location: Our New Apartment
Costume: Vampire Victim
(to compliment Nosferatu)
The idea:
The frame story was thus: Gwen Rossdale, a high school senior, has apparently been murdered by someone she met in an online chat-room. She was found in the back of a coffee shop with her head bashed in. It’s up to the guests to figure out who killed Gwen. Our friends were asked to portray different characters from the story, most of whom were members of the chat room, including Gwen’s best friend, another girl from their school, a child molester, Gwen’s boyfriend, and a drunk witness who was the last person known to see Gwen alive.
We created a website that was supposed to mimic an angst-y teen online chat room. I wanted to give the room a name that was appropriately gothic sounding, so I called it The Rose Room after William Blake’s poem ‘O rose, thou art sick.’ (Strangely enough, I completely forgot that was what I had named the chat-room when I created this site a year later). I sent out a party evite and created the chat-room 4 weeks prior to the party, and updated The Rose Room once a week with new conversations. Party guests were supposed to check each week for clues.
At the party, we divided the apartment into four different locations: the living room was the ‘police station’ and I was supposedly an undercover cop. This had the fewest decorations and served as the main party area. I had a timeline posted of the last week or so of Gwen’s life and printed out transcripts from The Rose Room chat-room. This is where we all met to solve the murder.
The guest bedroom was Gwen’s bedroom and included her diary with some entries that indicated she had been fighting with her best friend. I think we also put a laptop in here with the chat-room set as the home page.
The dining room was the coffee shop where Gwen was found dead. We named this place the Cyber ! (pronounced cyber not) Café. We had some deserts in here and a small table and chairs to suggest a café. This room also had a lot of Halloween decorations. We taped out the outline of a dead body on the floor. My sister portrayed Gwen, which involved her having to lie in the outline for a few minutes while one of our other guests yelled about “a dead girl on the floor.” ‘Twas hilarious.
Our kitchen was set-up like the bar next door to the Cyber ! Café. This joint was called The Bar Next Door. I had run out of creativity by this point. We turned off all the lights in the kitchen and strung Halloween lights and lit candles. Of course, all of the alcohol and mixers were in here.
During the questioning-at-the-police-station section of the party, our guests who were portraying characters were all given something to say which offered clues to Who Killed Gwen. I had written out general suggestions for everyone, and a couple of our guests got very into their roles. Dear Mikey, who played our drunk witness Barry Fleye, (yes, like ‘bar fly’), executed his spiel complete with hiccups and slurred speech, much to everyone’s delight. At the end of the questioning everyone voted on whom they thought the killer was, and why they did it. After the votes were tallied, the real killer jumped up and confessed. I think we gave a prize to whoever guessed correctly, and then distributed other goodies to anyone who played a character, and finally gave more prizes to everyone else. Prizes were things like Halloween erasers, stamps and inkpads, candy corn, and other cheap little Halloween novelties.
By the way, her best friend did it.
What we learned:
1) Give people something to do right away. We had thought people would want about an hour to party and look over ‘evidence’ before the game officially started. Instead, people just stood around wondering what to do. This wasn’t too awkward, but still we should have planned for things starting more or less right away.
2) KISS. I am still learning this. Some people ignored my red herrings, which was both expected and fine. One guest actually tried to follow-up on every single clue, thus devoting a lot of time and energy to the game. So if I ever do this again I’ll pare it down even more for the sake of the guests.
3) You never know how people will react to being a character. They probably don’t even know themselves. Remember to offer them a lot of help and support so that they understand exactly what to communicate. Write everything down for them. It’s difficult to balance giving someone instructions and giving them leeway, but better to err on the side of instructions.
Feedback:
This party went well, and we received compliments on the decorating. Those who got into their roles seemed to have a lot of fun. I don’t think we’ll do a murder mystery again (not for awhile anyway) just because I don’t think they tend to work as well as other parties. I do think some people appreciated the alternate world we tried to create, and it was lots of fun playing around on the web. But in the end I think more fun comes out of laughing at the silliness of the game, rather than getting in to the story and enjoying it.
2003 party
Theme: On-site Scavenger Hunt; “The Night We Killed the Party Guests”
Location: Family House-on-a-Farm in Wisconsin
Costumes: Sid & Nancy
We were up in Wisconsin for a family event when someone asked my husband and I when our next [WI] Halloween party would be. We decided to throw one that year. Members of my husband’s family wanted to co-host, so we decided to hold the party at his sister’s farmhouse. Her house sits on 5 acres and includes outbuildings such as a horse barn and an enormous storage shed.
The idea:
Invitations were sent out detailing the sad story of a beautiful princess whose crazy family killed people every Halloween. Guests were invited to come to the beautiful princess’ castle but told to beware the shed – for her family were waiting to lure people inside and then do them in. Guests were helpfully provided with a specific time and date for their demise.
Since we had people in two different locations both wanting to host the party, I divided the tasks down the middle. My husband’s family was responsible for general preparations such as food etc, and also for designing a maze in the storage shed. The idea was that if guests could not successfully complete the maze, they would “die.” My husband and I created an on-site scavenger hunt, which took the idea of a road rally but instead kept all of the action in one location, i.e. his sister’s farmland. We all decided to share the expense of the party equally, and communicated via email regarding what everyone needed to provide.
The execution of the idea, and the guests:
Right away, my husband’s family decided it would be prohibitively difficult and expensive to construct a maze in the shed. So they came up with a very creative idea: only a corner of the shed would be ‘mazed off’ with an old pool cover and a tarp. Guests would run into the inside of the tarp where they would then sit down and be directed to complete a cartoon maze copied out of a game book. Of course, anyone who didn’t complete the maze correctly ‘died.’
In order to get into the maze in the first place, guests had to complete a series of clues – this was the road rally part of the game. To compete, guests were divided into teams. Each team had to successfully solve 9 riddles. If a team member solved a riddle, then another member of their team advanced to the next clue – if they failed, they ‘died.’ Dying was the equivalent of losing a turn – the team member could continue to play but they themselves could not volunteer to solve a riddle until all other members of their team had already taken a turn. Teams had to keep track of how many deaths they had. The grand prize went to the team who first solved the maze, and a second place prize went to the team with the least amount of deaths.
Clues were designed to have teams running all over the large yard. One clue sent guests scurrying down to the mailbox, another to the horse barn, and another behind the house to the apple orchard. Following are some of my favorite clues:
Clue #1
Name Numerology
First off, please notice that in the yard there are nine pumpkins, each with a number 1-9 on it. The object of this clue is to add up all of the letters in your name so they equal one single digit number. Use the chart and the example below to guide you. After you have calculated the single digit numerological value of your name, then go to the pumpkin with the corresponding number and grab the next clue.
Note: in order to make the game more interesting, some of these pumpkins/numbers WILL kill you. So, if you are killed, the next player in your team has to figure out the numerological value of their name, and try a different pumpkin. Good luck.
Clue #2
The next clue is under the gargoyle in the driveway.
As you can see, there are 2 gargoyles in the driveway.
You have a 50/50 chance of guessing the right gargoyle. Good luck!
If you guess incorrectly, then you die and the next player on your team has to try and solve this clue.
Hint: If it takes you more than two turns to solve this clue, then you’ve had too much to drink.
Clue #3
In the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy’s house fell on the wicked witch of the _________.
We have the remains of 4 wicked witches around the yard, North, South, East, and West.
The correct answer to the above will move your team on to the next clue.
The wrong answer will kill you, and another team member needs to try and figure it out.
Hint: If it takes you more than 4 turns to solve this clue, then you’ve REALLY had too much to drink.
Clue #9
In the front yard, there are gravestones for four famous scary characters, Godzilla, Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, and the Mummy.
Let’s say you are in Transylvania, on your way home from robbing the great pyramid in Egypt of all its cursed treasure. It’s lunchtime, and you’ve sent your faithful servant Franz to the local pub to get some sausages and blood pudding for lunch.
Little do you know, Franz has stolen the Egyptian treasure from you, and plans to run away to America to make his fortune. Suddenly, the local villagers begin running in a panic . . . screaming about a large green monster which is destroying the forest just a few miles away. At the same moment, you feel a cold chill run down your spine, like something evil has found you . . . your pulse quickens, and terrified you turn around and see . . .
Who or what do you see? More importantly, who or what do you NOT see? The next clue is hidden behind the gravestone of the creature LEAST likely to attack you. If you don’t answer this correctly, certain death awaits. Then one of your other team members gets to try their hand at solving this clue.
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And so on. Guests seemed to have a really good time trying to solve these clues, and we received feedback for literally weeks afterwards telling us what a wonderful party it had been. I am eager to try and adapt this idea for my own home one of these years, but obviously this kind of game works better when you have a large area in which to run around.
What we learned:
1) Invest in a home printer. This party took a LOT of work. Not only did we have to gather props for each clue, I also needed to create several copies of rules, instructions, and envelopes. The envelopes were one of the biggest time investments, because for each clue I needed 4 envelopes (one for each team) holding the next clue, and at least an additional 4 envelopes saying “No, you are dead” in case a team member guessed the incorrect answer. For clues #3 and #9, where there were 3 possible wrong answers, I needed 12 wrong-answer envelopes just to be safe (and one team even took 5 guesses to figure out clue #9). Since our home printer wasn’t working I wrote out all of the envelopes by hand, and wore out a sharpie. During the game most of our envelopes got rained on or crumpled, so they can not be reused.
2) Try to anticipate everything that can go wrong, and have an answer for it. Luckily, we did, and had an answer for all the different questions.
3) Explain the rules 3 or 4 times. Circulate amongst the teams and make sure the rules are being followed. One of the guests took ALL the answer envelopes for one of the clues, thus leaving other teams without any correct answer envelopes. We had to replace the missing envelopes without giving away the correct answer. Luckily we caught the error pretty quickly so no harm was done.
4) Grossly overestimate the time it will take to set-up. That’s all I’m saying.
5) No one in rural Wisconsin knows who Sid and Nancy are. As near as people could figure, I was dressed like Madonna.
In summary, this was probably the best Halloween party we ever had. I think it’s the sort of thing anyone could plan; you just need to use a lot of imagination. And be very organized (we had about 40 guests and if I hadn’t been hyper-prepared things could have quickly become chaotic). Given the amount of work it took, however, I think I could only organize a party like this every other year. So, in 2004, we put the guests to work.
2004 party
Theme: DIY Haunted House
Costume: grey zombie (both of us)
This entry begins with the instructions for the party, which were linked from the evite and hidden in The Rose Room.
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Congratulations. You've found the secret page of information about AyM's Halloween 2004 bash. Now, we will have to kill you; muwahahahahahaha!!!!!! Or, at the very least, force you to attend.
The party starts at roughly 8:00 pm. If you want to arrive a little earlier, that's fine. Haunted House competition will start at 8:30 (more information provided below). Costumes are required.
WEATHER: As of 10/22/04, the projected weather for Saturday pm 10/30 will be: low of 36 (dress warm everyone!!!!!) and partly cloudy. Perfect for spotting the moon between the clouds in the halloween sky.
Haunted House Competition
Start time: 8:30
Decorating time: 30 minutes (until 9:00)
Walk-through: approximately 20 minutes (9:30-ish)
Awards!
Outline and Rules: Upon arrival at the party, guests will be divided into teams (there will either be two or three teams, depending on the number of guests). Teams will be selected at random. Pay attention, this information becomes important in a minute.
Teams will be assigned a specific section of our house to haunt/decorate. Sections may include stairways, closets, the backyard, open rooms, etc. Teams will be given diagrams indicating the exact boundaries of their section. The section assigned to your team is non-negotiable, and off-limits areas must be observed.
Teams will work together to turn their assigned area into a haunted house. Sufficient props will be provided, but feel free to bring your own as well (see the Props section below for more information). Teams will have 30 minutes to decorate their section, and are bounded only by their imagination. Now is not too early to begin thinking of ideas!
After 30 minutes, teams will stop decorating and everyone will regroup. Then, teams will take turns walking through each other's sections. Prior to each walk though, each team will be given an additional 5 minutes for all of their team members to get in place (if necessary) in their decorated section. Teams may want to designate a 'guide' to lead other teams through their section. All party members will walk through the same section, meaning first we will all walk through Team 1's haunted house, then we will all walk through Team 2's, etc. Teams will be respectful of each other's decorations, and will not try to unmask ghosts, stomp on giant killer spiders, etc.
Absolutely no one is allowed to do anything that might injure another person, or in some way damage his or her possessions. So, no throwing blood or guts on each other! Babies may not be shaken up and used as instruments of projectile vomit.
Following all of the walk throughs, all guests will vote on which haunted house they liked the best. First place team members will receive fabulous prizes, and second place team members will receive slightly less fabulous prizes, and everyone else will be fed to Martini, the ferocious puppy-dragon.
Props (Mine): As a Halloween fanatic, I have of course been collecting decorations and props for a few years now. Teams will be allowed to use most of this stash to decorate their section of the house.
Our props will be distributed in a 'white elephant' type fashion. All available decorations will be displayed. Then, a member of Team 1 will come forward and choose one prop from the group. Next, a member of Team 2 will make a selection. And so on, until all of the props have been distributed. In addition to traditional Halloween decorations, props will include sheets, cobwebbing, tulle, noisemakers, etc. Please, please, please do not break anything.
Once a team has selected a certain prop, that prop can not be 'stolen' from that team. Again, use your creativity and imaginations!
Props (Yours): In addition to AyM's decorations, all guests are invited to bring their own items to be used in decorating their haunted house.
Everyone is highly encouraged to bring a flashlight. Flashlights are good both for safety and for making scary faces/shadows.
If you bring your own props, they will not be distributed in the 'white elephant' selection. If you bring it, you use it. Now, remember when I said teams would be selected at random? This is where that information becomes important: you and your partner may not end up on the same team (the only possible exception to this is parents of small children, we're not going to break up a family). Therefore, if you and your partner bring a single prop, it is likely that only one of you will get to use it. Please decide who gets to use the prop before you get to the party. You may want to each bring your own item.
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What we learned:
1) If guests need to prepare something for the party, and this preparation involves teamwork, it’s better to assign teams before the party. Especially if there will be guests in attendance who don’t know each other. One of my friends, who was 7 months pregnant at the time, asked if she could be on the same team as her husband Just In Case something happened. I was already planning on putting them on the same team, and assured her I would not split them up. She then asked if I would let her know who else would be on her team, so she could start planning. So, I sent each team an email listing their respective teammates and reiterating the party rules - this allowed the team members to get to know each other briefly ahead of time, as well as to discuss decorating ideas. If I ever do this type of party again, (which I will), I will defiantly assign teams as soon as is possible. One difficulty to this, however, is that you have to have a pretty good idea of who will be attending before teams can be assigned, since you’ll likely want the teams to be even. So perhaps a good rule of thumb is to have teams finalized by one week to ten days prior to the party - that should offer adequate planning time as well as a near-finalized guest list.
2) Evite rocks. I’ve used Evite for other parties, but for this one it was very useful for both myself and the guests. With Evite, we could easily see who would be attending the festivities, as well as other guests’ email addresses so my friends could chat amongst themselves. (No, I am not sponsored by Evite, I promise.)
3) Post Halloween sales also rock. One friend brought an ENORMOUS amount of decorations, which she had acquired at numerous post-Halloween liquidation sales. She brought almost as many decorations with her as I had displayed. Im-press-I’ve.
4) Never underestimate the decorating power of old sheets and clothes. One can stuff old clothes to make horribly killed or disfigured dummies. Sheets can be stained with blood, or torn, or made into ghosts.
5) Martini has no use for ghosts. Our ferocious puppy, who is friendly to all creatures and curious about everything, does not like Big White Ghosts one bit. She doesn’t trust ‘em, and lets them know they better not come into her yard, or try anything funny, or else they’ll be very sorry. She doesn’t even like seeing them hanging out in yards across the street or down the block. Martini didn’t mind seeing mommy and daddy dressed up like zombies with skeleton face-paint, or seeing other guests in various masks, wigs, capes, jump-suits, etc., but she draws the line at ghosts. So we know that if your ordinary, every day crazy stumbles across our house she’ll welcome them with open paws, but if they happen to dress as a ghost then they’d better Watch Out.
6) As a host, you can participate in the decorating. My husband and I didn’t, and instead took the time to sit for a few minutes and answer questions. However, unlike the murder mystery and road rally type parties, we didn’t need to monitor the activity as closely. So - it’s really up to you, but if you want to participate, then in my opinion you certainly can. If you are co-hosting with another person then you likely want to be on different teams, so no one can accuse you of any impropriety.
Feedback:
One of our guests, who was a friend of a friend, said this party was the best Halloween party she’d ever been to. Before the decorating began a few members of the competing teams could be heard egging each other on - I think the winning team might even have done a pre-decorating cheer. This event really brought out some people’s competitive natures. I think the idea of a contest helped to build up excitement for the party, which hopefully contributed to everyone’s fun. Also, I received several compliments for my decorating (I put up decorations in the areas of the house that were not used in the game). Note, it took me two weeks to decorate for the party - because, as I said, I’ve amassed quite a few items and also because I am extremely anal retentive when it comes to Halloween prop placement. I likewise tend to pay a lot of attention to detail. For example, since we were dressed as the living dead I decided to post an obituary for our ‘former selves,’ including an ‘old’ black and white picture of us (in costume but without make-up) when were ‘alive.’ A friend (who throws many, many parties himself) commented on this decoration and wondered if I went as all-out for Christmas (answer: sometimes, depends on who’s coming over). Several guests liked the small haunted village display, and of course my husband’s scary sounds and music CDs added to the atmosphere. My goal with any Halloween party is to offer guests an evening of fun in an out-of-the-ordinary setting; this year I think we were able to do so.
Next year there will probably be at least 2 babies in attendance, so I am already looking forward to planning for Halloween 2005, and tailoring the event to a multi-generational audience.
2005 party
Theme: Luck & Fortune
Location: Our home
Costume: Samara from The Ring (me), A Gentleman from BtVS: Hush (husband)
I’m not exactly sure how I came up with the idea for a trivia game. It was something I was tossing around in my head, along with a few other ideas for this year’s party. Let me tell you, conceiving a trivia game is more difficult than it sounds. But more about that in a few minutes.
This year our party started with a grand entrance. Guests were met at the front door by two signs, one at the front door declaring to enter around the side of the house and a second pointing to the side gate saying “this way for horror.” My sister with a fine arts degree drew the “this way for horror” sign - a cloaked skeleton pointing a bony finger towards the gate. It looked far cooler than anything I could have done. At the gate we had a skull on a spike in the ground – the skull flashed on & off (until later in the evening when my battery died). On the gate itself was a hanging skeleton with bat wings holding a welcome sign. It was decked out in orange and purple lights.
I opened the gate and guests walked by my husband who was hiding in the dog run. He’d jump up and bang a chain against the chain link side of the dog run and yell. Then they’d walk by a hanging skeleton (and a strobe light) who said things like “hey! Nice costume!” and a few feet later a ghoul under a black light that moaned spookily. Then, as they passed the corner of the deck, two of my (freezing cold) sisters would jump up and yell “boo!” (and then usually giggle afterwards). Finally the last thing guests saw before they entered the house was a small stone well in the middle of the yard with another ‘Samara’ (dummy) crawling out of it. She was lit up by a second strobe light and accented by a fog machine. On the patio were several dog bones displayed for creepy effect. Guests then entered the house through the back door.
In the house was a display of various fortune-telling mechanisms. I had a bag of runes, an abbreviated tarot deck (only 13 specifically selected cards), a numerology packet, a small book and flyer on palm-reading, and a book on astrology and a book on relationships (a combination of astrology and numerology). I had displays for the runes and tarot cards explaining how to perform readings. This was obviously the ‘fortune’ part of the party’s theme.
I also had two other small displays which were important for the ‘luck’ part of the evening later on. One display listed 4 other festivals around the world similar to Halloween, and one listed the top 10 phobias as listed on The Phobia Website (#1, arachnophobia; #10, necrophobia).
‘Luck’ was a trivia game testing Halloween and horror movie knowledge. We played ‘Family Feud’ style with everyone divided into 2 teams. One member of each team would come forward and we’d read a question – the team members would clap if they thought they knew the answer. The first person who clapped got to give their answer – if they were correct the question went to their team (usually each question had about 5 correct answers). If the first team gave 3 incorrect responses, the other team got the chance to steal the points for the question. Make sense? A couple of sample questions were: “Name a well-known actor, living or dead, who is famous primarily for playing the role of a monster or creature in American or UK horror movies” and “Name typical characteristics of a haunted house.” Almost all of the answers came from web searches, and credit was given to the appropriate websites when the questions were read.
The losing team received “death” – a bag of ghostie peeps and skeleton rings, skeleton hanging decorations, and skeleton erasers. The winning team received a bag of “fabulous prizes” – for the most part very cheap Halloween costume pieces like funny-looking glasses and temporary tattoos. The winning team also got the chance to add some candy to their pot by having 2 people try to guess the answers to a final set of 10 multiple choice questions.
Overall feedback:
We had a mixed crowd at this party, including some friends we had not seen for several years. We also had the misfortune of holding our party at exactly the same time as Game 1 of the North American Series (as one friend pointed out, the game hardly represents the world). One of our home teams was playing. So we had to have the game on for the first couple hours of the party but oh well, it made some of the guests happy and I survived. This was also our first at-home Halloween party featuring a (friend’s) baby.
We noticed much alcohol was consumed, which we are assuming indicates a good time was had by several. Guests cheered on each other during the trivia game, and one guest commented even the awarded “death” seemed pretty cool. All of our guests got along well, including the baby and the dog, and we had some fairly creative costumes. Our home decorations received several compliments. We noticed a few people reading each other’s palms, and others reading through the numerology packets. The party itself was called “fun” and “awesome” but – since our friends and family are all very nice people – I believe they would have said the same thing if the party had been boring and horrible.
What we learned:
1) If you are going to do a grand entrance, be a little more organized about it. Possibly hire actors. I think maybe one group of people actually went through the full effect of the grand entrance. Otherwise we were plagued with things like motion-sensors not tripping, ‘performers’ not being in place, etc. If we ever do it again, we will get many people in the house first, then take a big group through the walk together, giving the performers time to get in place and also allowing a guide to go ahead and make sure the sensors got tripped. I think people appreciated the effort, but overall it was incredibly chaotic and stressful for the hosts. I did like the idea of a walk a lot and think we will do it again, it will just be done a little differently.
2) Be ready an hour before the party. We are ALWAYS ready early. Last year we spent almost 2 full hours sitting around waiting for guests to arrive. This year folks were either early or exactly on time. This also contributed to chaos. I am going to strongly consider hiring caterers for the next party.
3) If you want something done right, or in a way that remotely makes sense, do it yourself. That may sound bitter, but it’s all I’m (we’re) saying.
4) One of these years, we’ll wear costumes that don’t require a lot of make-up. It adds a lot to preparation time. But everyone said we looked good, even those who were unfamiliar with both The Ring and Buffy and who just thought we were ‘the dead couple.’
5) Details matter. I think I mentioned this last year, but people really notice the details in my decorating. I can’t tell you how happy that makes me – it also makes the 3 weeks of decorating and re-decorating worth it.
6) Have several garbarges. Especially if you have candy with wrappers. People will want to throw things away and it’s a good idea to have a garbage near the cauldron of candy.
7) You can have a party a week after you return from vacation. Just be prepared to spend every night of the week before the party cleaning or doing something else to prepare. Have a lot of lists. Be prepared and you can do it.
8) Next year, I think the winning team is going to be awarded a "pot." Buying prizes is fricking expensive. So I think even if we have the party at home next year we will have guests contribute $5 or something to the reward, and then the winning team can split the money.
2006 party
Theme: Movie night and costume party
Location: Our home
Costume: Jack Skellington, Sally Skellington, baby skeleton (first family costume)
In August 2006, our lovely daughter Emily was born. When I saw her second ultrasound pics I decided for Halloween she was going to be a little baby skeleton. She was adorable.
Earlier in the day, we went to a friend’s children’s Halloween party (yes two parties in one day!). For that party, Em dressed up as a pink kitty. For a little while she wore cowboy boots and was ‘puss in boots.’ For a little while she carried a pink and black whip and was ‘kitten with a whip.’
Since almost all of my time was taken up with my new baby girl, we did an extremely laid back party – basically potluck food and Halloween movies. We also had a costume contest, complete with prizes (Halloween themed books). Someone voted for my costume, even though I had declared myself ineligible. The first place winner was whatever cave from Holy Grail houses the rabid rabbit. Yes, he was the cave – he covered himself in a gray blanket and held a bloody bunny doll.
Although this was not the most original or craziest party ever, I was so happy that friends came out to share the evening with us anyway.
2007 party
The Mad Tea Party
Theme: Alice in Wonderland; Road Rally
Costumes: Alice, Mad Hatter, White Rabbit (note the White Rabbit was complete with pocket watch)
This year we did another road rally/scavenger hunt. The theme was that each team had to collect items that Alice needed in order to get back home.
Since I dislike the idea of having more than team search for the exact same things at the exact same time, I put the clues in a different order for each team (we had 3 this year). Clues were at a mix of on-site locations in our house and yard, and locations around our town. Given how incredibly busy I was in the weeks leading up to the party, I had to rely on my husband for a lot of help this year, and did not get to vet the clues as thoroughly as I might have liked to have done.
For the 'around the town' portion of the game, teams were given hand drawn maps to follow. Each guest had been instructed to bring a digital camera with them in order to take pictures of some clues. We tried to word each clue so that it kept with the 'Alice' theme. In addition to the basic rally, teams were given the ability to earn extra points by completing 5 trivia questions.
Following is our introductory text:
Alice visits wonderland but on Halloween – so it’s a scary place of vampires and frights in addition to the normal wonderland delights. Alice must not only find her way through wonderland but also survive if she is going to make it back home before dawn.
For the 'at home' tasks, guests had to identity a piece of music ("White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane), find an 'Eat me' card hidden in the back yard under an Alice-In-Wonderland flagstone, and could opt to take their own 'mad tea party' pic.
For the 'around town' tasks teams had perform tasks such as photographing themselves standing by a clock before midnight, getting a picture of themselves by a couple local landmarks, providing Alice with a straw lest she need to drink anything, and also finding a 'red queen.' Here we were being quite clever - the 'red queen' = the (red building) Dairy Queen in town. Two teams got it, one had no clue (I am so punny!!!)
In case you want to use them, here were the extra points trivia questions and their answers:
Additional Bonus Points Questions
1. Who wrote “Alice in Wonderland” – 2 pts for pen name, 5 points for real name. (2 pts – Lewis Carroll) (5pts - Charles Lutwidge Dodgson)
2. Your hostess is very fond of jabberwocky since part of the poem contains her name. 10 points if you can quote jabberwocky from “Twas Brillig . . . .” up through the end of the line containing your hostess' name [Unfortunately, hostess' sisters have an unfair advantage with this one]
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.'
3. Fill in the blanks for the name of this video game: “_______________ ________’s Alice”
(American McGee’s Alice)
4. How tall, exactly, is the hookah-smoking caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland? (3 inches)
5. In what year was Through the Looking Glass first published? (1871)
Overall feedback and What we learned
1. Due to necessity, we Kept It Simple, Stupid. I literally Did Not Have Time to over think this one. The simplicity was nice I think - both for the guests and for the planner. Unfortunately, though, I have this nagging feeling that I did not do enough preparation but - eh - what's done is done.
2. If you have a nagging feeling a clue isn't a good idea . . . . it might not be. See #3 for more details.
3. The police in our small town are pretty friendly. Yes, the police. Our town has a nuke plant . . . one of the planners thought it would be fun to have people get a photo of themselves in front of the nuke plant. I think this was the one clue we did not even attempt to tie in with the Wonderland theme . . . we said "go take a picture of your team in front of the nuke plant" and on the map we wrote NUKE PLANT and drew twin cooling towers. We figured the location was wondrous enough on its own, we didn't need to mention Alice or any mutant talking animals. Well, can you imagine how small town police react to several cars speeding towards the nuke plant at night? Yeah. The fact that our friends were not arrested is amazing. The fact that our friends are still friends with us is more amazing. The fact that our friends came back to the party and laughed their butts off over ALMOST being arrested is just . . . priceless.
4. The kids in our general group of friends are at an age where they should have sitters for an evening party. Which means I'm still not exactly sure what I'm going to do for a party for this year. I was hoping to get parents to leave their kids with me while they went on the rally but - every family is different.
5. Remember to tell people to bring flashlights! Dummy! Read your own rules.
6. It is darn near impossible to find an Alice costume that is not intended to allow you to flaunt your inner stripper. Nothing against inner strippers, but that was not the look I wanted to present in photos with my baby girl. It took about a dozen (I'm not exaggerating) web searches to finally find a 'storybook Alice.' Stripper mad hatter is popular too, which is just strange.
7. Have more dessert. We seemed to have too much 'real' food, not enough dessert. Or maybe folks just expect to eat junk on Halloween.
8. Sometimes, the best party moments are those that are completely unexpected. See again #3.
9. Our prize this year was baked goods, which was much less expensive than previous year prizes. Folks still seemed happy to win. Good to know.
Overall, a fun party, and the theme really helped me tie things together. Being short on time meant I could not invest as much random creativity into this party as I've done in the past, but the theme took care of some things for me. It was nice to have such a broad theme too like 'Wonderland' - we had some trippy images playing on our TV at home which fit in well enough. It also held our little 1 year old captivated too. And finally, we won Major Points with a few people for having a little White Rabbit to take around trick or treating. We did not wear our complimentary costumes when we took her out so she looked a little out of context, but when we saw a couple folks 'get it' - including one girl who must have been about 14 - their faces lit up as they said 'that costume is so cool!' I know I'm bragging but - she's my daughter - I'm allowed.