Black out the windows, dim the lights and get the atmosphere as spooky as possible. There are shops around that seem to exist solely to provide decorations for Halloween – just how joke shops selling plastic creepy crawlies, fake skulls and spider web spray survive for the rest of the year is a mystery, but every town seems to have one.
With an investment of about £20 and a bit of imagination you can convert your living room, or a room of a pub, into a ghoulish dungeon or vampire’s castle.
Buy some pumpkins (or a more exotic variety of squash if you’re a Waitrose kind of person), cut holes around their stalks and scoop their insides out. With a sharp knife cut some eyes and a jaggedy mouth. Chuck in a tea light, and you’ll have a perfect old-fashioned freaky pumpkin head.
Pure horror show, of course. Plenty of black and lots of fake blood. The less adventurous can go for the lazy option of a sheet with eyes cut out of it. The more expansive can plaster on theatrical make-up to create the appearance of a hideous zombie – a look that will be achieved by most party-goers the following morning without the aid of cosmetics.
To make sure that everyone takes part, offer a prize to scariest outfit and a very messy forfeit for the lamest.
If you want things to get a little bit edgy, make masks a requirement. There’s nothing like a little bit of anonymity to spice up a party.
Apple bobbing is the classic Halloween game. It’s simple to set up. Fill a large bucket or deep bowl with water and drop some apples in. Contestants have to pull out all the apples in the fastest possible time. For a more extreme version, follow the apples in water with sweets hidden in a bowl of flour, followed by chocolates hidden in beaten egg, followed by coins buried in cocoa powder. Set up a couple of teams in relay. Give the winners a prize. And a shower.
Another game, designed to shake the more squeamish party goers - Gather some nasty objects together. The more they feel like human body parts, the better – peeled grapes, cold spaghetti, cold porridge, raw meat, lychees. Blindfold a guest and make him or her handle the objects and guess what they are. Get everyone else to help create an atmosphere by sounding as disgusted and ill as possible.
To really spook people, turn the lights right down and take it in turns to tell ghost stories. Point a torch at your face while you’re talking. Yikes.
Plenty of blood and gore – lovely rare steaks, racks of sticky ribs and anything involving lashings of tomato sauce.
To make pumpkin soup from the insides of your ghoulish pumpkin heads:
Boil the insides of the pumpkin until tender.
Gently fry a chopped onion and a couple of cloves of garlic until soft. Add the pumpkin.
Whizz the mixture up with a little bit of single cream and some vegetable stock.
Shake in some ground cumin and some black pepper.
The more it looks like blood, the better. Appropriately blood-red cocktails include the sea breeze (vodka, cranberry juice and grapefruit juice) and the bloodhound (gin, dry vermouth, sweet vermouth and crushed strawberries. And, of course, the classic: Bloody Mary.
Bloody Mary (serves 1)
A shot of vodka
200ml of tomato juice
A dash of Tabasco
A dash of Worcester sauce
A sprinkle of celery salts
Pour ingredients into a shaker and add ice. Shake, then strain into a glass filled with ice. Add salt and pepper to taste. Squeeze a wedge of lime over, and serve.
A non-alcoholic option is good, old-fashioned Ribena.
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| 1. | Monster Mash / Bobby "Boris" Pickett & The Crypt-Kickers |
| 2. | Bat Out of Hell / Meat Loaf |
| 3. | Thriller / Michael Jackson |
| 4. | Lullaby / The Cure |
| 5. | Eyeball in My Martini / The Cramps
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| 6. | She Sells Sanctuary / The Cult |
| 7. | Where the Wild Roses Grow / Nick Cave |
| 8. | Strange House / The Horrors |
| 9. | Come to Daddy / Aphex Twin |
| 10. | Hammer Horror / Kate Bush |
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