Get Spooky With It

GET SPOOKY WITH IT
FROM A HOW-TO FOR HAUNTED HOUSE TO A TREAT OF A TREASURE HUNT AND OTHER FREAKY FUN, KIDS PARTY PLANNER LISA KOTHARI TELLS YOU HOW CRAFT THE PERFECT HALLOWEEN PART

How to Create a Haunted House for All Ages to Enjoy

1	Decide upon the space you want to use. This could be your yard, your home or just one area of your house, like the basement.
2	Plan your entrance and exit and think through what types of spooks and scares you want to include in your plan.
3	Get help to not only transform the haunted house, but also to participate in spooking it as well.
4	Don’t forget to add eerie lighting, scary sounds and darkness. Throw dark sheets or black garbage bags over the windows so that no light will be able to show through.
5	Replace your outside bulbs with orange bulbs. Also, have a black light bulb for your porch light if you have some glow-in-the-dark decorations hung close by.
6	If you have some leftover tiki torches from your summer parties, use those to light the path to the front door of your haunted house.
7	Hang spiderweb netting throughout that your guests will get entangled in!
8	Hang a “dead guy” in the front entrance, i.e., stuff a pair of jeans and a shirt with newspaper and use an old bleach container cut out into a face. Top with an old hat.
9	Decorate your doors to look like coffins.
10	Using large appliance boxes, you can make coffins, fake walls, crypt chambers, etc.
10	Set up a spooky dinner table and have a silver tray with a Jell-O brain mold atop or a severed hand or head. Set a monster dummy or a real person at the table about to eat the feast. Creepy!
12	Hang wet yarn from the ceiling for your guests to walk through.
13	Have bloody hands laying around. Fill surgical gloves with sand and tie them off with a rubber band. Add the effect of blood with red paint on the fingers. So creepy!
14	Spritz cold water on the guests as they enter the haunted house.
15	Use dry ice to make a boiling cauldron or for a foggy effect, but be very careful to not have the dry ice touch anyone. A better option would be a fog machine—it is a bit pricey, but you may be able to rent it out to others throughout the year.
16	Dress up your participants in scary costumes.

Ghoulish Games and Freaky Fun

Play Pass the Pumpkin: Have kids sit in a circle and pass small pumpkins and gourds to music. When the music stops, whoever isn’t holding a pumpkin is out.

Mummy Fun: Break up the kids into two teams, provide several rolls of toilet paper to both teams, and choose one person to mummify. The team to wrap the mummy in toilet paper the fastest wins!

Build a Scarecrow: Divide the kids into two teams and provide old clothes, pillowcases, newspapers and markers. Give them 20 minutes to build their scarecrow.

If older kids are attending, and you have a video camera on hand, give the kids the chance to make their own Blair Witch Project–style Halloween film. Give them five minutes to shoot the film on a Halloween topic.

Halloween Candy Hunt: Sit in a circle in the dark with only flashlights and/or glow sticks. Begin the tale of a scary story and go around the circle with each kid adding the next portion of the story until the end of the circle has been reached.

Hanging Tree:
Supplies: 13 apples (12 red and one green). You will need extras, string, a blindfold and a tree branch. Tie each of the apples to a tree so they can swing freely. To keep observant kids from memorizing where the green apple is, just loosely tie the strings together.

Take a child and tell him to close his eyes and make a wish. As he does, you blindfold him. Once blindfolded, spin him around and say this rhyme:

13 apples hanging from a tree,
12 dark red and one bright green
Blindfolded, spun around, and then set free
Is that green one meant for me?

You then release the apples and point the child in the right direction. He then will stumble about and pick an apple. If he gets the green one, his wish will come true. Before the next child goes, replace the apple and move the green one. If you want, you can place a tag with a number on each apple, then each number will correspond to a small gift or prize.

Pin the Wart on the Witch: String donuts on a clothesline, blindfold the kids and/or tie their hands behind their backs, and enjoy eating the donuts off the line.

Carve pumpkins: Older kids will love to actually carve the pumpkins and smaller kids can either use markers to draw their faces onto small pumpkins or use various candies and frosting as glue to decorate the pumpkins.

Candy Corn Guessing Game: Fill a large jar and have everyone take a guess at how many there are inside.

Slimed!: Make a green Jell-O mold and place slimy plastic spiders and other creepy crawlies inside. Have the kids reach in to find their prize!

Hold a Costume Parade.

Witchy Crafts

Make little ghosts using Tootsie Roll Pops, small little squares of old white sheets, some colorful string and a black marker for the eyes. It’s easy and festive.

Make spiders using Styrofoam balls, black spray paint and black pipe cleaners. Have the kids assemble the legs and attach a smaller ball as the head.

Tricky Treasure Hunt

Organize a Halloween Treasure Hunt:

Happy Halloween to you,
Get your glow sticks to look for the clues
Don’t get scared when the ghosts go boo!
Look under ______ for Clue #2!

Jump for glee
When you find Clue #3
Under the _____
It will be!

Are you ready to go,
Outside the front door,
Sitting on _____ is Clue #4.

To the backyard we go,
Under the ____,
Let’s all look alive
As we find Clue #5.

Clue #6 is under ______ in the front yard
Don’t worry about finding it,
It really won’t be hard!

Are you getting tired yet?

Clue #7 is under _______
Be careful when you look,
So you don’t bonk your head!

Finally, you must find the treasure itself, but first you must pass through the witches and ghosts!

Click here for everything you need to know about throwing a Halloween party.

Click here for the tasty—and terrifying—treats to serve.

Lisa Kothari is the founder and president of Peppers and Pollywogs, a kids' party-planning company that provides parents with ideas, entertainers and interesting web-based tools (customized rhymes and cards for your invitations!) to make kids' party planning easy. She has recently written and published Dear Peppers and Pollywogs…What Parents Want to Know About Planning Their Kids' Parties, which is available at www.amazon.com and www.pepperspollywogs.com.