Spooky ideas for Halloween Celebration

Celebrated on 31^st October every year, Halloween is a festival that has evolved over many centuries. It started with the ancient Celtic festival Samhain when people used to light bonfires and wear costumes in a bid to shoo away ghosts. Then in the eighth century, Pope Gregory III, assigned 1^st November to honour all the saints. As time passed, some of the traditions of Samhain and the customs of All Saints Day intermingled with each other and finally 31^st October started getting known as Halloween’s Day. During the present time, Halloween has evolved into an eventful festival which involves a lot of frolicking and fun with activities like carving jack-o-lanterns, wearing costumes, trick-or-treating and eating lots of treats. This year because of the pandemic, all of us are limited to our house and cannot go to Halloween parties or trick-or-treating, so it’s important to bring the mystery to your home.

Halloween at Home

A Halloween party always guarantees fun but at the same time it’s a lot of pressure for the host. Hosting Halloween at home requires a little attention to detail, some brilliant ideas and a flare for ghosts. If you are a fan of the scariest day of the year then you can start with some DIY home decorations which can be a lot of fun for kids as well as adults.

• You just have to collect huge dry leaves which you won’t have trouble finding during Halloween season and paint them black and display them everywhere in the house. Black leaves will add a touch of authenticity to your decoration.
• Take some brown sacks, paint R.I.P. on them and add some random dates to the bottom as written on an epitaph. Take these painted sacks and cover the dining chairs with it.
• Add googly eyes to anything and everything. Involve all the members of your house to this activity and you will definitely find some messed up creature staring at you by the end of the evening.
• Use a net cloth to give a spider-web effect to your wall, add a few black painted branches to give it an uncanny effect and add a few blotches of red paint on the net cloth to intensify the eeriness. If you do this in a corner, you can also add a painted pumpkin at the bottom resting on some stone pebbles.

Halloween at home ideas

A number of Halloween games are available in the stores; you can buy silly faces flip book or Halloween to keep the little ones as well as the adults entertained. Else you can try the following activities:

• Take a white cloth, put it over a big ball and paint three big black circles to make two eyes and a mouth to make a ghost. Display it near the entrance of your house or near your door.
• Hang some bat or skeleton cut-outs all over the house.
• Take a white chart paper and cut it into a circle. Take a black chart paper and use it to cut out shapes of eyes, nose and a mouth, use a double-sided tape to stick it on your round white chart paper and thus have a 3-D skull which you can hang anywhere in the house.
• Cut out 6-inch pieces of scary figures of your choice from a black chart paper, and string it together on a red thread and display it on your door.
• Take a red lipstick and leave daunting messages like ‘I’m coming for you’ on the mirror. You can also use coloured water and drip it all over the mirror to accentuate the effect.

Halloween activities for kids:

Kids and adults cannot resist the charm of Halloween and here are some of the activities you can try out with everyone this Halloween:

• Give carving jack-o-lanterns a twist, ask everyone to carve their pumpkins to depict their favourite actors and cartoons in case of kids. This activity will definitely end up with everyone laughing on the floor.
• Face painting is an activity that ends up in everyone looking like an idiot but it is definitely something that you cannot miss in your Halloween celebration. Give a theme to the painting contest like famous horror movies or favourite season.
• Instead of having the scariest costume competition, change the parameter to funniest costume competition. Funny costumes are essential in every Halloween celebration.
• Tell ghost stories. Sit in a circle with everyone, dim the lights and give the story-teller a candle in their hand and let the blood curdling stories begin. Or you can read excerpts of your favourite ghost books and play horror music in the background

Halloween activities at Home

• Transform the pumpkin. If you are not up for the messy carving pumpkin idea, then you can take pumpkins and transform them using paint and craft supplies. Instead of carving pumpkins, you can paint pumpkins and double those painted pumpkins as decoration. Not only is it a fun activity but also at the same time, you are getting your house ready for Halloween with the end product.
• Watch a scary movie and eat candies. Have a movie marathon with the home family.
• Instead of going trick-or-treating, you can have scavenger hunt for candies at home. Divide the people in two teams and make them run around all over the house for those candies.
• Borrow from Christmas to add mystery to your Halloween and build haunted ginger bread houses. Decorate your gingerbread with unusual motifs and bizarre figures.

Halloween is a time where you can use your creativity to make the most of your time. You can give every traditional game a ghostly twist and play it on Halloween. Blindfold the player and hand them a spider figure and ask them to pin it closest to the centre of the web and see everyone’s competitive side coming out. Bake some cookies in the shape of ghosts, bats and other disturbing shapes. Halloween is also a festival all about having fun with family. Halloween means dressing up in funny and spooky costumes, eating candies and enjoying yourself.