Halloween Party Ideas – 61 Spooky Ideas for Halloween

Halloween is a great time to exercise large amounts of creativity to make the season special. With so many creative ways to celebrate, there are endless Halloween party ideas for every age.

A Halloween party is for people of all ages and can be enjoyable for anyone. From crafts, decorations, music, and treats, there is sure to be something new at each event.

1. Ornate Candle Holders for a Spooky Feel

Halloween is a time for spooky decorations and all things unusual. Old candelabras with dripping taper candles, black metal bird cages or square lanterns are ideal for this purpose. They can be used season after season and the older and more burned down the candle gets, the more it adds to the effect.

2. Tiny Treat Pinatas for Gift Bags

Create unique and individual gift bags for candy and other treats by creating individual paper mache pinatas. Stretch out a balloon or use a plastic egg to create the shell of paper, fill it with candy or treats, and then remove the balloon by popping it or take out the egg and glue the shell together.

3. Halloween Tablecloth and Place Settings

Decorate your table for the holiday with a Halloween table cloth, bats and pumpkins, black or silver plates (paper or plastic is fine) and use bat napkin holders for an added touch.

4. Fun Baked Goods

There is almost no end to fun baked goods for a party. Top cupcakes with fondant or other strips to make mummies, decorate them like jack o lanterns, or place small decorations on top.

5. Halloween Themed Finger Foods

Mummy hot dogs, carrot sticks shaped like fingers, and cheese balls with jack o lantern faces are just some of the Halloween party ideas for finger foods. They are easy to eat and don’t require fully made tables or sit down meals.

6. Jack o Lanterns

Pain, carve, or make jack o lantern decorations to place everywhere. Paper garlands can be cut in these shapes, balloons can be drawn on, and even placemats can be made to look like these Halloween staples.

7. Reusable Jack o Lantern Decorations

Plastic pumpkins can be painted or decorated with stickers and reused year after year. When planning your next Halloween party ideas, you can already have a collection of ready to use decorations.

8. Use Bats to Decorate

Bats are a wonderful way to add some variety to decorations. Their ability to fly allows them to be easily used to decorate higher spaces, to place in corners or above doors.

9. Fake Spider Web Decoration

Fake spider webs are a very traditional Halloween decoration that will be expected at a party that time of year. Make them unique by using black string to create large webs under stairs or in unused corners, make them from food or place them across snack bowls to reach through.

10. Spider Web Cotton Candy

Cotton candy is a versatile treat that is spun much like a web. Use it to decorate cupcakes or other snacks, adding in other treats to the web for colour.

11. Cookie Decorating

Set up a cookie decorating center for both children and adults. Everyone can enjoy a tasty treat they designed themselves, and add a fun contest for adults to boost the fun.

12. Alternative Candy Apples

Traditional candy apples are expected, but you can swap them out for a unique option instead. Use black food colouring or a toffee coating instead of the shiny candy coating for a twist on the expected.

13. Halloween Theme Drinks

Another of our top Halloween party ideas is to theme your food and drinks, Make your drinks themed with dry ice, mason jars, and food colouring. The options are endless.

14. Scavenger Hunt

Entertain guests of any age with a scavenger hunt. Have them take photos of their finds, create a scavenger hunt bingo, or leave items out to be found and brought back.

15. Mystery Solving Game

Murder mysteries are a fun addition to any adult gathering, and you can add your own twist or make it suitable for children by changing it to a mystery. Perhaps a pumpkin has gone missing, or all the candy is stolen.

16. Pet Costume Parade

Dress up your pets and parade them down the sidewalk for a fun lead up to the evening of trick or treating. A pet costume contest can add a new aspect to a costume party, even having guest bring photos of their pets dressed up for those who have birds, reptiles, or small animals that can’t be taken out of the house.

17. Photo Booth

Set up a photo both with props, a theme, and a spooky backdrop for beautiful images of your guests.

18. Bread Monster Fingers

Rolling bread dough and decorating with seeds, food colouring, and fingernail of dough or other treat, can create monster fingers served in a mason jar.

19. Create a Garland with Candy Corn

If you have an abundance of candy corn, string it with a needle and thread for a unique garland.

20. Host a Halloween Carnival

Go all out with a fun Halloween carnival. Have apple bobbing, spooky games, treats and costumes for a fun fall afternoon.

21. Halloween Bounce House

An all time party favorite, hire a bounce house and decorate with Halloween balloons and decor for fun the kids will love.

22. Potion for Drinks

Set up an Italian soda station or snow cone section, coffee bar, or bubbly water center, so people can choose their own colours and flavours, making their own potions.

23. Ticket Invitations

Upgrade your invitations by making them look like tickets. It will make your party the event not to be missed.

24. Halloween Tree

If you can’t wait to get your Christmas tree up, then why not start early and decorate a Halloween Tree.

25. Pumpkin Bean Bag Toss

Spice up a bean bag toss by using plastic pumpkins or carved pumpkins to throw in the bean bags (black bean bags made from cloth or sand filled balloons can have pipe cleaner legs added for spider bean bags)

26. Choose a Halloween Theme

Theme your Halloween party around a popular theme, like Sally Skellington or the Adams Family.

27. Gloves for Candy/Treat Bags

Use winter gloves or dress gloves and fill them with candy for a special treat bag.

28. Large Bat Decorations for Webs

Create large bats from cloth or paper to put in the large fake webs for an added surprise.

29. Make Paranormal Portraits

Print off some black and white images and place red LED behind them, either for the eyes or put pinholes in the eyes to let the light through. Editing some images to be blanched of colour but have red or glowing eyes can also be effective.

30. Skeleton Decorations

Skeletons are a very traditional and very expected decoration, with several choices. A glow in the dark version, a full size one behind a door, or tiny skeletons on the table cloth are all sure to please.

31. Shape Ice Cubes into Spiders

Spider ice cube trays can make a special surprise for the drinks of your friends and making them with black food colouring or with cola will surprise everyone.

32. Set up a Trunk or Treat

Another fun Halloween party idea is a Trunk or Treat party. Set up the trunk of your car and get together with your neighbours for a fun trunk or treat event. We love this Candy Land trunk or treat kit.

33. Charades

Charades is a great game to bring people together and make memories. Use a Halloween theme to fit perfectly with the rest of the party.

34. Creepy Glassware

Choose your drinkware to make an impression. Goblets with a monster hand holding the cup, mason jars with stickers, pumpkin shaped cups, and many others will add an extra detail to the experience.

35. Large Pumpkin Pinata

Create a large pinata shaped like a pumpkin and take turns hitting it to release all the candy that it can hold.

36. Slime Making Station

People of all ages can enjoy slime, whether as a prop, a prank, or just to hold. Set up a basic slime and allow guests to add their choice of colour, glitter, and small theme related items.

37. Placemats Shaped like Spiderwebs

Add a touch of fun to place settings with spiderweb shaped placemats. This also works with pumpkin shapes, spiders for hot plates, and more.

38. Spiderweb of Snacks

Use sticky fake spider webs, run black elastic to create a web in a corner or on shelves, and stick wrapped candies and small bags of chips or others either directly to the sticky web or with clothes pins to elastic.

39. Cauldron of Smoking Drinks

A black bowl on a bed of shredded red, orange, and blue tissue paper, with dry ice underneath or in the bottom, will create a smoking cauldron to hold your favourite punch mix.

40. Black Thread Spider Web

Decorations can be very difficult but using black thread to create spider webs adds flexibility and originality. Embroidery or sewing thread can be sewed into a spiderweb patter, or white thread on a black pillow, tablecloth, or strung between the spindles on tables and stairs.

41. Haunted Bar Cart

Fill a rolling cart with drink choices or snacks, covered with a table cloth, and add a moving toy beneath to move the cloth (or sheet). Use a length of fishing line to pull it invisibly across the space for an extra fright.

42. Chair Covers for Haunted Look

Cover furniture with white or slightly yellowed sheets to make the space look abandoned and haunted.

43. Create a spooky front door

Halloween front door decorations are a great way to get your Halloween party started. We love this simple but effective idea of creating a mummy door.

44. Shadow Box Halloween Animal Display

Place small plastic spiders, rubber rats, or other painted toy bugs into shadow boxes or deep picture frames. Include notes about them as though they are real and display as a museum would for a spooky display sure to please.

45. Pretty Halloween Colors

If you are a bit over black, orange and purple, then add some pretty pink pastels to your Halloween styling for a lighter take on the color scheme.

46. Pin the Nose on the Pumpkin

Grab the full game or a large poster of a pumpkin or jack o lantern, then use pins through a paper nose to play pin the nose on the pumpkin.

47. Halloween Based Shots and Drinks

Make your drinks fit the theme! Monster blood shots of green or orange, add grenadine to a clear or light drink to create the appearance of blood, use dry ice for a smoking affect. Pumpkin flavours, unusual colours, and the glasses they are served in will make all the difference.

48. Decorated Cupcakes

Set out decorated cupcakes that fit your theme for people to enjoy without the hassle of a cake. A cupcake cake can even be created in the shape of a bat, pumpkin, jack o lantern, or each cupcake can have a Halloween topper. Flavours can be changed to match as well, candy apple, pumpkin spice, and cider are all great choices.

49. Decorate the Mailbox

Let the decorations spread to the outside by decorating your mailbox. Make it a spooky mailbox for a vampire home, a fun monster mailbox for a kid’s party, or any other style that fits your theme and age group.

50. Line the Walkway with Fences or Graves

Line your walkway with small fences and keep off the grass signs to guide people to the door. Add lighting for effect and safety or beware signs to scare unwanted guests away

51. Decorate your trees

Give your guests Halloween vibes as soon as they arrive with these fun tree ghost wraps from Amazon. Ghost Wrap, $25.99 from Amazon.

52. Pretty Pumpkins

If you want to go for a softer look then go for pumpkins in shades of white and orange and mix and match with pretty tableware.

53. Personalized Grave Decorations

Use cardboard (cereal boxes are a great source) or other materials to make grave stones for your guests, or pets, etc, and space them around the yard to make your yard a spooky adventure or a fun game to read all the silly names.

54. Candy Bar

Use themed cups or bowls, plastic cauldrons, or even plastic bins and small scoops to create a candy bar. People can stop by any time for their favourite treat.

55. Bat Donuts

Buy ready made chocolate donuts, or make your own, and add wings of candy, or use additional donuts to create wings. There are many options on how to make great donut treats, and donut holes make a great bat or spider as well.

56. Halloween Thumb Print Cookies

Get the kids involved with the prep to make these cute thumbprint cookies for Halloween.

57. Broom Candy Bags

Use paper from paper bags or other brown paper, fold in half and cut up the middle into strips without detaching them all the way, then shape them into a bag, fill with candy, and tie around a short stick to look like a broom. Use these to fill your candy table or to pass out to trick or treaters.

58. Cheesecloth Drapery

Cheesecloth can be used to replace curtains, to hang from doorways, and even to cover furniture as a way to create the appearance of old and worn drapery.

59. Cauldron Bread Bowl for Dips

Turn dinner buns into tiny bread bowls, add small feet from dough or gumballs, and fill with dip for individuals, or create one large bread bowl for guests to share. They can dip in vegetables or the bowl itself.

60. Halloween Bingo

Create a game card for each guest, and list Halloween terms, ideas, and animals to call out to guests and let them fill their bingo card.

61. Host a Halloween Picnic

A picnic is often an idea that is overlooked for Halloween. A Halloween picnic is the perfect family friendly Halloween party idea. Make it a spooky games night for added fun.

Halloween Party Ideas Final Note

We hope you love these Halloween party ideas as much as we do. There are so many fun ideas for a Halloween party, from cute Halloween decorations for little children, to terrifying party activities for older teens. Whichever you go for, be sure to have a fabulous Halloween party.

About Author

Jane Sheriff is the founder, creative director, party planner and mom of three. She started Darling Celebrations back in 2012 to share easy and beautiful ideas for celebrating the special events in life.