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halloween greetings, originally uploaded by Boju.

Unlike a Haunted House, where the decor is the event, when decorating a Halloween party you’ve got the added challenge of needing to set up the normal party places – a bar, a dance floor, a buffet, social space, bathrooms, but give them a twisted edge. Here are some tips for decorating a killer Halloween party or event, and where to find the supplies.

1. Decorating a Halloween Bar.
Mad science just works in the bar. Set up black lights or black light spotlights around your bar area. Stock up on tonic water. Tonic water contains quinine which is naturally black light responsive. So gin and tonic is going to glow like radioactive spider venom. Add some small bits of dry ice to get it fully foamy. Brown liquors and wine can be dyed red with food coloring to look like blood. Add vintage labels for effect. Serve drinks in laboratory glassware. Spice up the booze bottle collection by adding assorted specimen jars.
Laboratory glassware is available for rent here anf for sale here
Specimen Jars are available for rental here and for sale here
Oh and one more thing Skull Beer Bong!

2. The Dance Floor.
All the best Halloween parties have a dance floor. The biggest thing you’ll need is just a large space where people can dance without running into things. That leaves props for either high above them, or on stage. For hanging props nothing is more impressive than a hanging skeleton cage or gibbet, especially hung from a lamp as a chandelier or in the cross beams of some spotlights. Either way your going to get great creepy shadows. BJ Winslow.com in Los Angeles rents gibbets that are life size but made of light weight plastic that can be hung anywhere. For the stage a great backdrop can really set the mood. The backdrop should be large and colorful enough to stand out. If your performer is a DJ or keyboardist, a casket is a great prop to set up their turntable or keyboard in. Smoke machines are important to dance floors year round. For added creepiness, try getting your fog cold so it clings to the floor like cemetery mist. Avoid low lying fog machines with small chill chambers. The best fog chillers have a refrigerator cooling element built in. A budget version is to feed the fog machine into a cooler filled with ice or dry ice and a small fan to push it along.

3. The Halloween Buffet.
Great Halloween buffets make people think twice about eating the meat. Try setting up your kitchen as a Cannibals Meat Locker and mix severed heads and skinned bodies in with your cold cuts and melon balls. Autopsy bodies make great cake pans Drizzle deserts with delicious Butterscotch blood Shape both deserts and dips into human organs with Body part molds After all, you are what you eat! For snacks, use leech jars as cookie jars.

4. Halloween Party Social Space.
Nothing helps people relax more than torture gear. Get a couple of electric chairs set up for people to sit in, maybe a stocks, and plenty of safety weapons so people can wail on each other while they chat. Plant a few decoy corpses in the space to encourage people to congregate there. People can also sit on autopsy tables, wheelchairs and hospital beds, but not caskets. Casket lids aren’t designed to take the weight and will break.

5. Smokers lounge.
Where there’s smoke there’s fire, and where there’s fire, theirs Hell. Make the smokers lounge a lair of fire and brimstone with smoke machines, candles, and randomly flickering orange and red lights Add some devil props and your Halloween Party is smokin’!

6. The Bathroom.
Bathrooms are fun because they’re an opportunity to get people alone, so a nice horrific scare can be really effective here. They’re also great because glass, tile, and porcelain surfaces are hard to stain, so get as bloody as you want. Dry ice is activated by water, so try hiding some in the toilet reservoir.