Outdoor Decor: Halloween Party Ideas for Adults

If you’re going to leave your lights on remove the regular bulbs from your outside lights, porch lights or driveway lights and replace them with red or purple lights. For more ideas on how to light an adult party, check out our article on Lighting Ideas for Halloween Decorations.

To add some serious spookiness to your home, strategically place a Halloween Strobe Light in front of your most gruesome Halloween party decorations and set the strobe speed to your desired effect. Set the strobe light to slow if you want to highlight your scary display or set it to fast to really pump up the vibe on your Halloween display. You’ll also want to set up a couple of fog machines around your yard.

If you have a long walkway to the front door, you can line the path with some creative Halloween bags. Just take paper bags, cut them out with a spooky scene or scary Halloween sayings and add a light inside the bag so the scene will shine through. For safety, useflameless tealights, which can burn for up to 12 hours on one charge.

Setting Up a Halloween Graveyard
Nothing says a spooky adult Halloween party decoration like tombstones. To create tombstones, simply purchase large pieces of Styrofoam, paint them black and cut them into tombstone shape in several sizes. Once the tombstones have been shaped to your liking, carve RIP and names into each tombstone (or whatever creepy saying you want) and paint the words with glow-in-the-dark-paint. For more tombstone ideas including some clever quotes for tombstones, see our article How to Make a Tombstone.

After you stake your tombstone Halloween party decorations into the ground, up-light them with a spotlight or black light and add a fog machine. Place a black plastic trash bag in front of the tombstone, cover it with some dirt and shape it into a mound in front of the tombstone so the grave will look fresh. Throw down some leaves and some fake bones and you’ve got yourself a real graveyard. Tip:Make sure you place the plastic trash bag down before adding the dirt so the dirt will be easy to remove after Halloween has passed.

If you want to kick up the spooky factor a bit, create a one-of-a kind graveyard by adding some graves and characters to your tombstone decorations. Create graves by strategically placing dirt mounds around your yard, and then add a couple of animated Halloween zombies. You can also purchase packs of faux human bones, some spiders, broken-down looking lanterns and shredded clothes to lay around your yard – just make sure they are well lit. Stake some Halloween Skeletons in front of some of the tombstones and it will look like these spooky guys are protecting the graves! You can also set up some sound-activated animated coffins that will spook your visitors with flashing lights and crackling noises.

If you have trees in your yard and you want an ultra-scary look, get some mannequin heads, white sheets and some thin rope. Drape the white sheet over the mannequin head and tie the rope around the mannequin’s neck. Drape the rope over a tree limb and hoist the ghost up. Cut out some fluorescent scrap paper in the shape of small, round eyes and paste the eyes onto the white sheets. Add a black light to the base of the tree and you have a spooky ghost. If you don’t have time to make your own ghosts, check out our sound-activatedflying ghosts that swoop down on unsuspecting guests as they hear sound and then turn around and glide back up the included cable to reset for your next visitor. For additional ideas on what to hang in your trees, see our article on Halloween Tree Decorations.

Whew! They Made it to the Porch
When your visitors actually make it to the porch, greet them with a life-sized, Faceless Hanging Ghost strategically placed under an eave. This menacing Halloween Phantom wears tattered fabric and creates an eerie site as he holds his arms out to greet your guests.

In one area of your porch, set up some hay bales and mix in some hay and cob webs on the floor of your porch to give your entry an aged, dirty look. Add beat-up looking pumpkins, fake snakes and any old wooden pieces of furniture on your porch.

Perch some fake Halloween crows and fake owls along your banisters, on hay bales, atop old furniture or sit them on top of pumpkins. You can even add a menacing Halloween snake that will hiss, strike, and rattle his tail as someone approaches the porch.

Hang some white or cream colored thread or fishing string from the eaves of your porch (that’s almost invisible to the naked eye) so your guests will feel like they’re walking through a real web as they enter your home. Hang more cob webs in the corners above your door jamb and along the door knobs. You can even add a fake, bloody handprint to your door. Take a bottle of red children’s washable paint and put it in a paper bowl. Mix in a couple dabs of black paint to darken the red paint. Once your paint looks “bloody”, dip you hand in the paint and then touch your door. If you streak it, it will look like someone was in a real hurry to get out of your haunted abode.

Since most of your lights are probably off and the only illumination comes from up-lights and black lights, stand a realistic-looking 6-ft tall Halloween witch draped in iridescent purple clothes and holding a broom next to your door. The witch has a sculpted latex face, realistic grey hair, posable arms and will greet your visitors with flashing red eyes as she utters scary phrases.

On the door, you can create a black flower wreath. Buy a regular wreath at a craft store and either cover it with black painted flowers or dried, dead flowers and tie it the wreath hanger with a crisp black bow. Add some fake plastic spiders on the door handle and up the door to give your entry the deserted-house look. For more wreath ideas, see our DIY Halloween Wreaths article.

Nothing says Halloween like pumpkins on the porch. After you carve your pumpkin and give him a grimacing face, add a flameless tea light candle and, for an ultra spooky effect, add some rubber snakes squirming out of the pumpkins eyes. Any rubber bugs or reptiles will do, but nothing is as sinister as a snake. To finish off the front door, you can add some fake spider webs all over the windows, and anywhere else where they can be draped.

Now you’ve Halloween party decorations set up for the outside of your home, now see what you can do to make your house scream with some clever Halloween party ideas for the indoors.