Put lots of fake cobwebs around the house - the more you stretch them out the more realistic they will look. Hang the fake cobweb on doorways, railings and corners . Put cobwebs on furniture that is not being used. You can decorate the cobwebs with fake plastic spiders. Sometimes you will get plastic spiders included in the cobweb package. This is the best looking and least expensive decorating idea. The spiderwebs are available at party shops during Halloween season and are very inexpensive considering how great they look and how many cobwebs one package makes. Use safety precautions around flame or electricity.

Take old sheets and wash them in dark gray clothes dye. Rinse and wash them immediately. "Tatter" the sheet edges and drape them over chairs and sofas for that "haunted house" look. Use a gray sheet as a tablecloth too. This is also a great idea for keeping your furniture covered during a party. Make sure the sheets don't run colors if you are putting them on furniture.

Helium balloons covered with old tattered sheets (same as above #2) and painted with scary faces make great ghosts to bob in the corner of the room. You can also use white trash bags over the baloons instead or just use white helium baloons. Put a piece of gray sheet or trash bag over a helium baloon and anchor the baloon, the wind moves them and seems to give them life. Draw ghostly faces on them with black a marker. Leave some with only eyes, and no mouth. You can also make use of plain white balloons with faces painted on them. Hang these together in a corner of your ceiling in groups of 3 or more.

Any room becomes a "Haunted House" when the lights are turned down. Simply use your dimmer switch or replace regular lightbulbs with lower wattage bulbs. For a real scary effect use colored light bulbs such as blue or green. Set pictures at an angle as if "ghostly fingers" have moved them.

5. Lighting:

Soft flickering lights that give the apearance of a flame are available at your local hardware store. They come with a flame like fixture in the light bulbs. Replace regular light bulbs in your lamps with flickering light bulbs. Use a low wattage bulbs. Many stores now sell strings of decorative lights with plastic figures of pumpkins or ghosts and other scary things. Place these around the house to illuminate passageways.

For a real scary Haloween look you can put up a blacklight. What is black light? If you turn on a black light bulb in a dark room, what you can see from the bulb is a purplish glow. The blacklights make things in the room glow and give a very scary effect. Costumes and masks that have glow-in-the-dark (fluorescent) properties make a great addition to your black light haunt. Black lights are available at many store's with the Halloween stuff or in hardware stores. You can buy glow in the dark paint or pens to decorate & draw signs. Painting your props with this invisible fluorescent paint will make them glow eerily under black lights enhancing there effect. Be creative, experiment in advance with things that will glow so you have evrything perfect for when your guests arrive. They get very hot so be sure to place them well out of reach of passerbys, kids and away from anything flamable. Positioning black lights - When possible the black light unit should be positioned or camoflauged so that it cannot be seen by your visitors. As with any electrical device, care must be taken to protect against electrocution and accidents.

Add a little Halloween spirit to your windows! Using the gray cloth from #2 above, make some spooky looking curtains. If you dont sew, consider decorating your windows the following way. Remember there are lots of pages that you can color on this very web site and use to decorate your house. Go to the "Coloring Pages" on this web site. Print out the pictures you like, color them and hang them up on your windows. You can also cut figures of ghosts or black cats from black construction paper to hang in your windows to look like silhouettes.

8. Music:

Don't forget to top off the mood with some Creepy scary music. Nice scary music is great at a Halloween party or just to play when the trick-or-treaters come to your home. Some kids can be scared by the commercial creepy music tapes. It's more fun to record your own sound effects to be played, plus it neutralizes the fear when kids are involved with the making of the tape. Record a series of slightly overlapping sounds, and at one point on the tape follow a few seconds of complete silence followed with a high pitched, hair raising, piercing scream. Here are some sounds to record:

9. Mad Scientist Laboratory:

10. Table setting:

Take an old white sheet (see number 3). Rip or tear or cut the bottom edge into tatters. Then get a package of spider webbing and pull out the web until it covers the whole table. Pull down the edges and hang some plastic spiders. Buy a couple of rubber rats and put them between slices of bread on a plate. Now, take a piece of poster board cut to the shape of a gravestone and write out your menu with creepy letters. Use mini tombstones made from black cardboard to create individual place settings with guests' names. Be sure to visit the "Recipe's section" on this website for great Halloween recipes. If you have a scarecrow or plastic skeleton you could but it in one of the seats.

You can make any type of centerpice for the table that looks spooky. You can make a centerpiece with an inexpensive cardboard coffin from a party store. The coffin is assembled according to instructions. This takes less than 2 minutes. Than black & gray dried flowers are placed inside. Some black ribbon tied around the flowers completes the project. You can make a simpler centerpiece by just placing small pumpkins and guards in a bowl. You could also buy some small plastic Halloween pumpkins or ghosts or even cats and place them in the bowl also. Another idea is to buy an inexpensive witch's pot from a Halloween store and use that to place your small pumpkins in. Another idea is to use your candy bowl for the trick or treaters as a centerpiece.

Purchase dry ice. It is inexpensive and lots of fun. This emits a cloud of fog in the area and moves whenever someone walks by or the wind blows. To make fog from dry-ice you simply add pieces of dry-ice to very hot water. One gallon of hot water for every 1 - 2 pounds of dry ice is one formula. The smaller the size of dry ice pieces the more fog, the higher temperature of the water the more fog. When the water temperature gets below 40° F, fog production will stop and you will need to change the water. One way to make a very simple dry-ice fog generator is to use a Crock Pot as the heating tank. This works great for placement behind a tree, headstone etc.While this method does work and will extend the time the water stays hot, the heating element in most Crock Pots are not designed to get that hot, so you will still have to replenish you hot water, although not as often. Dont put the ice in the water until it is time for your guests to arrive. The dry ice can usually be purchased locally by finding a distributer in the phone book. It is usually sold at places that freeze food. CAUTION: Be sure to read all warnings that come with your dry ice. KEEP dry ice away from children!

Don't you just love the way that flowers always brighten a room, even at Halloween? For a regular display pick out orange, yellow and brown flowers, and put them in a plastic pumpkin or similar vase. Complete the arrangement with an orange ribbon. For a real scary haloween look you can gather some dried flowers from a garden and spray them with flat black paint and than let them dry for a day. You can also purchase dried black & gray flowers from decoration shops at this time of the year. You will need a vase to put the floweers in. If you have a black vase use that, if not make your own. You couldd use a rusty old can if you can find one. Or you can buy an inexpensive witch's pot from a Halloween store and use that to place your flowers in. If you have a plastic skull that would look good also. Be creative, the idea is to have it look tacky & spooky.

Giving Out Treats? Find something cool to put your treat's in. Cardboard coffins, spider webbed baskets or fake plastic skulls are great and inexpensive. Some fast food restaurants give out free plastic pumpkins at halloweeen time. Put your treats inside a witch's cauldron with a green emergency light stick inside or any battery powered light. You'll have to reach your hand into a glowing, green skull in order to pull out the candy inside! Watch the kid's faces.

Cut orange and black construction paper into 1" by 5" strips. Tape or paste one orange strip into a ring. Thread a black strip through the orange ring and paste or tape it closed. Continue adding rings to the chain, alternating the colors. When your chain is long enough, drape it across a doorway or window. Paste a Halloween picture at each end of the chain where it is attached to the doorway or window. You can also buy orange & black streamers at party stores.