WE’RE HALFWAY THROUGH October now, and we all know what that means. It’s well and truly spooky season, and it’s only appropriate to decorate your home accordingly.

Halloween is one of the standout dates in the calendar, and if you’ve got young children, you can expect the whole month to be taken up with excitement over costumes, decorations and, of course, trick or treating.

It’s always nice to get into the spirit of things, and Halloween can be one of the easier festive seasons to decorate for. It’s possible to repurpose many ordinary household items to give your home a suitably spooky vibe ahead of 31 October.

This week, we’re looking at tips and hacks for how to turn your home into the perfect haunted house this Halloween.

Arts and (witch)crafts

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While there are plenty of cheap Halloween decorations for sale in any discount party shop, you can make a lot of what you need at home with a little help from your family. 

One thing that takes very little effort to make is a haunted moor/landscape full of ghosts. All you need is a bunch of sponges, black marker, a bunch of lollipop or ice pop sticks, and tissue paper. Line all of the sponges up side-by-side on a flat surface, stick the lollipop sticks into them to keep them steady, then wrap the top of the sticks with tissue paper in the shape of a ghost with drawn-on facial expressions. 

Other very easy Halloween-themed crafts you can make with your kids are turning cotton balls into spiderwebs, using black crepe paper to make bats, or filling glass jars with glowsticks and hand sanitiser to give the effect of creepy, gloopy potions on the shelf.

Don’t stop at pumpkins 

A great way to make your home a little more authentic this Halloween season is to take it further than pumpkin carving. The traditional Irish jack o’lantern from the ancient Samhain festival actually made use of turnips, which are much creepier than pumpkins when carved. 

Not only that, but they’re smaller, so you can have more of them decorating your porch and your mantle, letting any and all guests know that this is a home where Halloween is taken dead seriously. 

Play with your food

If you’re having family or friends around for Halloween and you’re putting out a spread, be sure to stay on theme. If you’ve got a bowl of crisps or other assorted sweets, make sure to pick up a few jelly eyes and other texturally creepy things at a party shop so that when guests reach in, they get a spooky surprise.

One very easy way to get your guests in the mood is to lay out cakes liberally iced with red icing or red food dye to give a bloody effect. 

If you really want to scare someone…

Now, everybody enjoys Halloween to a different extent. Some people just like the whimsical fun of bobbing for apples, while others are more committed to the tradition of scaring others.

If you, your family, or your guests fall into the latter camp, one move you can pull to give your home the effect of a haunted house is to hide a Bluetooth speaker to play screams, roars, and other creepy sounds when your loved ones least expect it.  

No matter what you do with your decor, the important thing is getting into the Halloween spirit and doing whatever you can to make it a special time for yourself and your family, whether that’s playing Halloween games or turning your home into a legitimate scarefest. What matters is getting the whole family in the spooky spirit and spending quality time together.