Eerie Effects for your Halloween Party

Halloween parties are all about creating shivers down the spine. When it comes to refreshments, there's no need to worry about making things look beautiful or tasteful. This is the one time of the year when you get to revel in making everything look unsightly and downright unnerving! You can have all kinds of fun creating spooky or nauseating special effects with your food, even playing gross games with it!


Frightfully Fun Fog
Dry ice is an old favorite for creating a creepy Halloween atmosphere with the billows of foggy mist it gives off. It's available at most places that sell fresh fish. Besides the old smoking punchbowl trick, you can use dry ice to cover the entire food table in a layer of creeping mist, giving the impression that your guests are plucking their refreshments from the middle of a haunted swamp or graveyard.

The fog given off by dry ice is heavier than air, so it tends to sink down, rather than float up. To get maximum mist, place the dry ice in a low-sided container such as a roasting pan and set it at the back of the refreshment table. When the festivities begin, pour hot water over the dry ice and watch the mist billow and creep eerily across the table. Keep a kettle simmering the stove and continue to add hot water to the dry ice as needed. Hide the behind a cardboard gravestone or a menacing jack o' lantern. For added effect, put a green or purple light bulb in a small desk lamp and shine it on the table. Warning! Dry ice should never come in contact with skin. Handle it with tongs, heavy gloves or oven mitts only. Keep it away from children and never, ever put it in your mouth. Dry ice gives off carbon dioxide fumes, so use it in a well-ventilated area.

Radioactive Refreshments
Make your food glow! Use non-toxic plastic glow sticks (available at any party supply store) to make your food look radioactive. Place some glow sticks in a clear glass bowl and pile orange, green or red gelatin squares on top. Drop some glow sticks in the punch bowl, too!


Cannibal for a Day
Take a small pair of freshly laundered pants and roll up the cuffs a few times. Stuff the pants with wadded-up newspaper and place them in a sitting position on a large platter. Use a large, heavy can inside the waistband of the pants to keep them upright. Now place smoked turkey legs, cheese logs or summer sausages at the ends of the pant legs. Garnish the platter with lettuce leaves for a dainty touch. Now fill a medium-size bowl with dipping sauce or crackers and place it on top of the can. Use tape to secure the waistband around the edge of the bowl. Set the whole platter in the middle of the snack table and wait for the gasps!


A Visit to the Mad Scientist's Lab
This old favorite Halloween party game using common foods you already in your kitchen never fail to raise delighted shrieks from every guest. First, put a CD of spooky sound effects on the stereo and have everyone sit the floor in a circle. Make up a story about the time you got lost in a swamp and stumbled onto a mad scientist's lab. As you tell the story, pull out bandanas and blindfold everyone. Then, pass bowls around the circle one at a time containing samples of the disgusting and ghastly things you found in the lab, letting everyone feel them as their imaginations wild. Start with a brain (a whole head of boiled, chilled cauliflower), then move on to a bowl of noses (chunks of hot dog), followed by eyeballs (peeled grapes), intestines (boiled spaghetti, rewarmed slightly in the microwave), bat wings (beef jerky), a hand (latex glove filled with warm water and tied shut), bat toenails (whole caraway seeds), dried ears (dried apple rings cut in half) and a liver (a slab of gelatin). Use your imagination to come up with grosser mad scientist samples using foods you have around the house. Your kids will LOVE to help you with this.

Acrid Appetizers
Turn deviled eggs into deviled eyeballs by topping each one with a slice of green or black olive. Make an edible veggie head: buy a Styrofoam wig head and wash it well. Dry it and secure it to a square of plywood with a long nail. Now cover the head with bite-size vegetables or fruit speared with toothpicks. Use differen and shapes to make facial features (red pepper or apple slices for lips, radishes peeled in strips to make bloodsho eyeballs). Don't forget the dip!


Mutilated Main Dishes
Cut slices of meatloaf with a bat-shaped cookie cutter, and serve with bat's blood (ketchup). Spaghetti and meatballs takes on a whole new 'life' when you announce it as and eyeballs. Chicken strips can easily become witch fingers when served with slime sauce (ranch dressing dyed green) for dipping. Stuffed pasta shells have an awful appeal when you call them Snail Shells stuffed with Rat Spleens. Good side dishes include steamed maggots (rice), rotting teeth (corn) and lizard tongues (carrot sticks). For a less nauseating but still festive meal, scrape out small pumpkins and use them as individual serving bowls for black bean, split pea, or pumpkin soup.


Games that are Good for You
When planning party activities, don't underestimate how much fun a good old-fashioned game of bobbing for apples can be. For an added challenge, remove the before beginning. Turn it into a game of bobbing for 'eyeballs' instead by using grapes. If you would prefer to avoid the sloshing water and wet guests that result from traditional apple bobbing, try a different twist on the game: tie strings to each apple and hang them from the ceiling at face height. The challenge in this game is to take a bite out of the apple without using your hands!