Murder Mystery Halloween Parties – Collecting Ideas

For most Halloween-haunt and house-decorating enthusiasts, collecting and plotting out ideas is the best part of decorating for Halloween. For a Halloween murder mystery party, it’s no different. In our previous blog posts we’ve discussed choosing your game and setting your budget, so if you have missed those tutorials you may want to go back and read them before, or after, you read this discussion.

Of course, you’re not going to be able to decorate for your party and add in all the extra little party favours and details that make your party the best on the block unless you have some ideas at the ready.  It’s now time to start collecting your ideas.

One of my fellow Halloween Forum members, peeweepinson, says she even gets a notebook and decorates it all spooky and festive before she begins collecting her ideas. We highly recommend this first step in the Halloween party ideas collecting process, because it will really help get you in the mood and keep you excited every time you refer back to it.

Your Halloween party decorating and other ideas can come from many sources, but here are a few places to start:

- things from others parties and haunts that have caught your eye and you might want to recreate

- props/Halloween websites

- yard haunts

- magazines

- store displays and the things you find on store shelves

- forums discussing others’ decorating and parties of the past

Many publications, including Martha Stewart Living, come out with a guide each year specifically for Halloween parties and all things to do with All Hallows Eve, so start with a few of those and cut out the things you like or would like to try. One of the best parts of your ideas notebook is that you can look back on the notes you’ve made or things you’ve cut out of magazines and look back at next year for even more inspiration, or just a little nostalgia.

The theme of your murder mystery will largely determine your decor, but remember that on Halloween, all bets are off. You can go completely overboard with bloody gauze and cheesy-looking skeletons hanging everywhere and it will still turn out great!  So why not go all out for your Halloween mystery game party this year and decorate to the max?