Halloween is a delightful chance for families and friends to get together and be extremely creative and a bit indulgent. From the costumes to the candy — it's a holiday that practically begs for parties. Throw one for your kids, or throw one for yourself — we've got two frightfully fabulous ideas for each!

Fun for Kids: A Spooktacular Night

This party is designed for the fearless at heart that love a good ghost story — or an evening filled with them.

Decorations

The mood for this night is dark and haunted. To create this effect, you can use spider webs, creeping vines, hanging bats and skeletons. No need to use artificial light with plenty of black dripping candles (used with adult supervision) and a variety of jack-o-lanterns. Black streamers can also be useful on the floors and walls to transform your cheery home into a dreary dungeon.

Music

While music with lyrics may be distracting to the ghost-story teller and listeners, eerie sound effects are perfect for providing added suspense and drama to the evening.

Munchies

Cakes and cookies are always a hit among little goblin guests. Let your ingenuity mold these in the shapes of pumpkins, ghosts and witches' heads. If it's not spooky, it can also be slimy. Try green-coloured gelatin or gooey sandwiches filled with cream cheese and jelly worms as a horrific treat.

Giveaways

While adults can play along by telling their scariest stories, an incentive for children to get involved in the action is spooky prizes for those courageous enough to take centre stage. You can offer a variety of giveaways for the Halloween spirit such as a sorcerer's hat and cape, a set of old keys that unlock a secret dungeon or a ghost-story book filled with frightening tales.

Fun for Kids: Haunted Treasure Hunt

For a fun-filled evening of games, prizes and a few secret frights! Let the kids entertain themselves by hunting for their own Halloween treasures.

Decorations

For this party idea, it's essential you move away anything that's valuable or breakable, as the children will have free reign to ransack the house for hidden treasures. Use classic Halloween decorations including spider webs, ghosts and jack-o-lanterns, create your own special trunks made out of painted cardboard boxes of all shapes and sizes with fake padlocks and plastic chains.

Games and Giveaways

The object of the night is to hunt for treasures: some will be easy to find while others more challenging. Fill the corners, drawers and trunks with fishing nets, spider webs or confetti — anything to cover up your special prizes.

For treats, go wild with little Halloween candies, fake fangs and glow-in-the dark shoelaces. For tricks you can throw in fake goo and rubber eyeballs. Add some spooky notes that will reveal hidden clues and a few grand prizes such as a "magic" broomstick or piggy bank filled with chocolate coins.

Music

To heighten the energy and momentum of the evening, choose fun Halloween tunes the kids will enjoy such as "Monster Mash," "Ghostbusters," "Purple People Eater," and the "Munsters Theme Song."

Munchies

A spooky adventure party calls for equally entertaining snacks. Try a classic Halloween punch with frozen floating hands. (Fill surgical gloves with water and food colouring and let freeze overnight.) Ghost-shaped sandwiches made with toast and cookie cutters and chocolate-spider cupcakes will also make filling and tasty treats.

Fun For Adults: Black Ball

While Halloween is fun for kids, the chance to dress up can be just as alluring for adults. Invite your best friends to a haunted dinner-masquerade, where mystery is the theme of the night.

Invitations

Forget email or word-of-mouth. For this party you'll need a bit more creativity with formal invitations. Choose black (or blood-red) calligraphy requesting the guests appear in formal black attire and masks. The rest is up to them. Seal the envelope with an old-fashioned wax stamp.

Decorations

To transform your home into a setting for a masquerade ball, you'll need plenty of candlelight and lanterns. Votive candles can also be placed in hollowed-out pumpkins for the entrance. Line the table and chairs with cobwebs and place fake spiders randomly around the place settings. If you're tempted to add splashes of colour, stick to orange and red.

Dinner

At Halloween parties, pumpkins aren't just for carving and decorating, but for eating too. Concoct your own delicious recipes such as creamy pumpkin soup or pumpkin mashed potatoes. You can also serve the main entrée in a mini, hollowed-out pumpkin shell. And why not pumpkin pie or cupcakes for dessert?

Music

To stay consistent your ambient mood, forgo the dance tunes for some classic gothic choirs or Gregorian and Benedictine chants. It will inspire your guests to live up to the fantasy of a genuine masquerade of centuries past.

Gifts

At the end of the evening, engage your guests into a guessing game of each other's identities. If they haven't done so already, it's a perfect time to reveal what lies under their disguises. Award a bottle of champagne to the most convincing guest, and toast the others for their effort and enthusiasm.

Fun for Adults: Boo-gie Bash

Why not invite your closest pals to a Halloween-themed disco? Tell them to dress up as their favourite character for a night of dancing and old-fashioned immature Halloween fun.

Decorations

For a terror-ific Halloween disco party, borrow your ideas from the kids. But along with homemade pumpkin shaped-doilies and homemade ghost centerpieces, grown-ups are also allowed to shop for extra gory decorations such as fake blood and rubber body parts to keep your guests on edge. And of course, you must not overlook the essential Halloween lighting of candles, lanterns and a pumpkin disco ball.

Music

Bust out your favourite Halloween disco tunes such as "Thriller," "Black Magic Woman," and "Goblin Girl." Feel free to intersperse with your regular party songs to liven up the atmosphere.

Munchies

Even with adult appetites, you can still make snacks that are fun to eat: Breadsticks shaped as ghosts and goblins, spider-web tomato soup using sour cream and olive eyeballs, and chocolate-mud cake are few tasty suggestions.

Games

Halloween is the perfect holiday to unleash the little kid inside you. Why not play a grown-up edition of bobbing for apples where the fruit is mixed up with floating rubber fingers? An old-fashioned mummy wrap with toilet paper is also sure to get the laughs rolling.

Gifts

As special prizes for the favourite costumes and disco dancers, offer a CD collection of Halloween tunes, or crowns for disco king and queen. You could also offer a variety of Halloween-inspired candles and holders for your guests to remember the evening by.