Halloween party ideas: Make your own DIY Halloween graveyard this year!

A brief history of Halloween

Everybody’s favorite holiday — Halloween — is almost here! This means there’s no better time than now to take a little trip back in history and find out where Halloween has its origins. Most ancient civilizations in the world have their own rituals and ceremonies to celebrate the relationship between the living and the dead. In the western world, Halloween marks this celebration. 

The traditional holiday can be traced back to the festival of Samhain, which marked the beginning of a new Celtic year. This pre-Christian ritual was mostly practiced in what we now know as Ireland. With time, the Samhain tradition was influenced by elements of Christianity like All Saints’ Day (also known as All Hallows’ Day). And when the British made their way to North America, they brought these traditions with them. The holiday was then further transformed by various American influences. 

Over the years, the fusion of many cultures, right from Celtic and Irish traditions to British and American elements, have made Halloween what it is today. This year, with only around a month to go for the big day, you may be excited and eager to head off to your spooky holiday celebration. Or better yet, you may be all set to host your very own Halloween party. 

A graveyard theme may be a good choice this year

Whether it’s your first time hosting a party for Halloween, or whether you’ve been doing it for a few years now, a good theme is crucial. There’s no dearth of choices here, because Halloween decoration ideas can range from monster props and haunted house decorations to glow-in-the-dark products and even murder mystery props. But if you want to truly up your game this year, why not choose to transform your party venue with Halloween graveyard decorations?

5 key things you will need for your Halloween graveyard party

If you’re going to make your house (or your Halloween venue) the scariest one on the block, you’ll need some very good Halloween decorations to begin with. To bring your graveyard-themed Halloween party to life, here are some essential decorations and props that can help. 

1. Start with the tombstones

Tombstones are the key signatures of any graveyard. So, you can start off by bringing in a nice selection of tombstone props for your Halloween graveyard decorations. There are many online and offline stores that sell inexpensive tombstone decorations made from cardboard or foam insulation sheets. 

If you want more premium props that can be reused for future Halloween parties, you can opt for wooden tombstones too. A more inexpensive option would be to simply take the DIY route and make your own tombstone decor from accessible materials like thermocol, foam or thick cardboard. Make sure you paint over the surface for a more realistic look.

2. Throw in some Halloween caskets

A tombstone can only scare you so much. If you want to truly give your Halloween venue a makeover, you’re going to need Halloween caskets. Although caskets are typically buried underground, you can keep them at various vantage points around your home or your Halloween venue. This makes the overall vibe more aligned with the theme. 

Alternatively, a casket can also be the focal point of your venue. You can purchase this Halloween graveyard decoration from trusted casket makers like Titan Casket. We offer a wide range of caskets in different materials like steel, wood, cloth and more. You can also choose from caskets of different sizes. Thanks to the durable design, you can even reuse the casket for your Halloween celebrations year after year

3. And of course, you need skeletons 

What’s the fun in a graveyard-themed Halloween party if the dead aren’t going to come out and play, right? Skeletons can be the perfect props to make this idea work. Halloween decor shops will typically have ghouls and skeletons that you can set up around the house. Some of these can be standing around the graveyard, while others could be floating around too. 

Other similar Halloween decoration ideas that come in handy include skulls, bony hands and just some additional bones lying around the floor for good measure. And for some extra credit, you can even set up a spooky statue of the Grim Reaper waiting around the graveyard to collect souls, as the legend goes.

4. Make room for some webs and creepy crawlies

If you’ve ever taken a detour to a real graveyard as a dare in the middle of the night, you’ll agree that the slightest movement can be extremely scary. To make your graveyard-themed Halloween party a success, you’ll want to replicate this very thing. Hang cobwebs around the venue and be generous with this decoration idea. 

Then, throw in some creepy crawlies like toy spiders, fake rats and of course, some bats. This will make the overall vibe more authentic. If you can get toys and fake insects or bats that can fly around, that will elevate the overall theme further. 

5. Use fog to tie it all together

This may be an optional Halloween decoration idea, but if you want to make the experience truly surreal and memorable for your guests, a fog machine can help. It ties the whole place together with thick fog that gives a truly spooky touch to the whole party. By limiting the visibility, fog can also make it easier to place jump scares at strategic points on your venue.

The best part is that you can reuse the fog machine each year, no matter what theme you decide to use for your future Halloween parties. If you prefer DIY projects, there are many affordable ways to create your own fog machine too. Check out some online tutorials to figure out the best way to add some fog to your Halloween party.

5 tips to plan the perfect graveyard themed Halloween party

Once you have the essential Halloween graveyard decorations, you need to go about planning the party itself. Here are some tips that can help you rock this party to the fullest and make your venue the most haunted place on the block

1. Pick a suitable venue 

The most obvious Halloween venue idea is your own home and backyard, of course. But if you can and you want to, it may be a good idea to consider various other venue options for your graveyard-themed party this year. The people you invite may already be quite familiar with the layout of your home. So, they may not really be able to picture it as a cemetery. 

But a change in venue brings with it a sense of novelty and makes it easier for everybody to get into the party mood. Some Halloween venue ideas that may work include abandoned houses or buildings in your vicinity, or even an eerie camp by the edge of the woods.

2. Use sounds to bring the graveyard to life

Granted, a graveyard can be eerily silent. But if you are hosting your Halloween party at home or at a venue that is not quite abandoned, white noise from outside may ruin the whole cemetery vibe. Imagine being in the middle of your graveyard party and hearing a chorus of kids cutely crying out “Trick or treat?” That’s not very scary, is it?

To truly make the experience more immersive for your guests, you can make use of graveyard sounds like leaves rustling, cackling laughter, church bells or the sounds of somebody running towards the listener.

3. Rely on pop culture

Pop culture can really help make your party a hit. You can Halloween decoration ideas that connect to popular movies set in graveyards, like The Omen, The Night of the Living Dead and even The Pet Semetary. There are two main advantages to using pop culture references in your party. 

Firstly, it helps draw your guests in because they already have a picture in their head of how scary the reference is. Also, using a movie template makes it easier to put together the party, because you can narrow down the Halloween graveyard decorations you need more easily.

4. Choose appropriate costumes

You don’t want to be dressed like Superman or Rapunzel for a graveyard-themed party. Instead, having guests who fit into the theme may be more fitting if you want to truly tie it all together. So, a dress code of sorts can help make your cemetery more realistic. The most obvious choice would be to dress up as a ghost or a  skeleton. 

However, there are also endless choices that you and your guests can choose from. Some options include an Egyptian mummy, a ghoul or even a zombie. If you’re feeling particularly adventurous with your costume choices, you can dress up like the Angel of Death himself.

5. Keep your guests in mind

Let’s face it. A cemetery can be a chilling theme. If your guests consist mostly of adults who have a good tolerance for horror, you can go all out and make the theme as sinister as you can. However, if you are having children over, or if the adults you hang out with scare easily, you may want to tone down the spookiness. 

You can throw in a bit of humor and lighten the mood a little bit too. Blow-ups of graveyard memes and funny versions of popular graveyard ghosts can add a touch of playfulness and tone down the horror. 

Own your Halloween party with the right graveyard decorations!

The ideas you’ve seen above can help you make a believable Halloween graveyard or cemetery for your Halloween party this year. Remember to add a signboard at the entrance, so your guests know what to expect. After all, whether you want to call it a Halloween cemetery or a Halloween crypt, you can’t go wrong with this Halloween decoration idea. That’s because a graveyard by any other name would be just as spooky, isn’t it?