How To Throw The Perfect Psychedelic Halloween House Party

It’s spooky season! It’s pumpkin season! It’s also… mushroom season! Yes, it’s no coincidence that psychedelic mushrooms sprout at the time of year that has become synonymous with transformation, mischief, and mystery. Psychedelic mushrooms give spiritual rebirth, while Halloween is all about zombies and re-animating the dead. It’s not a dead on match, but it’s close enough for us!

Something else due for a re-birth is the good old-fashioned house party. Recently, numerous articles have been published commiserating the ‘death’ of the house party, once a Saturday night staple. Exorbitant rents, lack of space, Gen Z’s modest drinking habits, and getting rusty due to COVID lockdowns were all blamed. But, like Dr. Frankenstein shooting electric volts into his monster while cackling wildly, we think that there is room for some re-animation (house party-wise at least!)

So this year, why not throw a psychedelic Halloween House party? We’re simply dying for one!

‘How?’

— You might ask —

‘I’m out of party practice!’

Or maybe you were never the expert host in the first place.

Either way, this Halloween you have nothing to fear on that front, because we are laying out a party-planning guide that will make sure whatever kind of event you throw — big, small, spooky, kooky — will go with a bang.

Spooky Set and Spooky Setting

One of the most effective ways to get into the Halloween mood is by decorating your party location. However small or cramped your apartment might be, to get people in the party spirit from the get-go you’ve gotta make it look the part. You want to make an impression as soon as they walk through the door.

Depending on the theme you’ve chosen, your options will be different; tin foil on the walls for space theme, sand and shells for deep sea terrors, or you could get creative with our favorite — Psychedelic Spooky!

Here are some essential starting points for decorating your place for psychedelic Halloween — however, feel free to go further — go wild! The only limit is your imagination…

Lights! 

Lights (or absence of them) are essential for creating atmosphere. You want dark spooky corners, and vibe changing filters. Buy some coloured bulbs or cover existing light bulbs with (fire safe) coloured gels. Key spooky light colours include: red (devilish!) blue (ghostly!) and green (just makes you look really sick!). Triple points for kitschy colour-change disco lights!

Lastly, if you can get hold of some, or your budget covers it, UV black lights really take a psychedelic Halloween party to the next level. Instantly, skeleton costumes, plastic fangs, ghostly sheets and anything else white are animated by the unnatural UV glow. Picture it, the truffles are just starting to hit, and a friendly skeleton comes boogying up to you all lit up like Las Vegas — trippy! 

Decoration!

Decorations are the next step for creating your psychedelic Halloween world. If you are using blacklights, decorations in white or fluorescent with graphic design will really pop. Think of the ghost train at the local fair or carnival…

Cut out skeletons, spiders, and bats out of paper to decorate your walls and windows. Sure, your local or online party shops have all sorts of decorations, but they are often made of plastic and materials that are a down right horror for the environment, not to mention kind of stinky. When making your own, your only limit is your imagination, so invite some friends round and get creative! Our personal favourite is a paper mushroom silhouette — you can make it as big as you like — with a face, or with Fly agaric toadstool polkadots (greeeeat under the black light!), or with arms and legs. Really, a psychedelic halloween party isn’t complete without some freaky mushies. Instant Alice In Wonderland vibes too!

Another classic decorative option is to carve some pumpkins. You can’t go wrong with a grinning Jack o’ Lantern. They say halloween like nothing else. 

Top Tips for Carving a Psychedelic Pumpkin

Essential tip 1: carve them BEFORE you load up on spooky punch or shrooms.

Essential tip 2: If you don’t want to worry about potential candle disasters you can use fairy lights or nightlights inside your pumpkin instead. 

Essential tip 3: You don’t have to go down a traditional route. There’s zillions of other designs that aren’t that classic evil grin, and plenty of online tutorials showing you how to do them!

Music!

Once you’ve got the lights and decorations dialled it’s time to get onto the maker-or-breaker of a party. The music! While you can just crack out your go-to party bangers (your house looks damn spooky by this point after all!) it’s nice to add in some seasonal specials into the mix — the trippier the better! Whether you go for spooky pop hits or scary movie soundtracks, here’s a few classic recommendations…

• The Monster Mash – Bobby Pickett (sorry it’s gotta be there!)
• Disturbia – Rihanna 
• Season of the Witch – Donovan 
• Somebody’s Watching Me – Rockwell
• Suspiria – Goblin
• I Was A Teenage Werewolf – The Cramps
• The Time Warp – The Rocky Horror Picture Show 
• I Put A Spell On You – Screamin’ Jay Hawkins
• Ghost Town – The Specials 
• Gimme Some More – Busta Rhymes (yes that is a ‘Psycho’ sample!)

All Treats… No Tricks… Definitely Trips!

You may decide to cater your party with fabulous foods and drinks. From creepy cookies to pungent potions (i.e. booze) there are endless recipes to inspire and satisfy even the appetite of Hannibal Lecter. And luckily, they’re just a Google away!

Our specialist subject is (obviously!) magic mushrooms and truffles. Using our tried and true recipes you can make your Psychedelic Halloween Party psychedelic in more than just name…

Psychedelic Witches Brew

Take our magic truffle iced-tea recipe, and make it spooky! Once you have the iced tea made, it’s easy to jazz it up. Our choice for a really witchy brew would be:

• A batch of our psychedelic iced tea
• Green or red food colouring (to make it look super evil!)
• Sugar syrup (to make it taste super sweet!)
• A fun garnish — we are keen on peeled lychees (doppelgängers for eyeballs!)
• Ice 
• Slices of lemon or lime

Trippy Treats

You must have tried our recipe for chocolate coated magic truffles. If not, then Halloween is the perfect time! Both delicious and trippy, they’re key for a psychedelic trick o’ treat. For spooky season you can add all kinds of additions to the original recipe, from gummy worms, to jelly beans, to crushed nuts! 

Our original tutorial showed us using mini-silicone cupcake molds to create a chocolate delight similar to that of a (very Halloween appropriate) Reese’s Cup. However you can make as many different shaped chocolates as there are molds! For example, a skull-shaped silicone ice tray used as a mold will give you skeleton choccys (try using white chocolate for the full effect!) 

The possibilities are endless! Just make sure your choccys are chock full of truffles…

Important Note: Ensure your guests are aware you are making magic truffle goodies, and clearly mark which treats or drinks are trippy or not. A light psychedelic experience is the best! — but only when you asked for it. Unexpected trippy vibes are not always welcome, so make sure it’s clear to your guests what is what. That way, whether trippy, tipsy, or sober-but-spooky, we all have a great time!

Crazy Costumes

It’s not a Halloween party if people aren’t in costume! Truly, the motto here is ‘if in doubt, freak ‘em out!’

Of course, we love a good mummy, or vampire, or a classic witch topped with a pointy hat — chef’s kiss! But if you fancy getting psychedelic with the costumes, here are a few ideas — with different levels of… let’s say… psychedelic conviction. 

Beginner level:

Alice in Wonderland

Already a Halloween classic, you can’t beat an Alice or other Wonderland character costume. Whether you go White Rabbit, Queen of Hearts, Mad Hatter, or signature blue dress, you’ll be muttering “curiouser and curiouser” in no time!

An Alien

Psychonauts and space go hand in hand. Afterall, shrooms let you explore the cosmos without ever leaving your sofa! Maybe you’ve even ‘met’ aliens while you’ve been up there.Why not honour our intergalactic buddies this Halloween? And there’s a lot of scope: from little green men, to tentacular monsters, to freaky-deeky Mars Attacks style aliens to adorable ET — you can shoot for the stars. 

Intermediate: 

A Woodstock Hippie

Some people already go as a hippie for Halloween — with paisley, tie-dye, flares etc — but we think a cool twist is to really double-down on the idea. Be a hippie who never left Woodstock. So as well as being dressed in your finest 1969 attire, you’re also muddy, messy, your facepaint is smudged, maybe your hair is full of twigs… you get the picture… you’ve been living in a field for 55 years! Maybe you’re even a hippie skeleton — cross over costume alert! 

A Mushroom

I mean …duh. It’s the perfect costume. Whether you go as a toadstool (love those white polka-dots under a UV light!), or golden cap shroom, it’s a costume that seems so obvious for a psychonaut you might overlook it. But don’t! There are loads of tutorials online on how to make a mushroom cap for your costume, so you’ll truly look the part. (Extra tip! Why not go as an actual MAGIC mushroom? As well as your mushroom costume you could add a magic wand, hold a rabbit coming out of a top hat, or simply annoy everyone with card tricks all evening!)

Expert: 

Albert Hofmann

Like we said, these costumes are for the psychonaut experts, the scholars of the ‘culture’, if you will. Why not show off your smarts by dressing as the granddaddy of LSD? A lab coat, a test tube with something luminous inside, a pair of specs and a wild look in your eyes like you’ve just ingested something brand new. Double points if you arrive on a bicycle. 

A Machine Elf

Perhaps the most psychedelic kudos will be granted from this wacky costume. ‘Machine elf’ (also ‘fractal elf’, or ‘self transforming elf machines’) is a term coined by late psychedelic icon Terence McKenna, to describe the crazy elf-like creatures you see during DMT trips. Basically, just dress like an insane goblin from another dimension (maybe you can take reference from things you’ve seen on your own psychedelic experiences?!) and if anyone asks, just say haughtily ‘I’m a machine elf actually…’ Master McKenna would be proud…

Go Forth and Party!

So, there you have it! That’s how you bring the house party back from the dead.

Now you know how to throw the perfect psychedelic Halloween party! And remember, keep it SAFE and spooky.

Happy Halloween!