Be careful with candles, if you're having a children's party, the black light bulbs will be eerie enough. In the windows, use silhouette cutouts. Trace a silhouette of your favorite witch, wizard, black cat, ghoul or goblin onto large sheets of black Bristol board. The best place to find patterns for these scary characters is in your children's colouring books, storybooks, or off the packaging from Halloween candy. To make the tracing job easier, borrow or rent an overhead projector.
Projectors are readily available at schools or office supply and craft stores.
The silhouettes can also be placed at the end of a dark hall or ascending down the staircase. A vase of dead roses replaces the vase of fresh flowers that usually sits on my living room cocktail table. You can store your dead dried roses in a shoebox year after year. For filler, in a large vase add some dead twigs and branches. Potted dead plants also work well.