Headless Torsos

    How to Throw a Gay Halloween Party

    Halloween is one of the few nights of the year when everyone is actively encouraged to dress like a slut, wear excessive make-up, and get wasted. So naturally, gay people tend to take it quite seriously.

    A good gay Halloween party isn't just a few pumpkins and a bowl of crisps. It's the combination of costumes, decorations, food, drinks and the entertainment that really make this favourite gay holiday a hit. An unhinged gay card game like Headless Torsos can make all the difference turning the evening into a spooky yet funny affair.

    Here's how to do Halloween properly.

    1. The costumes: more skin, more drama

    Let's start with the important bit. Halloween is not the night for modesty. Obviously, wear whatever you're comfortable wearing. But if you've been waiting for an excuse to turn up in a tiny pair of shorts, a harness, angel wings and absolutely nothing else, this is your moment.

    Some easy gay Halloween costume directions:

    • The slutty version of literally anything. Vampire, cowboy, angel, devil, pirate, firefighter, priest. You get the idea.
    • The group costume. Everyone comes as a different Spice Girl, a different vampire, a different pop star, or the cast of a terrible reality TV show. Or just tell everyone the theme is "hot and vaguely Halloween-related" and see what happens.
    • The effort-over-everything costume. For the friend who has been planning his costume since August. Let them deliver. Nobody wants to be the person who turns up in a £12 devil outfit from Amazon next to someone who has spent three weeks making a full prosthetic.

    2. Make the flat look like something happened there

    You don't need to spend a fortune decorating. In fact, the slightly trashy look is probably better. Think:

    • Fake spider webs everywhere
    • Plastic spiders
    • Black candles and red candles dripping wax
    • Skeletons, fake blood and graveyard signs
    • Black balloons and orange / purple lighting
    • A few strategically placed skulls
    • Something that looks like it shouldn't be in your living room

    Don't restrict the decorations to one corner of the room. Cover the entire place. The bathroom should look haunted. The kitchen should look like a witch's laboratory. The entrance should immediately tell people they've made a terrible decision by coming here. And if you have a mirror, write something creepy on it in washable marker: I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST NIGHT. Then leave it there all evening.

    3. The food: Halloween, but make it filthy

    This is where you can have some fun. Regular Halloween recipes are already halfway there. Spider cupcakes, ghost cookies and graveyard cakes are easy to make and look great on a party table. But this is a gay Halloween party, so you can do better.

    Dick cupcakes. Yes. Make penis-shaped cupcakes or one large penis cake and decorate it with little edible spiders. Add chocolate spiders, red icing, edible cobwebs, tiny fondant ghosts and green slime icing. The combination of horrifying + phallic + surprisingly well executed is exactly what we're after.

    Other completely unnecessary food ideas:

    • Graveyard brownies — chocolate brownies, crushed biscuits for soil, little biscuit tombstones.
    • Eyeball devilled eggs — can also make them testicle-shaped. Turn the yolks into eyeballs with olives and paprika.
    • Spider pizzas — mini pizzas with olive spiders.
    • Mummy sausages — sausages wrapped in strips of pastry with little edible eyes.
    • Ghost strawberries — strawberries dipped in white chocolate with little chocolate eyes.
    • Bloody popcorn — popcorn with red candy drizzle in black bowls.
    • Rainbow Halloween cookies — because apparently we're incapable of leaving Pride out of anything.

    And don't worry about making everything from scratch. Halloween is one of those occasions where supermarket food becomes significantly more impressive once you put it on a black plate and add plastic spiders.

    4. The drinks need to look slightly dangerous

    Halloween cocktails are all about presentation. Black, red, green, purple. Anything with smoke, bubbles, unusual glasses or something floating in it gets bonus points. And have a non-alcoholic punch option too — fruit juice, lemonade, berries and plenty of ice still looks spectacular in black glasses with creepy garnishes and dry ice around the serving vessel (just don't put dry ice directly into anything people are drinking).

    • The Blood Orange Old Fashioned. Whisky + blood orange syrup + bitters. Dramatic, and doesn't require a cocktail laboratory.
    • The Black Widow. A dark, berry-based cocktail in a coupe glass with a blackberry or two and a plastic spider next to it. Done.
    • The Witch's Brew. Green cocktail, black rim, something bubbling. Call it Witch, Please.
    • The Pina Ghoulada. A Halloween piña colada. Because nothing says "terrifying" like tropical drinks served by someone dressed as a slutty vampire.

    5. The playlist

    You need two playlists: one Halloween, one gay. The trick is knowing when to switch between them. Start with Michael Jackson — Thriller. It is practically compulsory. Then add the rest:

    • Ghostbusters — Ray Parker Jr.
    • Sweet Dreams — Eurythmics
    • Toxic — Britney Spears
    • Disturbia — Rihanna
    • Maneater — Hall & Oates
    • Bad Romance — Lady Gaga
    • Monster — Lady Gaga
    • Dark Horse — Katy Perry
    • Heads Will Roll — Yeah Yeah Yeahs
    • She Wolf — Shakira
    • Black Magic — Little Mix
    • Murder on the Dancefloor — Sophie Ellis-Bextor
    • Bloody Mary — Lady Gaga

    And then, when everyone's sufficiently drunk: Kylie. Madonna. Don't fight it. Halloween eventually becomes a Kylie and Madonna night.

    6. Give people something to do

    A party where everyone stands around holding the same drink for four hours is not necessarily a party. Have something ready. The trick is to choose something people can pick up without needing a 20-minute explanation. You don't want everyone sitting silently around the table trying to understand page 47 of the rulebook while the drinks get warm. Something quick, funny and slightly competitive is ideal — particularly once everyone has started telling stories about their worst dates.

    • A Halloween quiz
    • A costume competition
    • A blind cocktail tasting
    • A murder mystery
    • A ridiculous photo booth
    • A card game

    7. Have a costume competition

    Don't just announce a winner. Make categories. Give out stupid prizes — bottles of something, mini trophies, a plastic skeleton, a crown. The prize does not matter. The judging does.

    • Best costume
    • Most skin
    • Most disturbing
    • Most creative
    • Best group costume
    • Best "I understood the assignment"
    • Worst costume — important. Someone needs to be publicly shamed.

    8. Have a photo corner

    You don't need a professional photographer. You need one wall. Put up a black sheet, fake cobwebs, some balloons and a few ridiculous props, then leave a phone tripod there. People will do the rest. And if everyone is dressed up, you're going to want the photos — especially the ones taken at 9pm before everyone's makeup has started migrating south.

    9. Don't make the party too organised

    This might be the most important rule. Have food, have drinks, have music, have games, have somewhere people can sit. Then stop planning. The whole point is that people start talking, drinking, flirting, disappearing into the kitchen and eventually arguing about who had the best costume. That's the party. You don't need an itinerary.

    The ultimate gay Halloween party

    If you get the basics right, you really don't need that much:

    • Hot costumes.
    • Too many decorations.
    • Something inappropriate on the buffet table.
    • A cocktail that looks radioactive.
    • Michael Jackson at the appropriate volume.
    • A game for when conversation inevitably turns into dating-app stories.
    • Enough friends that someone eventually says: "This was a terrible idea."

    Which, for a gay Halloween party, generally means it was a huge success.

    Once the costumes are on, the drinks are flowing and someone has inevitably started telling a story about their worst Grindr date, get Headless Torsos onto the table. It's a gay dating-app party game built around real messages. Players compete to come up with the funniest responses, so you don't need to explain complicated rules or spend half the evening reading an instruction manual. There are 150 cards, it's designed for 3–10 players, and games take around 30–60 minutes.

    It's a particularly good fit for Halloween because the game already has the right combination of questionable messages, bad decisions and people being far too confident in their own sense of humour. Put it on the table. Deal the cards. See who actually is the funniest person in the group. And if the evening ends with everyone dressed as sluts, eating dick-shaped cakes covered in spiders, screaming along to Kylie and arguing over a dating-app card... I'd say you've done Halloween correctly.

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