Apple-Biting Contest (Apple suspended from a string)
1. The apple is set swinging and two people, standing opposite each other, try as it passes to seize and hold it in the mouth. They must not touch it with the hands.
2. Tie an apple by its stem to the middle of a string about a yard long. Then two people, each taking one end of the string in the mouth, begin, at a signal, to gather it as fast as possible into the mouth, and so to reach the apple. This belongs to the one reaching it first.
Refreshments
Apples, nuts, popcorn, cider, gingerbread and doughnuts are suitable for lighter refreshments. Baked beans and plain ice-cold rice pudding were once eaten with decided relish at a New York City Hallowe'en party, the city people evidently enjoying the contrast between this feast and the usual caterer's service. Serve fruit from a kettle suspended from three cross-sticks, a la witch.
Decorations
Jack-o'-lanterns of pumpkins; strings of apples, popcorn and cranberries, and toy brooms hung here and there, as reminders of the witches who are said to be abroad, will add to the occasion. The pumpkins should be cut to resemble skulls.
Reading
Have some one read "Tam O'Shanter's Mare" (Burns); also some good ghost story. Thomas Kendrick Bangs' "Ghosts Which I Have Met" contains some good stories, all absurd. Choose a good reader for this.
Place Cards