Each guest wears a false nose and goggles. The nose may be purchased, or clever fingers can make it of heavy cardboard covered with chamois.
Jack-o’-Lanterns. The effect of these may be heightened by sticking pins through pumpkin seeds and placing them in the comers of the eyes for the irises and into the mouth for teeth. This makes the lantern exceptionally attractive and “realistic.”
The Surprising Candle. This is a very clever contrivance, calculated to cause consternation and astonishment to any individual with ordinary nerves.
Supposing yourself to be the victim, how would you feel if, when retiring to bed in some strange establishment, just as you were thinking of blowing out the candle, it should suddenly explode with no small report, the light be extinguished, and in place of the flame a small ghost with outstretched arms would appear, shining with a phosphorescent glow? I venture to think you would be very, very much surprised; and yet this is the effect produced by this ingenious construction.
By examination it will be found that the lower half of the candle is really a thin cardboard case, enameled to resemble a wax candle, and containing a small ghost whose arms fly apart when released from their bondage. To the bottom of this ghost is affixed a wire spring.
The upper half of the candle is perfectly ordinary, and merely stuck on to the lower portion; the joint being hidden by a rubbing of wax.
On top of the ghost’s head a few gunpowder caps, such as are supplied at toy shops for children’s pistols, are laid.
Now the candle can be lighted, and it will burn quite respectably until it reaches the caps, which, by their explosion, cause everybody’s attention to be drawn in that one direction, just in time to see the appearance of the ghost, it being forced upwards by the action of the spring simultaneously with the discharge. The wicked little image should be liberally coated with luminous paint, and the effect can be better imagined than described.
The foregoing are only a few of a vast number of similar diversions, but they are ones most to be commended, and will be sufficient to produce many an hour of harmless mirth, and very likely lead to the acquirement of much useful knowledge, as well.