Make your guests quail, quiver and quake by dimming the lights and replacing the white bulbs with orange and black ones. Play a torture tape with screams and moans, or try to find tapes of eerie organ music. Your library may have a few.

Buy large rolls of cotton at a craft store, pull them apart into webs and hang them in corners and on the ceiling, putting a plastic spider in each web. Hang a plastic skeleton in a closet or inside the bathroom, and leave the door open just a crack.

No bones about it, this one's always good for a scare.