This Halloween is going to be scarier than usual. Ironically, it’s because I expect to see fewer ghouls and goblins. The death knell of Halloween hedonism sounded the day my friends Sarah and Jim sold their spooky multi-acre house in the boonies, ending their long reign of Halloween party dominance. I’m terrified at the prospect of having to find a new late October haunt.

When Jim told me they were moving to an apartment, I gave him an Elaine Benes-style shove and a “Get OUT!” I couldn’t understand why he and his wife were vacating the premises. Was it poltergeists? A homicidal neighbor with a chainsaw? A voice in the house warning them in non-Seinfeldian fashion to “geeet ouuuuut?”

Drama aside, they simply wanted something smaller and closer to work, but to many of their friends the move came as a big surprise. Sure, the couple will be happier 364 days a year, but what are we, the victimized guests, to do on October 31?

You see, Sarah and Jim love Halloween the way a bloodthirsty, two-foot-tall leprechaun loves Capri pants. They’ve got so much macabre paraphernalia that their home could have been called Wiccapedia. This is the only couple I know that actually owns Halloween furniture, and I’m not talking about the lovable inflatable pumpkin man you drag down from the attic each fall. They actually have tables with skulls built into the design, and they keep their knives in a butcher-block voodoo doll.

In years past, they would use this cutlery to prepare creative Halloween party treats like grave-soil brownies and hard-boiled eggs that not only looked like eyeballs, but were even (you guessed it) deviled. The finishing touch, for spirits partaking of spirits, was industrial-strength black and orange Jell-O shots, which always ensured a Hammer-ed House of Horror by night’s end.

A few years back Sarah and Jim even picked up a stray black cat on the day of the party, which must have been drawn to the property by the elaborate tombstones and fog machine of their mock graveyard. At least I hope it was a mock graveyard. As I said, they take this stuff very seriously. But it’s over now. A clairvoyant child perusing the new owners’ yard can only say, in a hushed whisper, “I don’t see dead people.”

Why was this bash so important? Simply put, there is nothing better than a great Halloween party and nothing worse than a bad one.

One year I was dragged to a co-worker’s party. The house was a ghost town, and not in the good way; when we arrived it was so empty we thought it was the wrong address. Of the six people that showed up, three were not in costume and the scariest part was when the hostess, seemingly possessed, threw a tantrum: “Karen’s not here and she was supposed to bring the fucking potato salad!” What a delightfully wicked evening that turned out to be. I remember apologetically rushing off to tuck in the kids, even though it was four years before I had any.

There are also parties where everyone dresses up, but nobody otherwise gets in the mood. Ever been stuck in the middle of a fiendishly dry Windows-versus-Macintosh conversation with Adult Hobo, Fred Flintstone, and Death? It’s quite surreal. I’m not advocating that everyone stay in character, like the guy who won’t leave your house and insists on using the bad British accent until the last 4 a.m. “Cheerio!” but for Satan’s sake, pick a costume you feel comfortable in even if the party is a bust.

One man dressed up as the Jack Nicholson version of the Joker. This poor guy ordered a kit months in advance and spent four hours applying the makeup, only to arrive and find a room full of strangers, quiet music and little revelry. His costume was an incredibly realistic imitation of the film version and I was astonished by how good it was. I was also wearing a white bathrobe and tan socks with shoelaces wrapped around them. I was Luke Skywalker. Who felt stupid? Not me. While this clown couldn’t move his mouth without ingesting toxic latex, all I had to worry about was not peeing on my Radio Shack flashlight (a.k.a. light saber) when I went to the bathroom.

I may not win any prizes for design quality, but my intentions are always good. The trick (or treat, if you will) to my Halloween party happiness is finding the appropriate middle ground. I usually try to counteract my fashion deficiencies by opting for a bad pun costume, like Harry Pothead or Tigger Woods. The wordplay costume serves several purposes: it (hopefully) gets people laughing, it’s a surefire conversation starter, and it frequently allows you to pass out after the Jell-O shots without taking off any makeup (though once I fell asleep without any makeup and woke up with some). This concept also extends to the potluck offering. At Sarah and Jim’s last party, I created a basket of treats featuring Mrs. Blooderworth – a bottle of syrup with an axe lodged firmly in her head. Sweet, but saucy; it was so gory it looked like a science fair volcano.

Be you Joker or joker, you were welcome at Sarah and Jim’s as long as you had a costume, however pedestrian the design, and a healthy dose of enthusiasm. The focus was on having fun with the masquerade.

Those of us that know Sarah and Jim should have realized that our best years of Halloween LeSure were behind us when the couple left the state for a wedding last October and cancelled the event. In retro-spectre, they Maben Hallo-weaning us off the parties, but reality snuck up on us like Michael Myers, the original “Dr. Evil.”

Like Myers, most famous horror movie villains come back no matter how many times you kill them. For now, the Halloween party as we know it is dead. Knowing Sarah and Jim, however, it won’t be long before it’s undead.