These 5 spooky tech gadgets will make your Halloween party a huge success

Without further ado, let's dive into what can be done to make your Halloween party even more spooky.

Lighting up scares

One crucial reason why Halloween may not seem as spooky anymore is that, over the years, decorations have become repetitive and have shown little innovation. Animatronic decorations that resemble life-sized beings and even mimic them fairly realistically do exist, for a price, showing that technology has evolved. What is missing is imagination.

Interestingly, it is makers of smart lights that have spotted this gap and now give you the option to turn your ordinary lights into Fright Lights at this, or indeed any, time of the year. If you haven't checked it out yet, you might be missing out on the festive specials that your smart light provider offers.

In the spirit of the holiday, many of these lights can be switched to hues of purple, orange, or green using the app on your phone. Some apps, like DynamicHue, also go a step further to offer animated experiences like the image of a sky filled with lightning or the flame of a candle, for added effect. More effects get added to the list every year, so do check out what your locally available smart light manufacturer has to offer.

Sounds to spook

Instead of just relying on visuals to create the perfect Halloween ambiance why not spook your neighbors and trick-or-treat visitors with some ominous music? Luckily, there is very little you actually need to do to get this right.

Most smart speakers understand voice commands such as the words "get spooky," and will begin playing some scary sounds right away. You can then add variations of scary or spine-chilling to the voice command and find new audio treasures that can help you take the spookiness quotient up a notch or two.

Even most smart doorbells can offer to play Halloween-y tones this time of the year, so why not add that to the mix? For those who are throwing a Halloween party for your friends and family, audio streaming sites like Spotify and YouTube Music have dedicated playlists for the day, so just connect your speakers and get the party going.

If you can spare a little time and cash to buy some small smart speakers, they can be neatly hidden inside a pumpkin or seemingly harmless outdoor decoration and play some hair-raising music on a loop at low volumes. Your visitors may not even realize why they felt a chill on their way in.

Apparitions on demand

Nothing is scarier than an apparition appearing out of nowhere in a dark room and disappearing all of a sudden. Back in the day, when we were kids, the only way to get this right was to dress up like a ghost and wait for the right moment to spring the surprise.

Luckily, with technology, you can be at the door, talking to trick-or-treaters and still feigning innocence about what is going on in another room. If you think that your acting skills help you hold a straight face, then here's what you need.

A dark room, a short-throw projector, a shower curtain, and some spooky scenes to go with it. For less than $400, you can have it all in one go with the AtmosKIT Plus, which comes with a battery-operated projector, a 4GB drive to play spooky projections, and projection material and it can even mirror what's happening on your tablet or smartphone.

If you already own a projector, then you can purchase the video effects on their own, making them the only digital decoration you need to buy.

Bonus tip:

Since most of these devices will be using the existing Wi-Fi at your house at the same time, you can also direct them to play out in a sequence when someone approaches. Rather than testing your coding skills, just head over to IFTTT, which runs online digital automation platforms as a service, and connect your devices.

All you need to do is to tell the site the sequence of events you want to be played out when somebody approaches the house and it will handle the rest. Even with a free account, you can run your sequence an unlimited number of times. Setting it all up will likely not even take an hour but definitely make for a memorable evening.

Halloween in Virtual Reality

If you have been debating whether of not to get the latest virtual reality (VR) headset for yourself, then this would be a good time to do so. There has been a sharp increase in offerings in the VR space over the past year and Meta's Quest headsets, among others, are home to a variety of spooky content just in time for Halloween.

You can experience the horrors of popular titles like the Haunted House and Scream Park in virtual reality or choose to visualize the Alien Apocalypse or interact with Pennywise the Dancing Clown from close quarters.

For those dying to share their experiences with their family and friends, Meta will also let you make #KillerReels on its Messenger as well as Instagram platforms, so everybody can join your online party too.

If VR games are more of your thing, then there is no dearth of options there too and you don't have to be limited by Meta's offerings either. You can go all out on shooting games like After The Fall or take up the role of a paranormal investigator in Phasmophobia and do some ghost hunting with your friends on a Halloween night.

Mobile games

In case you haven't caught up on the VR bandwagon yet or simply don't want to have your precious VR headset out when the large numbers of people arrive, then why not ask them to pull out their smartphones and have a live competition with mobile games?

There are a bunch of spooky games that one can play. If you are a fan of jump-thrills then there is Five Nights at Freddy's, or for those who don't like them, there is the spookiness of Limbo.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night would be ideal for gamers who are looking for a theme-appropriate game for Halloween night, and if you do not wish to hash and slack, then there are five episodes of The Walking Dead, each of which come at a fee.

Now that you have some great ideas to spook up your Halloween Party, now is the time to put them into action and have a fun weekend ahead.