LAST CALL
Dick Durland author of ‘Halloween: Life of the Party’ D
ick Durland of Paxton wants to take your Halloween party to the next level. His new book, “Halloween: Life of the Party,” outlines the top tips for throwing a spooky bash your guests will never forget.
DYLAN AZARI
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What did your first Halloween party look like in comparison with the most recent one? We always wallpaper the entire first floor. At our very first Hallow-
carved. The best thing we serve, quite honestly, is something that my father-in-law makes called a graveyard cake. Another concocYou discussed four of the senses. You clearly create a dis- tion that he created is “kitty litter.” tinct smell, look, feel and sound. That’s exactly what it looks like, with little squirts of Tootsie Roll What about taste? What’s on twisted on top. The eyeball punch the menu? Oh my gosh, we have is also beautiful. a whole section on food. Presentation is everything. One of the recipes is just chips and salsa, but I’m creeped out just hearing you talk about it. Oh yeah, almost the salsa is inside a baby’s torso. anything is possible. I have a It’s just plain sick. When I first saw it, I was like, “Who invited the repelling spider that is hooked to a individual responsible for this ma- switch on the other end of a room niacal dish?” We also serve crack- so it comes down and drops into the party whenever somebody ers that are pouring out of a dead triggers it. skeleton’s chest cavity. We have different variations of finger food like little mummy dogs. One year, Where can people find your book? Amazon, Barnes & Noble, somebody brought hot dogs and Walmart … pretty much everycarved them. You’d be amazed at where. how much they look like realis– Sarah Connell Sanders tic bloody fingers when they’re bunch of little 15-second snippets of old-time horror movies.
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What were you celebrating? It was a family party. An excuse to get everyone together. I’ve always gone over the top. When my son was 12, he achieved his black belt in karate. I bought a ream of black tablecloth fabric. It was about four feet wide and 200 feet long. I wrapped the entire house in it and tied it like a karate belt over the front door. I have a habit of supersizing any events that we have.
When I think about a Halloween party, I imagine wearing a blindfold and feeling my way through a bowl of grapes that are supposed to be eyeballs. What takes your Halloween party to the next level? Anybody can throw a Halloween party. It’s easy to do. There are lots of stores to go buy stuff and decorate. But, we painstakingly go through the effort of wallpapering the entire first floor to create a backdrop and set the scene for a castle dungeon. We found that by putting simple $15 flame pots in the corners of the rooms, we can elevate the look. There are a lot
of spiderwebs; some you will see and some you won’t see. We hang pieces of thread from the ceiling at about shoulder length to give you that cobwebby brush. At a store in Salem, we bought vampire blood incense, which we burn for its distinct aroma. All of the internal lighting is orange. There’s a fog machine that lets out intermittent bursts. A thunder and lightning storm ensues throughout the party. The backroom is mocked up like an actual dungeon torture chamber. When the sound system isn’t booming out thunder, my wife and I enjoy playing eighties hard rock. Anybody can set up a party, but ours is a production. The music actually ramps up as the party goes on. Between every couple of songs, you hear a witch cackle or Vincent Price’s laugh from “Thriller.” And then, there’s a
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What did the path to becoming a published author look like for you? I always wanted to write someday. It was on my bucket list. I’m pretty passionate about a lot of things. Our Halloween celebration evolved out of what my wife would call perfectionism on my behalf. Every year we throw a party. With each new iteration, I pick up where I left off and add to it. Over the years, we’ve amassed quite an accumulation of storebought and homemade Halloween decorations. I’m not talking about just props and backdrops. It’s the nuances and the minutiae — the special effects and illusions. All kinds of little things contribute to the ambiance that we create in order to throw the kind of party that our guests have grown accustomed to. Over the years, people began asking me, “Did you invite the newspaper to take pictures of this thing?” And, then, I had other people saying, “You should write a book.” So, here I am. Theme parties have always been one of the things I’ve enjoyed most. It started with a luau in my backyard that involved a six-foot functioning volcano and 200-pound carved totem poles.
een party, I remember we didn’t cover the top foot because the reams of wallpaper came up short. We just left it. The elements of trickery grew as the years went by.
