The thing about Halloween is this: We’re all in on the game. We know the front yard is not really a cemetery, the skeleton on the front porch is plastic, the eyeballs in the bowl are peeled grapes and the punch-bowl fog is caused by dry ice.

Yet, we play along, because illusion is fun and Halloween still reminds us of plastic buckets full of candy and all that jumpy frivolity.

Any stage director knows that lighting is half the battle. If you can create a foreboding darkness sprinkled with flickering light, all those ghoulies and ghosties seem twice as real. Begin by preying on your guests’ scary-movie memories: Hang a lighted Bates Motel sign in the yard, preferably creaking in an autumn breeze, advertising that there’s always a vacancy inside ($30, above left). Drape orange icicle lights from Amazon in the upstairs windows for an otherworldly glow ($6), and nestle an electric spider web (above, right) in one of your trees, preferably in a branch that bows down close to people’s heads.

Wrap a lighted string of pirate heads, skulls and tombstones (both above) or creepy crawlies from Halloween Effects around the front porch posts and you’ll make some of those trick or treaters think twice about charging up to your door ($10-$13).

Inside the house, turn off those overhead lights: You don’t want it to look all safe and normal. Take a devilish cue from the old Munsters TV sit-com and fill Pottery Barn’s wicked black candelabra ($59) with eight black tapers ($10, set of 4, above left).  For an even more startling effect, use Illuminations’ dripping tapers - white tapers that have the illusion of dripping red as they burn ($9, set of 2). Artfully place some haunting ghoul tapers and tea lights in the nooks and crannies of your rooms, just so no one has a chance to get comfortable ($19 tapers, set of 3; $10 tea lights, set of 4, above right).  And continue the mood right into the restrooms, by hanging strings of black lights around the mirrors; nothing is quite as unsettling as seeing your teeth and the whites of your eyes reflected in black light ($20).

And the table? A piece de resistance, spooky lighting-wise. Smith and Hawken offers galvanized bat luminarias, ensuring a constant peek-a-boo flickering light ($51, set of 3, above left). Horchow adds a dose of evil with its tall skull candleholders ($50, above right), and Ablaze Candles adds to the haunting with its handcrafted gargoyle candle; just imagine it when it’s burned halfway down and the light comes from within ($21).  You’ll have a table full of tricks and treats.