Mark Hopkins, manager of the Halloween Express in Greenville, S.C., is proud of his meat freezer. It's not your normal meat freezer by any means. This one is spray-painted a rusty red, is missing a door, and overflows with packaged, fake, but real-enough-looking, human body parts.

The freezer isn't for sale, but the body parts are, Hopkins says.

When it comes to decorating your home for Halloween, a blood and guts theme is one option. After all, this is the one holiday where gross-ness makes you cool (although you'll want to spare the youngest trick-or-treaters).

These days there are more ways to decorate for Halloween than ever before, so you might want to explore your options before you put out the same old rubber witch, inflatable ghosts and plastic pumpkins.

And the market is bigger than ever. National retail statistics show that spending has surged among young adults over the past two years, and the National Retail Federation notes consumers are likely to spend $1.39 billion on decorations this year, about $26 per person 18 and older.

If scary and gory decorations just aren't for you, go for the theatrical.

Suzie Grow knows all about do-it-yourself Halloween decorating through her experience setting up haunted houses over the years. Currently, she is helping an arts group build the set for its haunted theater.

Grow recommends decorating tips from the Martha Stewart Living Web site, www.marthastewart.com/halloween-decorations. Spray-paint dead tree branches black and place them on your mantle or on a table, hang black crepe paper from your ceiling to look like stalactites, or dangle black bats around the room to give it the feel of a cave.

You can also check out local thrift stores for inexpensive items to turn into haunted home goods. Regan O'Leary, spokesperson for the Savers/Value Village thrift store chain, suggests setting your table with brass candleholders spray-painted black or orange and filled with orange or white tapers. Wrap four black pipe cleaners around the center of each candleholder and bend them outward to create "spider legs."

Grow and friend Pam Solberg offer a few more decorating tips for those who plan to go all out.

• The levitating table. To create the effect, place an old, white tablecloth, wet with starch, over a table.

Hang a coat hanger over the table, and pull four corners from the edge of the tablecloth up and attach them to the coat hanger while the tablecloth dries. When the tablecloth is completely dry, remove the coat hanger and the table will look like it is levitating.

• White paper-bag luminaries. While the bags are still flat, punch out words like "Boo" or other Halloween phrases with a hole punch. Fill the bags with two inches to three inches of sand, then place a candle or some kind of light in the bags and set them along a sidewalk leading up to your front door. The words will glow, and the bags will light the path for trick-or-treaters.

• A non-homemade item, but one that is "really cool," says Grow, is WOWindow Posters. The posters, which can be found at www.wowindows.com, are full-color, adhesive squares that you stick to your windows and illuminate with household lights. Choose from huge, black cat eyes, a pumpkin, a witch, candy corn, a skull and more.

"This is a really cool illusion," Grow says of the cat eyes that take up an entire windowpane. "It looks like a gigantic cat is looking out the window."

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