BANGKOK — Thailand’s Red Cross Society may not measure its blood supplies by the bucket, but it knows how to throw a Halloween party.

Hoping that the annual gusto for gore would inspire donors, the society’s National Blood Center had staff and volunteers dress up Wednesday as ghosts, monsters, and witches as well as other characters straight out of Monster Chiller Horror Theater.

The donation room was festooned with faux spider webs and plastic bats of the blood-sucking kind. At a minimum, nurses had horns or bat wings attached to their hats; others had macabre face paint, and a few gung-ho ghouls went all out in full dress as witches, ghosts, and creatures of indeterminate monstrosity.

The Red Cross said the need for donated blood grows by 8-10 percent a year.  /kga