The past couple of years, the amount of kids out on Halloween has dwindled down in my neighborhood. This year, my wife and I were at her cousin’s house and we saw maybe a couple of kids walking around. My wife blames people going to Trunk or Treat things. We both work in retail, so we see more of the public, and nobody was in costume. What was everybody’s experience with Halloween this year?
I went walking yesterday during trick or treating to a party at a bar 2 miles away. I saw a few groups of kids, I walked through a business street area and all the restaurants and bars and stores were giving out candy to kids with their parents. Every group had a parent but they were mostly 8-14. Definitely wasn’t as busy as it was when I went as a kid 15 years ago, even though I lived in a small town. Also not a lot of houses were participating in giving out candy but I moved to a city so maybe that’s it
Maybe it is the fear of being shot for stepping on someone else’s property. Many people with kids also can’t afford to live in a house, and apartment complexes don’t do door to door trick or treating.
Halloween never really was a thing in my country. At high times, there were three or four groups during the evening. This year only one.
I mean compared to when I was young its come down massively. It got sorta wierd when you had parents driving down the street one house at a time and the kids get out and back in and then you had people coming from far places if your place was known for handing out good stuff. Im in a condo now so it just does not really happen as its just not as accessible as single family homes. My place is also on this busy triangle that is surrounded by busy streets with no side streets.
I stopped bothering like two or three years ago. Number of years in a row before that I had zero trick-or-treaters so just kind of felt like why bother anymore?
For years we’ve had almost no trick-or-treaters come to our house. We know there are tons in the area, but the number who actually stopped at our house kept dropping.
Last year it was warm enough on Halloween for us to leave the front door open, and we saw tons of kids walk past our house and heard one kid say, “That’s the creepy house.”
Which is ridiculous. There’s nothing creepy at all about our house.
Anyway, last year I decided I should make a sign to let the kids know they could stop at our house.
I made a post about the sign.
Anyway, the sign worked. We had double-digit trick-or-treaters this year.
Creepy houses are exactly where you should go on Halloween. Damn kids only caring about candy and not the spirit of the holiday!
Kind of yes… When I was a kid (born in the 70s, grew up in the 80s) we went all around the neighborhood.
These days you can put your light on, it won’t matter. People drive their kids to the rich neighborhoods and trick-or-treat there.
Why the HOAs put up with it is beyond me.
The past decade or so where I live, almost without fail, there’s a huge rain or thunderstorm on Halloween that makes it absolutely miserable to trick-or-treat. You have to wear a jacket and if you wear face paint it just runs and you can’t see. The very last time I went out about 8 years ago, the storm was so bad it nearly ripped a chainlink fence off its posts and the people giving out candy just dumped their whole bowl in my bag because they knew nobody else would come.
No, it was still going strong yesterday, despite construction project blocking sidewalks and concerns about ICE.
I live in an urban area and we run out of candy in two hours there are so many kids.
Neighborhoods go through cycles. If all your neighbors have no school aged kids, you will see low turnout.
For my neighborhood it was the busiest I’ve ever seen it in 17 years. A lot of home made costumes, even teenagers dressing up and getting in on the action with the gaggles of little kids. A few houses even did mini haunted houses in the front yards and garages. A lot of other houses had people chilling in the driveways with a small fire going. It was in the 50s (F) so not particularly warm either… I’m in a lower to middle class area, no HOA neighborhood so people do what they want with decorating and it’s great.
This is really wholesome thanks for commenting!
If anything, it’s gotten worse since this place gentrified.
Used to be, kids weren’t allowed out after dark, this was a proper dangerous estate, we had murderers and even one or two people with actual guns!
These days it’s all weirdly big cars trying to copy the huge American ones, custom reg plates and live laugh love signs. They can even afford a second car this lot, AND fancy security cameras!
Gone are the days we used to get our cameras smashed so people could nick our motor.
What’s the world coming to?
My neighborhood has seen a steady increase in trick-or-treating over the last decade since the gentrifiers (including me, TBH) have started having kids.
Steady uptick in trick or treaters over the last 3 years. I think the neighborhood demographic is shifting to having more kids in the area.
We have a pretty large population of new immigrants in the area too, many with kids, and I think they weren’t super familiar with the concept of Halloween when they arrived. I mean… it does sound kinda insane if you didn’t grow up with it.
But I think they’ve realized that yes, it is a real thing… strangers will happily shovel candy at your children when they knock on a door.
Makes me very happy, it’s such a community building event. I was explaining to my newish-to-canada wife that as a kid it’s almost better than Christmas. As fun as Christmas is, as a kid you’re still the passenger. Halloween you actually have some agency… what are you going to dress up as? Who do you want to trick or treat with? What route do you want to take? What candy do you want to barter with your friends afterwards?
Lots of neighborhoods just don’t have that many kids left. They’ve grown. Easily 80% of my suburban neighborhood is over 65. And they’ve been here since the 90s.
When young families can’t buy homes their trick-or-treating becomes relegated to their apartment complex or (when those complexes are sketchy) to trunk or treats.
