Being a Saturday probably helped, also the weather was nice here.
I got about 30, which is more than last year, but nothing like what I remember from years past. I used to go through four big bowls, last night I only did one.
Live in a small town, in one of the “richer” neighborhoods. Ended up with somewhere around 300-400 kids. Definitely down from the last few years, but went through 6 bags of 455 pieces of candy and only had 1 leftover (started giving 2-3 pieces per person, and towards the end were giving larger handfuls).
We had about 75. One street over has hundreds, maybe thousands. We sit in the front yard and my husband waves at people so they stop. We gave candy, granola bars, peanut butter crackers, popcorn, and ramen. It was funny how many little kids went for the ramen. The parents would just shrug and say, “they love noodles.”
Several years ago, a house one block over set up an elaborate haunted house, the path started in the driveway, went through their garage, inside their house, and through the backyard, it was quite impressive. They did it for several years running. It made the local news. They had a line all the way down the block for a few years before they moved. The street was filled with people showing off big costumes, Stormtroopers, a dude dressed as reaper on his actual horse, crazy shit the last couple of years. Of course, that brought a lot of extra kids to the neighborhood.
I trick with ketchup. Last year, kids went crazy. This year, I almost made one cry and I felt really bad.
Anyway, I recommend a fog machine. Wind can ruin it, but I just let it rip with a clamp on the button. I ended up smoking out the block with an eerie haze that called kids over. I still had poor turnout. I always mean to stroll around myself and see if it’s my block or the town that’s light, but I’m always too busy heckling kids at my door.
How do you trick with catsup?
“Trick or treat!”
“ahh, I get to choose?? Then I choose trick! Pick your favorite ketchup” as I hand a bowl of ketchup packets to them
Ah i see, the ol’ switcheroo
Ramen? I should try ramen next year.
One of my daughters favourite places when trick or treating in previous years handed out potatoes (actually I think it was a bowl of various produce and she picked the potato). No idea why she loved it so much; she had to be told to throw it out eventually because it was like a pet rock for her, except potatoes eventually go bad.
My friend’s neighbor gives out potatoes. Apparently there’s a fight among the neighborhood kids to see who can get one before they’re gone.
Candy is very expensive. Some people are having a hard time affording their own groceries and bills, so spending a couple hundred dollars on candy is just out of the question right now.
A lot of the lights on my street were off yesterday (last year was also sparse), and it’s not as much fun to trick or treat if you have to walk a couple of miles because more and more houses aren’t able to participate, I’ll bet.
I’ll also bet some parents are driving their kids to richer neighbourhoods since they’re more likely to have the goods.
e: and to be clear, my neighbourhood is not poor, but comfortably middle class. People are suffering.
Any memorable costumes or encounters? I got Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum twins. Very surprising.
One girl came dressed up as Wednesday Addams and Thing with her parent dressed as cousin It. She pulled it off really well.
There was one kid, maybe like 10, who was dressed as some sort of mad scientist, so when he came to the door I said "Doctor! Good to see you! Any good experiments lately? And completely in stride he just says “yeah, him” and he gestures to his little brother who’s dressed like some kind of gremlin/monster thing with horns and wings. It was a fun coordinated idea and I just really liked his confidence, a lot of kids are too shy for that kind of thing!
Zero. As usual. Practically nobody trick or treats around here anymore. It’s sad.
Same. Been thinking for a few years about organizing the hood and making it the place to be for kids.
Neighborhoods get older. In a new sudivision of high density housing near us, you couldn’t drive through the streets there were so many kids.
Same, but we’re a single neighborhood without any connecting neighborhoods since the HOA neighborhood next to us pad locked our attached gate as they don’t want non HOA people cutting through there neighborhood
Same here. Very depressing!
We just moved, our old neighborhood was always pretty slow, and it was raining most of the day Halloween so we weren’t really expecting that many people. We ended up running out of candy (two large assorted bags) in about 40 minutes and there were people on the street for another couple hours after that so I guess we need to stock up for next year.
1 group of 4 high school age girls. Walked around the neighborhood and less that 20% were participating. Saw lights and TV on inside many with lights out. Sad. :(
None - I haven’t had any since moving to this neighborhood in 2020. The first few years, I bought full size candybars with the hopes of making a kid’s day. I always ended up eating them or giving them away to service workers, so I stopped even buying candy.
Wife and I sat on the porch. Nothing special, we had 3 kids come by. Boy did we buy too much candy.
I got <20, but they were super excited for the toys, stickers, and rocks, so I’m happy 💜💜💜 There was also a group of pre-teen/early teen boys that made me happy they hadn’t given up on their childhoods yet! 🎊🎉🎊
We got maybe 20 max. About half of them didn’t have a costume. I had a bunch of cheap masks that I passed out of they didn’t have anything and the kids were ecstatic.
We had 59 kids, which is slightly above average for us, but that’s not surprising considering it was a Saturday night and the weather was amazing. We prep for 50-60 usually and we had just enough candy to make it through.
I was hoping for a rebound after it absolutely poured last year and we only had 13 kids.
I was out trick or treating with my kids, but my father in law kept a tally.
235ish kids.
Between 650-700 treats given out, but I have yet to do a final tally on what’s left. Surprising given the rain in Southern California. Almost all were given out to children (a handful of parents asked for one) and few people got more than one.
Up around 100 over last year.
I haven’t had any trick or treaters at all since I moved into this apartment. But I usually see kids in costumes with their parents leaving the complex to go out and about the town. Didn’t even see that this year. And nobody had decorations or jack o lanterns.
