Ask Lemmy

Yeah.

I “blame” popular neighborhoods. Used to be you went around your neighborhood or went with a friend in town if you were more rural or something.

Now there are “it” neighborhoods or even small towns that seem to attract large groups, it’s almost like a block party. Tons of people arrive, there’s wild and extreme halloween decorations, effort gets put into costumes, and sometimes even full-size candy bars. My kids started going to popular areas with friends, one friend lives in a neighborhood like that so everyone uses his house as a starting point. It’s cool, but unfortunately large gatherings tend to bring assholes, too, and now there’s a cop nearby on standby because some people have to be dipshits and start being destructive or try to start fights.

We barely handed out one bag of candy in our neighborhood, last year we went through two big ones.

Trunk or treats and parents being afraid of the devil are to blame. Most parents won't even let their kids ride the bus these days let alone go to a strangers. The msm has parents constantly afraid that satan will abduct their kid. So yeah things trunk or treat in church parking lot evolved and killed normal trick or treat

Nobody seems to have mentioned this yet, but Trunk or Treat for lazy and/or helicopter parents has cannibalized door to door visits.

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.

It was bonkers this year!

In excess of 650 candy given out, though not my usual Famous Amos packs (wildly more expensive than last year). A solid wall of kids and families from 7-8:30 when we ran out.

I do go crazy for decorating and candy delivery mechanism.

Moved into my house in 2017. Neighborhood has smaller kids. I bought candy for a number of years and had less than 20 groups in the entire ~5 year span. So I just stopped buying candy and leave my lights off now. Even reviewing doorbell footage there were only like a handful of groups walking around this year.

Trunk or treats have blown up out here. Why walk miles through the neighborhood for a couple hours when 30-60 minutes through a parking lot or two gets you the same amount. Especially at malls with hundreds of cars.

We use to trick or treat on rollerblades as kids to cover more ground. Trick or treating has really gone down hill. I remember being a teenager and handing candy out at my parent’s house. We got literal hundreds of kids. Like you basically were better off just sitting at the front door or on the porch if the weather was nice. The stream of kids was practically constant. That was decades ago and their neighborhood has aged out a bit but they still get a ridiculously higher number than I’ve ever gotten.

Depending on your neighborhood and how long you've lived there, you'll see ebb and flow overtime. Families age out but stay in the neighborhood. My neighborhood actually saw an uptick for the first time since before COVID. We had some old families move out and replaced with just a few families with kids.

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.

Our street only has 2 houses that do it, so everyone drives right on by our block. Some of them go to parties instead, some of them are just lazy and disinterested.

I've kind of shamed people into decorating for Christmas, I made my house elegantly lit with a warm white glow and theirs were dark and depressing. But Halloween, just the 2 of us for years.

We're in a high crime city so a lot of folks do trunk-or-treats and I get that, but, those kids are gonna be adults that have to learn to live here too. There's something humanizing about going up to strangers doors, finding out your neighbors aren't actually monsters or assholes, but kind people.

No sidewalks. And nearby gated communities with sidewalks. Those communities are richer and setup tables outside. Two houses were handing out jello shots to the adults, one had a DJ and light show. My neighborhood still has some houses that do hand outs, but without a sidewalk most people drive up to each house, get out, knock, get back in, drive down to the next house, stop, get out, etc. Parents are worried their walkers will get run over. We can't compete with the other neighborhoods So, in my opinion, communities built to only serve cars and not pedestrians is the problem.

We normally have kids up until 11 pm, this year we had less then normal, and only 3 after 10 pm. We live on a main street, and are the known Halloween house with the way we decorate. We probably had 1/3 less this year. We attribute it to the trunk or treats. Our next door neighbor took his kids trunk or treating 6 times in the past week. Safer? Maybe. Lazier? Very much so.

There's one area in my town a few blocks away that gets SLAMMED with trick or treaters. It's got the highest density of nice houses. We'll see about a dozen families as they make their way over to that neighborhood.

Over the years, people in my neighborhood haven't bothered to pass out candy since nobody goes through here, which makes even less people go through here, and so on.

Neighborhoods go through cycles. If all your neighbors have no school aged kids, you will see low turnout.

We usually have several groups of families in our neighborhood. Our streets were packed this year, though. First Halloween in a while that wasn't cold or raining or both.

Our neighborhood only has two entrance streets with a lot of connecting interior streets and cul de sacs which makes it a wee safer due to no through streets and less traffic.

Many families set up firepits in their driveways to hand out candy, sometimes with music playing or movies projected on garage doors, one house has a popcorn machine every year. This year several houses had buckets of mini shots for parents and a lot of others smelled like some dank vape. When we drank we used to bring a wagon with wine and cups to share with neighbors. It's a really great time.

This year there was even an Inflatable Cupcake Castle of Doom.

Last year there was a haunted house set up so that at the end you were watching the next group on cameras and you controlled the puppets and stuff, very Jigsaw style. That house has always had an elaborate haunted house but couldn't do it this year.

So...yeah, trick or treating is still alive in our neighborhood.

I wondered this year. Last year 60 bags were not enough. This year i have 30 left. I think a lot kids got older and don’t do it anymore (though the biggest groups were some teenage girls admiring my decoration, i do the most fancy one in my area as i have a long path to fill).

Unfortunately I am not sure if i will ever be able to do this again due to my health.

Definitely on a down swing. Not a lot of houses do it. Lack of kids and candy prices. Kids get transported to more expensive neighborhoods or the trunk or treat events. I haven’t done it the last few years cause of the decrease in traffic, raising cost of candy, and the increasing number of rude ass kids (teenagers) that grab everything they can without saying a word.

We had zero this year. We even put out decorations and every year we give out full size bars and pokemon packs. Live in the center of town in a dense neighborhood. I do think part of the reason is none of the street lights ever are on anymore

UK - Only had one kid come and had lots of treats. My own kids went out and got quite a haul, but most people had left bowls out so they didn't knock on many doors (they know only to go to decorated houses).

For the last few years, there seem to be more people decorating and putting treats out than there are kids going out. Plus our weather has been shit.

No one this year because of a stupid baseball game and suddenly everyone cares about baseball because go local team. Canada is supposed to be "elbows out" but we throw money at US team sports that over schedule.

Things died down since start of covid and this year was more dead than last year. I suspect it has to do with ICE making people feel safer

/S

Neighbourhoods have less kids because they grew up and then didn't have kids at the same rate, it's prob more active near new suburbs built by schools or other areas they are renting at.

Maybe it's because no one can afford to have kids or buy candy.

More kids this year than any other year.

I meant to set stuff up this year but didn't make time for it. it was windy and the second day of constant rain in a row, which might have had an effect, but my street was dead.

we put out candy and decorations for a couple years until two thefts the same night, then my ex got so annoyed by that that she didn't want to do it the next year. the first theft was just the usual kid taking the whole bowl, whatever. but the second was a woman driving kids house to house and sending them to steal all of the candy. fuck that bitch. it was a pretty nice car, too.

my neighbourhood is very walkable for this kind of activity, so it is a bit surprising, but I blame this year on the weather, it truly was miserable. hopefully I find time over the winter to make decorations for next year

also, candy prices are insane

Not here. Insane amount of people out last night, most ive ever seen.

Had 1 visit, normally 5 or so.

But actually its pretty nice. I dont like these commercial days where its all about buying shit like costumes and candy.

Maybe we should donate that money to some organisation instead of getting fat and ugly eating candy.

I got 42 trick or treaters.

Neighbourhood is dying, new or expecting parents do not move here any more. And old folks get really aggressive when you dare go around as a young teen, for some reason.

My neighbors with kids took them to another neighborhood to trick or treat. Only one came to my door

My wife I walked around our area in Los Angeles this year and many areas were completely full of trick or treating. Strangely though some of the most expensive neighborhoods had zero Halloween decorations and no activity.

We had much nicer weather this year. I had maybe a third of the trick or treaters as I did last year.

It was much less than I expected, and I have a ton of candy left over. Like 90 full size candy bars left. Last year I went through 120 to 150. This year, we handed out about 70, and as it got later into the night I was handing out multiple to kids.

I'm in a middle class Chicago suburb. We've had ICE in our city and neighboring suburban cities. While I haven't seen them on our street, we do think the general political climate kept a lot of families home.

My neighborhood has kids living in single-family homes, but they all go trunk-or-treating. It's extremely disappointing.

Hasn't died here.

Trick or treating is alive and well in places where you can walk safely, and houses aren't too far apart from each other. The problem is too many places in the US don't fit that description.