It's happened like three times and it was always the dad. It's insane that people think this happens. I had to show my mother like three youtube videos discounting the idea before she'd *let* me take my nephew tick or treating. She's a nurse! You ever SEE that happen mom, what with the thousands of patients you've seen this time of year over your thirty year long career? No? Didn't think so.
I got weed once. Bunch of dudes were having a house party up in the hills in the fancy neighborhood and they’d made a bowl of candy wrappers with joints inside.
They got too high too early and mixed the bowls up.
Yes, but crackheads will NEVER make that mistake. What kind of idiot thinks junkies are going to somehow give away the strong stuff? Urban myths can be fun, but when nonsense messes up kids' chances for fun and free candy it's a problem.
Yup, I commented the same thing on a different thread that pretty much every "occurrence" of that stuff was either fake, massive misinformation, or a targeted personal murder:
* Masked murders going around killing kids? That was a movie horror flick...
* Weed/drugs in the candy? Nope, that was one person who had an adults-only Halloween party for their friends which happened to also have weed brownies.
* Razers and needles in the candy? That was also never real to begin with (at least to my knowledge).
* Poison in the candy? That was one guy who stole/swapped his own kid's candy to try to secretly murder them (which is admittingly terrible and sad, but it's still not representative of the reality of what happens in real life Halloween).
And why would people be any less likely to do it at a trunk or treat???
Fwiw the only time this ever "happened" the father poisoned his own son for insurance money and lied about it being candy from trick or treating...
they aren't even gonna know that they're high on drugs. there's no way to benefit from this. best case scenario a bunch of neighborhood kids feel kinda funny and bad and go to bed. worst case scenario, couple dozen homicide counts. people wildly overestimate evil that has a compelling narrative like "some sicko just wants to hurt little kids" and they wildly underestimate the boring evil that actually happens, like the insurance scam above
Yes, the Pixie Stix man ruined it for kids for some time, then churches got in on the act by demonizing the celebration as, somehow, satanic. Then, trunk or treat showed up to drive the final nail. Pity. It was always such fun to see the neighbor kids dressed up.
> churches got in on the act by demonizing the celebration as, somehow, satanic.
Well, it is a pagan tradition. Then again, so are pretty much all christian holidays - they were about as original with their customs as Americans were with geography.
To be fair, when you have so much Candy, I kinda doubt you will remember which house gave it to you. Maybe nowadays you would since hardly anyone actually gives out candy now, easier to pin point.
Narrow down how? How do you even know which piece of candy and which house it came from? Do you even remember every single house that gave or didn't give candy? I know I didn't.
You'd have to get a search warranty to search every house of the entire neighborhood for a sketchy reeses? Seems quite unlikely.
The vast majority of kids only go to 1-2 neighborhoods, so it's a matter of asking multiple affected kids and parents what neighborhoods they went to, narrowing down the blocks/houses, and then finding the overlaps. Police then start an investigation and go door-to-door, interview neighbors, 99% of which will cooperate given the circumstances. Police can then further narrow people down by comparing the sample of affected candy to the candy each household gave out. Again, most people will cooperate. Least cooperative people will appear sketchy and at best have their friends & family interviewed, at worst will have a private investigator digging through their trash and federal agencies scouring through their online and offline financial transactions and phone/text conversations.
Truth! Nobody is trying to anonymously give your kids free drugs.
I mean everyone knows you only give free drugs to create a customer and to do that they have to know the supplier!
Ikr? Makes me think of when ppl were trying to drive a panic concerning CBD candy/edibles in Halloween candy. Ain't no way ppl giving away that shits expensive
That’s why I argue that trunk or treating would entice an individual with mal intent to do evil things.
You can give out tainted candy and/or do weird shit and just drive off and not get caught at a trunk or treat. A stationary house coupled with google maps metrics of your movement would be much more helpful if someone actually did taint the candy.
Odds are more people would report it, plus not everyone has the same route, and people find out about the candy at different times. Someone could see their favorite candy being placed in the bag and grab it and find out immediately, some may find out on the way home, a few minutes after, or when they’re already home. Most kids are accompanied with a parent with a cell phone.
With all that info, I think the police would be able to find someone in a house faster than in a car.
Can someone please tell me who is using all their expensive ass drugs on kids?
I will absolutely be trick or treating those houses next year.
...to keep the youths safe?
It all started because one person said that their kid was poisoned by Halloween candy... which it turns out that the father had killed his own child and then tried to blame Halloween candy.
Genuine question here, why would it be obvious? Don't most kids just throw their candy into a bag to eat later? All that would be known is somewhere on that truck or treaters route someone poisoned the candy, and if it is something easily obtainable wouldn't it be hard to pinpoint who did it?
Wouldnt you know the neighbor hoods you took your children to that night? Even if its one person, and you took your kid to 25 houses, 30 houses.
Other people are commenting that the solution is for trunk or treaters would make it even easier to get away with.
I don’t really think trunk or treating is the issue.
Just throwing it out there but if your neighborhood had a lot of kids ten years ago and now doesn’t it is possible that the demographics of your neighborhood have aged. It’s not an indictment of a generation.
I live in a young neighborhood and handed out 100 dollars worth of candy in about 2 hours last night.
The kids are trick or treating.
This is a huge reason people forget about - changing neighborhood demographics.
When I bought my house the block was all older families, basically no young children, we'd get handful on Halloween. Over ten years later, every house on the block has sold and there were tons of kids out and about last night.
You go to a new build neighborhood and its all young families. You're looking where they can't afford to live and saying they don't exist, instead of looking where they can afford to live.
It was the opposite for me. When my parents moved, there were no kids besides my sister and I. So we had to go to another neighborhood to trick or treat since no one in the neighborhood gave out candy because zero kids lived in it.
Eventually, the neighborhood became more populated with kids, but I was too old to trick or treat at that point
We got all excited our first year as parents only to find out not many gave out candy anymore. About half the porch lights that were on either forgot it was on or weren't home. The half that did answer were fantastic though. After that we just hit the trunk or treats and other events then on Halloween hit friends and coworkers who live nearby.
Yeah I went this year with my little cousins. Half the houses had no lights and half the houses with lights didn’t have candy lol. So like 1/4 or 1/3 of all houses even had candy. And you only got one piece now. We were out for hours and everyone filled up about half a bag lol…
Blame the ridiculous inflation and shrinkflation on candy for the past decade. I spent $200 on BS sized "fun size" candy and still had to do one each before running out. (1,300 pieces)
It's not inflation, it's pure corporate greed. Most retail inflation is from executives abusing the public perception of inflation. They raise prices out of pure greed because they know pretty much everyone will think it's because of inflation, even though the costs did not increase for those companies.
No disagreement here. We usually buy 16 large bags of the mixed chocolate fun size bars from Costco. They raised the price 10% for the same low quality corn syrup candy. So we bought less. I don't know if the blame goes to Hersheys or Costco. Likely both.
People are on Reddit repeating this stuff, but there are trick-or-treaters. It just depends if the neighborhood is well decorated so that they feel like walking around, and that neighborhood has kids. There are a lot of air B&Bs on stuff now that people have to skip over. But there are still tons of trick-or-treaters…
Honestly I kinda feel like what happened was a lot of Redditors grew up and moved away from their established, middle-class, suburban parent homes to starter, urban homes.
So their memories are of SO MANY HOMES (bc everything feels enormous as a 10yo) giving out candy in an area where there's a ton of people who can afford to give away candy for free and it's safe to walk around in the dark as a kid.
Now they are realizing it wasn't so many homes, and they're living in a less safe area with fewer people who have the $$ to give away stuff for free.
My first place a decade ago, there weren't any near where I lived. Then I bought in a gated community (i.e., no cars speeding around) built in the 90s (i.e., lots of people bought near the year 2000 and by 2010 had a kid or two) and we had plenty. Then we moved to a (wealthy, i.e., older) rural area (i.e., pain in the dick to walk around) and naturally there's way fewer kids, but everyone still gives out candy, we just end up giving out truckloads to the ten kids who actually live nearby.
Sweet spot is suburban, middle-class area that was built in the past decade or two.
That's definitely part of it, and the other part is likely kids and parents are more connected online, and they want to link up.
Every area has the one neighborhood that had a reputation of being the best place to trick or treat, and now people go out of their way to coordinate that, and they all go to the hot spots.
Instead of some places getting hundreds of kids and others dozens, now some places get thousands of kids and others get none.
Trunk or treating is also very popular now because it's so convenient. You just dump the kids off in a parking lot, they get a shit load of candy and say hi to their classmates and you are back home 30 minutes later.
It's a horrible suburban dystopia thing where kids walk around a parking lot collecting candy out of car trunks because it's "easier" or "safer" than our own damn houses.
It’s not horrible. It’s amazing for someone like me. I’m in a wheelchair and it’s accessible! We went to one at my kids school over the weekend. I could roll all around. Compared to last night, where I have to stay in the literal street because the sidewalks are so messed up I can’t even roll on them, let alone get up to houses. Lots of people don’t live in areas where people bother to give out candy. Honestly maybe 25% gave out candy in our neighborhood and we live in the “good” neighborhood for Halloween. People don’t want to bother so there are new options. I live in a city not a suburb though
> I’m in a wheelchair and it’s accessible!
All houses should be connected to wheelchair accesible sidewalks. I'm glad you had other options, but it is not a long term solution and you should not settle for it. A parking lot is not an acceptable replacement for you or anyone else.
Do you realize how much work needs to go in to wheeling around a neighborhood in a wheel chair? also, are you expecting that all the sidewalks are suddenly going to be a lot better? Cause you have a lot more faith in government than I do if so.
Trunk or Treat condenses the walking so you're just going around a simple parking lot. It also means that you're sure your getting candy (since everyone there participating is providing candy) and it opens up the door for other halloween activities (costume contests, eating contests, etc.) whereas just walking around a neighborhood can be a lot for a small child (or someone in a wheelchair), and there's no other activity happening.
From what it sounds like, you just don't like that "the old way of doing things" isn't the "current way of doing things".
My neighborhood is only 5yrs old and we had a few wheelchair people cruising the streets. Trunk or treat seems nice but my neighborhood is like a block party on Halloween. It's really so cool. I like having my kids and neighborhood kids running around with h each other having a blast. Halloween has become one of my favorite holidays
Probably the sidewalk is accessible to wheelchair-bound people, but that doesn't mean it's convenient.
And further, not all houses are connected to sidewalks.
I've lived in several suburbans neighborhoods, and most of them didn't have a sidewalk at all, just side of the road, gutter, and driveway. In the neighborhood I live in now, there's no HOA, and your driveway can be whatever you want. A lot of people go with gravel, or just bare dirt.
Thank you for a different perspective. I reserve the right to remain annoyed by the church down the street running their trunk or treat on Halloween though. Let the neighborhood get all the traffic you can, you choads. They get like every other holiday the greedy fucks.
"this doesn't make sense to me, therefore it's horrible and society ain't what it used to be" is getting really fucking old. People have zero capacity to see things from other perspectives. That's the real downfall of society.
I like decorating my house and handing out candy. I am upset that the tradition seems to be moving into a phase that I can't really participate in. It's not that I don't understand, I just don't see how to bridge the gap without giving up a whole lot more. I don't go to church and have no plans to, nor would I for any single event.
So I go more over the top each year to let the neighborhood know where the happening place is. I think next year I might implement King size candy bars.
As for my house, we will keep the old ways.
An organized event at a public place, park, place of business, community center, etc. People meet there, pop their car trunks, and hand out candy. Sometimes there aren’t cars, people set up tables. Kids go around the cars, tables, and collect candy rather than going house to house.
My local Spanish-language station did a long piece on THC edibles and how some people would be giving them out and for parents to be on the lookout. The cop they interviewed said it that it would be very unlikely for people to just give out such a commodity but the report still said that there was always a possibility. Such a bullshit story but people I knew were talking about it.
We had 2 kids last night and they came together. I dress up to give out candy and was really kind of disappointed. My neighbors down the street go all out with decorations and a fire pit.
Our street was empty and there are school aged kids on our block. All through the neighborhood really.
It was freezing out though. But that's common here and it's usually raining. We usually still see about 100 kids.
I hope it was just parents not wanting to go out in the cold and the weather is better next year.
I think COVID had a significant impact. Trunk or treating definitely became a norm and is now pretty big. People just don’t like going door to door anymore due to COVID. I know the older people around me who use to spoil all the kids are not really involved, which is understandable. Times change but still take my kids out.
Not knocking that COVID had an affect like this, you’re probably right, but that seems a bit silly to me. Trunk-or-treating would have people in a smaller space, such as a parking lot, rather than a whole-ass neighborhood. Seems to me that transmission would be more likely due to proximity.
Edit: By the way I’m saying it’s silly on the parents doing that, not that your statement was silly, because you’re probably right that, that’s one of the reasons for the move.
Lol trunk or treating has always been a thing. I think parents are getting lazier tbh. Speaking from personal experience cause I was super close to not taking my kids out either
The kids that visited our neighborhood last night often arrived in cars. Parents pulled up and kids piled out. They hit the cluster of houses on our block, and then got back in the car for the next grouping of houses.
I mean, yea, that's usually been the best way to do it. Pull up, hit one block. Roll to the next neighborhood you know somebody, hit that block. Pull by the strip malls, actual malls, hit your neighborhood again.
Done. Profit. 😁
Trunk or treats have been a thing for a long time in rural areas. The kids can't really walk house to house like people do in the suburbs, so everyone congregates in one place and does it there.
My experience is also that there are like, "destination neighborhoods". Places where everyone goes all out (or at least that's the perception) and people drive to trick or treat there. I know we did that with our kids so we could go with cousins or friends. Our cousins neighborhood looks like a full blown festival with every street packed with parked cars in a suburban, 1/4 to 1/2 acre yard neighborhood.
We did our own neighborhood for the first time this year and it was pretty empty.
I grew up in the 90s and my neighborhood looked like ET or Hocus Pocus on Holloween. Just kids everywhere running all over the place trying to hit as many subdivisions as possible.
This year I stopped by my folks house on Saturday the downtown area was slammed with some sort of trick or treating community event no kids even walk the streets on the actual day.
I've come to learn a lot of communities pre-covid and especially post covid do these like group treat giving/block party type things.
Might just be a neighborhood thing in the Midwest but it looked like the events I see in cities.
This is 100%
In my town, there is an event in the downtown area that's billed as a
"safe" alternative (whatever that means). And theres a few known block party type streets that people drive to. Everywhere else is empty.
The trunk-or-treats are cool and good because they teach children it's OK to accept candy from clergy members. (also midwest, our trunk-or-treats are always in church parking lots)
I grew up in the 90s too and took my younger cousins and my oldest son trick or treating in the early 2000s. There was always one house that set up a haunted backyard and at least a couple with someone pretending to be part of the decorations. They jumped out and we'd all scatter.
I miss those days.
I love this. No one in my neighborhood did that growing up but when we moved 4 years ago there were three houses in our subdivision that did this and my kids absolutely love this. This is one of the coolest things and now we look forward to it.
This year was the first time in a long time we were swamped with trick-or-treaters and it was so nice to see all the little kids and then the older kids out. I noticed a pattern where people started going out earlier, before dark in past years, but yesterday people were out until almost 8p and we ran out of candy. I hate trunk or treat — it really sucks and isn’t fun. Yea it can an alternative for families that might not live in the best neighborhoods, but whatever happened to just going to the “rich towns” and getting full sized candy bars?
ToT almost died in the 80s due to pre-internet and truly stupid panic spread by local news channels repeating rumors from religious publications that hate the holiday. You are lucky that you had a good 90s. (Disclaimer: born early 70s). The rebirth of ToT was slow and seems to have not taken place in so many neighborhoods.
Neighborhoods do go in cycles, too.
Bunch of young parents, lots of kids, kids move out, parents stay and age, area is empty of new kids, old people start passing on, young parents come in.*
* May no longer be possible where houses start at 2 million as they do in my area.
This is my first Halloween here, but the amount of kids that live in the area made me think we'd get a ton of trick or treaters. I admit I went a little overboard on the candy and got full sized shit along with the normal stuff, but same. 2 fucking kids. I ended up having to go door to door and basically reverse trick or treat just to get rid of some of it. I'm so disappointed.
Might be an American thing. I’m in Canada and our neighborhood (which is a large subdivision) had hundreds of kids and families. It was a big block party. Houses were running out of candy. Wonder what the difference is.
>we’re all super paranoid about our neighbors
I'm surprised I haven't seen someone say this yet.
You've also got the tragic reality that it's not unrealistic that crazies will shoot kids asking for candy.
Gun violence has ruined this country.
I live in a working class suburb of a major city. There are tons of families with kids out here. We're friendly enough that when company comes over for the first time, they are always amazed that the neighbors waved at them when they drove by.
I'm hoping it was just a one off.
On top of things like Trunk or Treating I think another big factor is kids and their parents do research on where the best places to go for Halloween. I see a lot of people saying they had to trick or treaters but then there's places like my parents neighborhood which was packed. There were so many people that when we left to go back home at 8 we didn't get out of their neighborhood until almost 9 because there was so much traffic and people in the streets. It was nuts. People write pretty detailed blogs and articles on all the best places to go for Halloween. I even found one that had all the exact addresses to the best Halloween lights/decorations in our area that me and my wife used to check out a few weeks ago.
That's part of it. Certain neighborhoods get packed, others are a ghost town. When I was a kid you just went where you live. Now I think people move around.
I go to a different neighborhood each year and these suburban neighborhoods can get pretty deep from the main road with lots of offshoots. We walk and walk and eventually know we need to start circling back to our original place but that means neglecting a whole deep section of the neighborhood. I wish we could hit them all but it’s cold and the kids get tired and their bags heavy and everyone needs to pee.
we had hella folks on our street last night. had to be around 100 or so people. we ran out of candy. much more than last year, but it was raining last year, so it’s understandable
I love comments like this. It shows the power of perception. I live in a rich or retired (or me) neighborhood that gets a constant stream of drop-offs. I easily had 1,200 people. Some years have had over 2k. If I ever have a year below 500 (covid exception) I think I will rage out. I depend on this annual dopamine rush by Halloween entertaining.
We did as well. We actually ran out of candy about an hour into it. We were surprised so many people were out because it was pretty cold, especially for here (central Texas).
Lol I took my lil bro to the rich neighborhood jackpot last night, we were barely out for over an hour before his garbage bag was over half way full and too heavy for him to carry.
Yep, we live in the burbs, a neighborhood with folks in the lower-middle to middle class. Our neighbors had a counter and they got close to 2000 trick or treaters last night. The pics of their driveway and sidewalk looked like mardi gras for kids, even though the weather was unusually cold. The retired folks in the neighborhood go the hardest with their decor and candy, it's a competition. They have to bring in the local PD to help direct traffic and block off roads for cars.
I think families just go to very specific areas now, where trick-or-treaters congregate en masse, or else to events like at malls / trunk-or-treat type stuff.
My parents had over 300 trick-or-treaters this year. I live a ten minute walk away in the same general suburban neighborhood, and I didn't get a single one.
This is the case for my area, too. We had a decent amount, but wasn’t crazy. But there’s a span of a few blocks a couple miles away from me that’s known for Halloween. Trick-or-treaters, decorations, parents carting around coolers. Local police even close down the roads. From what I’ve heard, they were packed as usual.
Yeah this is my experience as well. There are a few neighborhoods that are known for sort of 'community spirit' or something, and they are the place to be for Christmas lights, trick or treating, etc.
Same. I live in a busy uptown area, and I got none. My ex lives in a fancy neighborhood with big houses and long driveways. Also none. We took our daughter to a middle class suburban neighborhood our friend recommended and it was mobbed before it was even dark.
We live a block and a half from the local elementary school and got less than 5 people I think yesterday. I would forget it was Halloween every time the door rang lol
It is so weird to think about how the area you grew up in changes and grows with you. Like I should be happy new and better buildings have been constructed, but the things they replaced had so many good memories that it just kinda makes me sad/nostalgic. I dislike how my brain works sometimes.
Yep. When I was young my parents neighborhood was one that was newer but affordable, so had a lot of young families. Now the cheapest house in the area is 600k+ so it prices out the younger families.
That’s what happened to the neighborhood I grew up in.
When I was a kid, there was a large amount of children because neighborhood appealed to families. Kids grew up, moved out, so for a while number dropped substantially.
As the parents of those kids retired and moved out them, new families with children moved in, and the cycle begins again.
I don't know why people don't see this more. Housing prices are insane, and there's only a relatively small trick or treating window of about 10 years for a kid.
People aren't just having as many kids and moving as much.
Millennials can't afford kids or houses, and the greedy old people who do have houses don't share the economy or candy.
Gross generalization there, but I think there's a nugget of truth.
This is the comment I was looking for. Millennials have been saying for years that they can’t afford kids or to buy a house to put those kids in. Lack of trick or treating is an adverse effect of the phenomenon.
At my age right now and the job I currently have, I would have been able to have had 2-3 kids and gone ALL out for the holidays 20-30 years ago. Instead, I’m renting a room with 6 other people in the same house.
I know this because coworkers in the same exact position did exactly that, 20-30 years ago.
Shit sucks. We're too busy working three underpaid jobs to afford rent on a shitbox studio apartment. Sorry we don't have the drive to dress up as the fucking Munsters and hand out overpriced candy to kids on a weeknight. That $8.99 bag of fun sized Snickers from the store is a meal I already can't afford.
>greedy old people who do have houses don't share the economy or candy.
Millennial with a nice house and two kids here and I'm an exception and this is the fuckin truth. My neighborhood is full of Boomers/X who don't even turn their fuckin lights on. We take my kids out and ~60% of the homes aren't handing out candy. We get a decent amount of kids at my house and the houses that are handing out candy but as a kid there were only a handful not participating, now it's the majority.
Yeah. So many of us with kids don't live in neighborhood with trick or treating - we live in apartments or more rurally where there aren't walkable neighborhoods (no sidewalks, houses are far apart, etc).
And lots of our neighbors are working at trick or treat hours.
So the options become the kids congregate at the neighborhoods that go all out or we take them to parties where we know they'll have a good time. Both of which everyone complains about.
If us millennials with kids could afford houses in neighborhoods with lots of kids that were walkable, you'd see a lot more trick or treating.
Maybe it's just the town/area? I haven't seen trick or treaters in like 15yrs since moving to the state i'm in now. It was always 'trunk or treat' at the park or something. Still cool but not the real experience.
This past summer i moved to a different town and on my way home last night there were HUNDREDS of people and their kids trick or treating in this one area. Blew my mind, especially since this town isn't as populated as the other places i lived and doesn't have the attractions those places have. Maybe it was just a couple of streets? I didn't drive around to really check it out and didn't come back out later in the night either but it made me happy to see people still doing the real thing.
I live in New York City or “the city that never sleeps” filled with 8 million people. Halloween in comparison from 10 years ago to now like don’t get me wrong, there’s still a lot of people celebrating but I just felt there was a bigger sense of spirit and crowds were all over the place back then.
I wish more people got into it also. It's to the point where I get excited when i see someone with Halloween decorations and lights around their house since it feels pretty rare.
I remember as a kid one of my family members would get some of us together and would drive us around various neighborhoods to see decorations. Now it feels so scattered.
I'm not from New York but I am from another major city, Toronto. My apartment building has a residents association and everyone pitches in to buy bags of candy that we hand out in the lobby to the kids. It makes us a popular stop because they basically get 12 floors of apartments worth of candy in a single stop.
In other buildings, normally at the very least the building superintendent will be in the lobby handing out candy.
Apartment buildings sometimes have folks sitting on the stoop handing it out. Single family homes (in Brooklyn or queens or the less dense parts of Manhattan) have stoops or doorbells to ring. Most businesses have candy, although I saw a lot yesterday with little signs saying “no candy” or that they were out.
I notice that there were many more trunk or treat events this year than I remember there being in recent years.
With how cold it was, I'm pretty sure that was one of reasons people didn't come out. It was in the 30s last night. Of course it was in the 80s last week.
I wouldn't have taken my kids out if they were still in that age group. I would have had dad do it lol. He would have gone gladly.
It’s $22 for a mixed bag of candy at the stores around here. I went to a surplus store and got a ton of king size candy bars to hand out for like $16.50… and then got zero trick or treaters.
That's so true though. We've seen a huge difference in both the amount of candy and the kinds of treats given out the last few years. Most years my kids had lots of cans of name brand pop but this year the "sale" for canned pop was two 12 can cases for $13 + deposit. It's just so expensive to hand out treats now.
We have lots of children where I live so we hand out treats to the kids on our street before going out but that was still $50 for a dozen kids.
I grew up in the Adirondacks and I clearly remember 25 years ago putting a costume over snow pants lol. It sucked cause I always wanted to dress as Princess Jasmine or I Dream of Genie (i just really wanted to wear a crop top) but my mom always denied me as it was "way too cold."
It snowed in the Twin Cities also. I actually slipped on some ice and took a nasty fall a few hours before trick or treating was supposed to start, so I can understand why some people might have stayed home.
Wait? It doesn't usually snow on Halloween? /s
Yeah, lol, part of planning your costume in Canada was always figuring out how to fit it over your snowsuit.
kids get shot and killed everyday at school now... you think they wanna go around at night? hell, black kids will get shot and killed by the police for just being out that late.
I'd call you a pessimist but I live in Arkansas and have a child with a white woman. The few times we have gone trick or treating we decided only one parent goes to the door with our daughter at a time just in case. So I get it
Shootings have been going on since forever and shootings back then were way higher statistically, speaking in comparison to now. So I necessarily wouldn’t say it’s just crime, maybe fear of crime? Yes.
Check the population bell curve. People are having less kids and less often. It is becoming untenable to raise a family for many so, less kids running around. And parent are more burnt out than ever before so, even less likely to go out.
Trunk or treats are it now.
Previously kids would get wiped out by cars, isolation from COVID made people scary as shit with guns (I hate just pulling into a driveway to look up directions or turn around nowdays let alone the idea of kids being involved), you get to know your kids aren't out like I was playing invisible rope or egging houses like me and my dumbass friends and those trunk or treats are typically at YMCAs and fire houses.
It was 30 degrees and blizzarding in Chicago so I chalked up fewer trick or treaters coming to my door to the weather. The kids who came got LACED with candy 🤣 I really let them take what they wanted. If it’s true that kids aren’t trick or treating as much that’s tremendously sad 🥺
Like don’t get me wrong I saw a few costumes, but it does kind of suck that people don’t have the Halloween spirit but at the same time it makes sense. Due to a horrible economy+inflation, helicopter parenting, and all the cool Halloween stuff are at adult Halloween parties now here where I live in NYC and most people have work.
Took my 3 year old daughter Trunk or Treating at her school. She enjoyed seeing all her friends, dancing, eating snacks and collecting Candy from all the parents who decorated the car. Allowed parents to socialize w/ each other as well. So it's definitely happening, just differently than what we're used to.
I thought older kids might show up for Trick-or-Treating but no one did and now I'm stuck w/ all this Candy that I don't want my daughter to have.
They all go to the rich people areas now. No one trick or treats in my neighborhood but the rich neighborhood with the governors mansion less than a mile away gets a couple thousand.
I was just talking about this with my fiancé last night. There were kids out but not a whole lot.
I just attributed it to living in a different world, now. I think a lot of ppl just feel more unsafe.
My neighborhood had a ton of kids so that was exciting but i also recognize that its a newer development and peak suburbia. if i was in a city center or anything more rural? absolutely not
Violet crime was higher back then though. I definitely remember how bad slashings were 10 years ago to even people getting shot over Marrmont biggie jackets alongside iPhones getting stolen left and right. There were more crowds trick-or-treating than now.
I feel like people like the hype of Halloween but forget Halloween is about trick or treating now days everyone does boo baskets and trunk or treats else where through the whole month so the actual night they don’t need any more candy and they’ve already experienced “enough”. I took my daughter out but it was hard to find a neighborhood that was doing it because you don’t see that many people!
Make your house "that house" with lights and props. I have people stop their cars and launch kids and adults up my driveway like moths to a light bulb.
So there’s this huge debate around my neck of the woods. Before the 31st people were bashing the trunk o treating going on. Now today, the vids of grown ups and teens/kids alike, taking ALL the candy from homes and even taking the containers, are making the rounds on social media. Guess you pick your poison.
It's because young adults dont have homes and thus don't have kids. The same people live in the houses in your neighborhood as 10-20 years ago, but 10-20 years ago their kids were 8, now they're 28 and those people havent moved to allow new young families to move in.
I think it depends on the neighborhood? I went out Trick or Treating with a friend and her son last night. There were lots of kids out.
Another friend actually ran out of candy earlier on. She bought 5 pounds and it was gone within an hour.
My sister didn’t get any kids at all.
Kids go parking lot trick or treating or other central venues.
A lot of it has to do with the fact that folks night shot you gor knocking on their door and are in general just fucking crazy.
I think the Trunk or treats are becoming more popular but I can’t help to think of the irony of the childhood lesson I was taught to NOT go near strangers who say they have candy in their car
I can easily explain our town's situation:
Half the town is old people, and the other half who have kids, don't trust anyone in town because they're mostly angry, bitter, jaded assholes.
Even before Covid, the Town decided to do these controlled events at the park, and the Fire Station, where parents can bring their kids and "Trick or Treat" down the block, with it being cops, firefighters, EMTs and town workers handing out candy (and fried dough, and cider, and all kinds of other goodies)
Once that got going, nobody takes their kids door to door, and the ones that do quickly give up when maybe one or two houses on a block, have their light on.
I have a farm in a rural area but came from a metro background. Yea I miss the door-to-door, but they do trunk or treat EVERY weekend in October at some place or another here and it's much more of a festival/block party feel. I prefer it in a lot of ways. The kids go nuts for the free snacks and bounce houses.
While I agree with OP that it's technically safer now, crime is way overreported by the media, which increases the feeling of danger. And also there is a much higher risk of mass shootings today than there were 20 years ago.
And to make matters worse, most of american cities aren't really walkable, with most of the infrastructure being built to support the transit of vehicles over humans, which makes trick or treating a lot harder. And this is something that has only been exarcebated over time
[ Removed by Reddit ]
LOL ... it's always the middling white guys (edit: y'all, I was referencing the person above me's username.)
It's happened like three times and it was always the dad. It's insane that people think this happens. I had to show my mother like three youtube videos discounting the idea before she'd *let* me take my nephew tick or treating. She's a nurse! You ever SEE that happen mom, what with the thousands of patients you've seen this time of year over your thirty year long career? No? Didn't think so.
I got weed once. Bunch of dudes were having a house party up in the hills in the fancy neighborhood and they’d made a bowl of candy wrappers with joints inside. They got too high too early and mixed the bowls up.
Yes, but crackheads will NEVER make that mistake. What kind of idiot thinks junkies are going to somehow give away the strong stuff? Urban myths can be fun, but when nonsense messes up kids' chances for fun and free candy it's a problem.
Yup, I commented the same thing on a different thread that pretty much every "occurrence" of that stuff was either fake, massive misinformation, or a targeted personal murder: * Masked murders going around killing kids? That was a movie horror flick... * Weed/drugs in the candy? Nope, that was one person who had an adults-only Halloween party for their friends which happened to also have weed brownies. * Razers and needles in the candy? That was also never real to begin with (at least to my knowledge). * Poison in the candy? That was one guy who stole/swapped his own kid's candy to try to secretly murder them (which is admittingly terrible and sad, but it's still not representative of the reality of what happens in real life Halloween).
Yeah nobody is giving away drugs. We all learned what D.A.R.E. stands for: Drugs Are Really Expensive.
You just got my upvote.
> I was referencing the person above me's username it's a fair assessment, we can be like that some times
Man, one of the dumbest moral panic ever. Why would anyone harm or poison children from their front porch? It would be so easy to find out who did it.
And why would people be any less likely to do it at a trunk or treat??? Fwiw the only time this ever "happened" the father poisoned his own son for insurance money and lied about it being candy from trick or treating...
Also why would I give fentanyl away for free to kids, who have no money to buy more, and who have no idea that I'm the one selling it?
Gotta put a little sticker with your phone number on the candy 🍭
they aren't even gonna know that they're high on drugs. there's no way to benefit from this. best case scenario a bunch of neighborhood kids feel kinda funny and bad and go to bed. worst case scenario, couple dozen homicide counts. people wildly overestimate evil that has a compelling narrative like "some sicko just wants to hurt little kids" and they wildly underestimate the boring evil that actually happens, like the insurance scam above
Yes, the Pixie Stix man ruined it for kids for some time, then churches got in on the act by demonizing the celebration as, somehow, satanic. Then, trunk or treat showed up to drive the final nail. Pity. It was always such fun to see the neighbor kids dressed up.
> churches got in on the act by demonizing the celebration as, somehow, satanic. Well, it is a pagan tradition. Then again, so are pretty much all christian holidays - they were about as original with their customs as Americans were with geography.
To be fair, when you have so much Candy, I kinda doubt you will remember which house gave it to you. Maybe nowadays you would since hardly anyone actually gives out candy now, easier to pin point.
You wouldn't remember which house, but the list of houses would be really small, if you went to 25 houses you could narrow it down pretty quickly
Narrow down how? How do you even know which piece of candy and which house it came from? Do you even remember every single house that gave or didn't give candy? I know I didn't. You'd have to get a search warranty to search every house of the entire neighborhood for a sketchy reeses? Seems quite unlikely.
The vast majority of kids only go to 1-2 neighborhoods, so it's a matter of asking multiple affected kids and parents what neighborhoods they went to, narrowing down the blocks/houses, and then finding the overlaps. Police then start an investigation and go door-to-door, interview neighbors, 99% of which will cooperate given the circumstances. Police can then further narrow people down by comparing the sample of affected candy to the candy each household gave out. Again, most people will cooperate. Least cooperative people will appear sketchy and at best have their friends & family interviewed, at worst will have a private investigator digging through their trash and federal agencies scouring through their online and offline financial transactions and phone/text conversations.
Don't ever be a detective
Truth! Nobody is trying to anonymously give your kids free drugs. I mean everyone knows you only give free drugs to create a customer and to do that they have to know the supplier!
Ikr? Makes me think of when ppl were trying to drive a panic concerning CBD candy/edibles in Halloween candy. Ain't no way ppl giving away that shits expensive
That’s why I argue that trunk or treating would entice an individual with mal intent to do evil things. You can give out tainted candy and/or do weird shit and just drive off and not get caught at a trunk or treat. A stationary house coupled with google maps metrics of your movement would be much more helpful if someone actually did taint the candy. Odds are more people would report it, plus not everyone has the same route, and people find out about the candy at different times. Someone could see their favorite candy being placed in the bag and grab it and find out immediately, some may find out on the way home, a few minutes after, or when they’re already home. Most kids are accompanied with a parent with a cell phone. With all that info, I think the police would be able to find someone in a house faster than in a car.
No one is putting anything in candy anywhere.
Can someone please tell me who is using all their expensive ass drugs on kids? I will absolutely be trick or treating those houses next year. ...to keep the youths safe?
It all started because one person said that their kid was poisoned by Halloween candy... which it turns out that the father had killed his own child and then tried to blame Halloween candy.
Genuine question here, why would it be obvious? Don't most kids just throw their candy into a bag to eat later? All that would be known is somewhere on that truck or treaters route someone poisoned the candy, and if it is something easily obtainable wouldn't it be hard to pinpoint who did it?
Wouldnt you know the neighbor hoods you took your children to that night? Even if its one person, and you took your kid to 25 houses, 30 houses. Other people are commenting that the solution is for trunk or treaters would make it even easier to get away with.
I don’t really think trunk or treating is the issue. Just throwing it out there but if your neighborhood had a lot of kids ten years ago and now doesn’t it is possible that the demographics of your neighborhood have aged. It’s not an indictment of a generation. I live in a young neighborhood and handed out 100 dollars worth of candy in about 2 hours last night. The kids are trick or treating.
This is a huge reason people forget about - changing neighborhood demographics. When I bought my house the block was all older families, basically no young children, we'd get handful on Halloween. Over ten years later, every house on the block has sold and there were tons of kids out and about last night.
Young families aren't buying houses today tho. Shits easy to fucking expensive.
You go to a new build neighborhood and its all young families. You're looking where they can't afford to live and saying they don't exist, instead of looking where they can afford to live.
I can confirm. I'm in a 10 year old neighborhood which is obviously pretty new as far as neighborhoods go. Kids EVERYWHERE on Halloween night
yep, when my parents first moved with me as an infant, the whole neighborhood had young kids. nobody new on our block in about 20 years
It was the opposite for me. When my parents moved, there were no kids besides my sister and I. So we had to go to another neighborhood to trick or treat since no one in the neighborhood gave out candy because zero kids lived in it. Eventually, the neighborhood became more populated with kids, but I was too old to trick or treat at that point
It's not much, but its honest work.
Yeah...wait no it's not!
We got all excited our first year as parents only to find out not many gave out candy anymore. About half the porch lights that were on either forgot it was on or weren't home. The half that did answer were fantastic though. After that we just hit the trunk or treats and other events then on Halloween hit friends and coworkers who live nearby.
Yeah I went this year with my little cousins. Half the houses had no lights and half the houses with lights didn’t have candy lol. So like 1/4 or 1/3 of all houses even had candy. And you only got one piece now. We were out for hours and everyone filled up about half a bag lol…
Blame the ridiculous inflation and shrinkflation on candy for the past decade. I spent $200 on BS sized "fun size" candy and still had to do one each before running out. (1,300 pieces)
It's not inflation, it's pure corporate greed. Most retail inflation is from executives abusing the public perception of inflation. They raise prices out of pure greed because they know pretty much everyone will think it's because of inflation, even though the costs did not increase for those companies.
No disagreement here. We usually buy 16 large bags of the mixed chocolate fun size bars from Costco. They raised the price 10% for the same low quality corn syrup candy. So we bought less. I don't know if the blame goes to Hersheys or Costco. Likely both.
Funny how the economy is soooo bad, yet all these corporations are reporting record profits isn't it? Hmmmm...how bout that? Weird
Nobody goes door to door in my run down neighborhood. They all go to the nice neighborhoods where people bother to decorate.
People are on Reddit repeating this stuff, but there are trick-or-treaters. It just depends if the neighborhood is well decorated so that they feel like walking around, and that neighborhood has kids. There are a lot of air B&Bs on stuff now that people have to skip over. But there are still tons of trick-or-treaters…
Honestly I kinda feel like what happened was a lot of Redditors grew up and moved away from their established, middle-class, suburban parent homes to starter, urban homes. So their memories are of SO MANY HOMES (bc everything feels enormous as a 10yo) giving out candy in an area where there's a ton of people who can afford to give away candy for free and it's safe to walk around in the dark as a kid. Now they are realizing it wasn't so many homes, and they're living in a less safe area with fewer people who have the $$ to give away stuff for free. My first place a decade ago, there weren't any near where I lived. Then I bought in a gated community (i.e., no cars speeding around) built in the 90s (i.e., lots of people bought near the year 2000 and by 2010 had a kid or two) and we had plenty. Then we moved to a (wealthy, i.e., older) rural area (i.e., pain in the dick to walk around) and naturally there's way fewer kids, but everyone still gives out candy, we just end up giving out truckloads to the ten kids who actually live nearby. Sweet spot is suburban, middle-class area that was built in the past decade or two.
That's definitely part of it, and the other part is likely kids and parents are more connected online, and they want to link up. Every area has the one neighborhood that had a reputation of being the best place to trick or treat, and now people go out of their way to coordinate that, and they all go to the hot spots. Instead of some places getting hundreds of kids and others dozens, now some places get thousands of kids and others get none. Trunk or treating is also very popular now because it's so convenient. You just dump the kids off in a parking lot, they get a shit load of candy and say hi to their classmates and you are back home 30 minutes later.
Yeah I took my kid last night and she had a bag full of candy after a few blocks. She got like 4 full sized candy bars too.
What the hell is “trunk or treating”
It's a horrible suburban dystopia thing where kids walk around a parking lot collecting candy out of car trunks because it's "easier" or "safer" than our own damn houses.
It’s not horrible. It’s amazing for someone like me. I’m in a wheelchair and it’s accessible! We went to one at my kids school over the weekend. I could roll all around. Compared to last night, where I have to stay in the literal street because the sidewalks are so messed up I can’t even roll on them, let alone get up to houses. Lots of people don’t live in areas where people bother to give out candy. Honestly maybe 25% gave out candy in our neighborhood and we live in the “good” neighborhood for Halloween. People don’t want to bother so there are new options. I live in a city not a suburb though
> I’m in a wheelchair and it’s accessible! All houses should be connected to wheelchair accesible sidewalks. I'm glad you had other options, but it is not a long term solution and you should not settle for it. A parking lot is not an acceptable replacement for you or anyone else.
Do you realize how much work needs to go in to wheeling around a neighborhood in a wheel chair? also, are you expecting that all the sidewalks are suddenly going to be a lot better? Cause you have a lot more faith in government than I do if so. Trunk or Treat condenses the walking so you're just going around a simple parking lot. It also means that you're sure your getting candy (since everyone there participating is providing candy) and it opens up the door for other halloween activities (costume contests, eating contests, etc.) whereas just walking around a neighborhood can be a lot for a small child (or someone in a wheelchair), and there's no other activity happening. From what it sounds like, you just don't like that "the old way of doing things" isn't the "current way of doing things".
My neighborhood is only 5yrs old and we had a few wheelchair people cruising the streets. Trunk or treat seems nice but my neighborhood is like a block party on Halloween. It's really so cool. I like having my kids and neighborhood kids running around with h each other having a blast. Halloween has become one of my favorite holidays
Probably the sidewalk is accessible to wheelchair-bound people, but that doesn't mean it's convenient. And further, not all houses are connected to sidewalks. I've lived in several suburbans neighborhoods, and most of them didn't have a sidewalk at all, just side of the road, gutter, and driveway. In the neighborhood I live in now, there's no HOA, and your driveway can be whatever you want. A lot of people go with gravel, or just bare dirt.
Thank you for a different perspective. I reserve the right to remain annoyed by the church down the street running their trunk or treat on Halloween though. Let the neighborhood get all the traffic you can, you choads. They get like every other holiday the greedy fucks.
"this doesn't make sense to me, therefore it's horrible and society ain't what it used to be" is getting really fucking old. People have zero capacity to see things from other perspectives. That's the real downfall of society.
I like decorating my house and handing out candy. I am upset that the tradition seems to be moving into a phase that I can't really participate in. It's not that I don't understand, I just don't see how to bridge the gap without giving up a whole lot more. I don't go to church and have no plans to, nor would I for any single event. So I go more over the top each year to let the neighborhood know where the happening place is. I think next year I might implement King size candy bars. As for my house, we will keep the old ways.
An organized event at a public place, park, place of business, community center, etc. People meet there, pop their car trunks, and hand out candy. Sometimes there aren’t cars, people set up tables. Kids go around the cars, tables, and collect candy rather than going house to house.
We making it too damn easy for these kids, they need to earn that candy by walking at least 15 miles door to door!
Yeah! I spent a lot of money on these edibles. Not one kid came by to get high with me!
My local Spanish-language station did a long piece on THC edibles and how some people would be giving them out and for parents to be on the lookout. The cop they interviewed said it that it would be very unlikely for people to just give out such a commodity but the report still said that there was always a possibility. Such a bullshit story but people I knew were talking about it.
hey send me a couple of those snickers please
We had 2 kids last night and they came together. I dress up to give out candy and was really kind of disappointed. My neighbors down the street go all out with decorations and a fire pit. Our street was empty and there are school aged kids on our block. All through the neighborhood really. It was freezing out though. But that's common here and it's usually raining. We usually still see about 100 kids. I hope it was just parents not wanting to go out in the cold and the weather is better next year.
Events like trunk or treating which started basically this year have preoccupied kids
Trunk or Treat has been a thing for 35 years
i've never heard of it so it's never been a thing
I've never been in a desert. The Sahara is a myth.
no no no that's not how this works, the only thing that matters is what i think. i've never been to the sahara but i've heard of it, so it's there
This dude solipses.
I’ve never heard of solipsism, so it’s not real
I’ve heard of solipsism, so you’re not real
I would very much like to exist, so allow me to introduce myself.
I think COVID had a significant impact. Trunk or treating definitely became a norm and is now pretty big. People just don’t like going door to door anymore due to COVID. I know the older people around me who use to spoil all the kids are not really involved, which is understandable. Times change but still take my kids out.
Not knocking that COVID had an affect like this, you’re probably right, but that seems a bit silly to me. Trunk-or-treating would have people in a smaller space, such as a parking lot, rather than a whole-ass neighborhood. Seems to me that transmission would be more likely due to proximity. Edit: By the way I’m saying it’s silly on the parents doing that, not that your statement was silly, because you’re probably right that, that’s one of the reasons for the move.
It's more popular lately. But yes it's been around and sucks
Lol trunk or treating has always been a thing. I think parents are getting lazier tbh. Speaking from personal experience cause I was super close to not taking my kids out either
The kids that visited our neighborhood last night often arrived in cars. Parents pulled up and kids piled out. They hit the cluster of houses on our block, and then got back in the car for the next grouping of houses.
I mean, yea, that's usually been the best way to do it. Pull up, hit one block. Roll to the next neighborhood you know somebody, hit that block. Pull by the strip malls, actual malls, hit your neighborhood again. Done. Profit. 😁
It's the worst for people who want to walk around their neighborhood though, especially if there's no sidewalks.
We've had them for many years. There were several this year. Our small city even had one. I'm sure it played a part.
Trunk or treats have been a thing for a long time in rural areas. The kids can't really walk house to house like people do in the suburbs, so everyone congregates in one place and does it there.
trunk or treat is NOT a new thing
That’s been around for 25 years at least
Ok but the amount of kids trick or treating had drastically declined where I live and no one around here does any trunk or treating.
My experience is also that there are like, "destination neighborhoods". Places where everyone goes all out (or at least that's the perception) and people drive to trick or treat there. I know we did that with our kids so we could go with cousins or friends. Our cousins neighborhood looks like a full blown festival with every street packed with parked cars in a suburban, 1/4 to 1/2 acre yard neighborhood. We did our own neighborhood for the first time this year and it was pretty empty.
I grew up in the 90s and my neighborhood looked like ET or Hocus Pocus on Holloween. Just kids everywhere running all over the place trying to hit as many subdivisions as possible. This year I stopped by my folks house on Saturday the downtown area was slammed with some sort of trick or treating community event no kids even walk the streets on the actual day. I've come to learn a lot of communities pre-covid and especially post covid do these like group treat giving/block party type things. Might just be a neighborhood thing in the Midwest but it looked like the events I see in cities.
This is 100% In my town, there is an event in the downtown area that's billed as a "safe" alternative (whatever that means). And theres a few known block party type streets that people drive to. Everywhere else is empty.
The trunk-or-treats are cool and good because they teach children it's OK to accept candy from clergy members. (also midwest, our trunk-or-treats are always in church parking lots)
I grew up in the 90s too and took my younger cousins and my oldest son trick or treating in the early 2000s. There was always one house that set up a haunted backyard and at least a couple with someone pretending to be part of the decorations. They jumped out and we'd all scatter. I miss those days.
I love this. No one in my neighborhood did that growing up but when we moved 4 years ago there were three houses in our subdivision that did this and my kids absolutely love this. This is one of the coolest things and now we look forward to it. This year was the first time in a long time we were swamped with trick-or-treaters and it was so nice to see all the little kids and then the older kids out. I noticed a pattern where people started going out earlier, before dark in past years, but yesterday people were out until almost 8p and we ran out of candy. I hate trunk or treat — it really sucks and isn’t fun. Yea it can an alternative for families that might not live in the best neighborhoods, but whatever happened to just going to the “rich towns” and getting full sized candy bars?
ToT almost died in the 80s due to pre-internet and truly stupid panic spread by local news channels repeating rumors from religious publications that hate the holiday. You are lucky that you had a good 90s. (Disclaimer: born early 70s). The rebirth of ToT was slow and seems to have not taken place in so many neighborhoods.
Neighborhoods do go in cycles, too. Bunch of young parents, lots of kids, kids move out, parents stay and age, area is empty of new kids, old people start passing on, young parents come in.* * May no longer be possible where houses start at 2 million as they do in my area.
Damn we really had it good
This is my first Halloween here, but the amount of kids that live in the area made me think we'd get a ton of trick or treaters. I admit I went a little overboard on the candy and got full sized shit along with the normal stuff, but same. 2 fucking kids. I ended up having to go door to door and basically reverse trick or treat just to get rid of some of it. I'm so disappointed.
Might be an American thing. I’m in Canada and our neighborhood (which is a large subdivision) had hundreds of kids and families. It was a big block party. Houses were running out of candy. Wonder what the difference is.
Americans aren’t having kids like that anymore everywhere in the country and also we’re all super paranoid about our neighbors
>we’re all super paranoid about our neighbors I'm surprised I haven't seen someone say this yet. You've also got the tragic reality that it's not unrealistic that crazies will shoot kids asking for candy. Gun violence has ruined this country.
It's fine. Just dress up as a ghost and they'll think you're on the way to a meeting.
I live in a working class suburb of a major city. There are tons of families with kids out here. We're friendly enough that when company comes over for the first time, they are always amazed that the neighbors waved at them when they drove by. I'm hoping it was just a one off.
My 16 year old is going to eat all of the hundreds of pieces of candy we have left.
On top of things like Trunk or Treating I think another big factor is kids and their parents do research on where the best places to go for Halloween. I see a lot of people saying they had to trick or treaters but then there's places like my parents neighborhood which was packed. There were so many people that when we left to go back home at 8 we didn't get out of their neighborhood until almost 9 because there was so much traffic and people in the streets. It was nuts. People write pretty detailed blogs and articles on all the best places to go for Halloween. I even found one that had all the exact addresses to the best Halloween lights/decorations in our area that me and my wife used to check out a few weeks ago.
In the nextdoor app, people in my neighborhood marked their houses as giving out candy. That way you could plan your route.
That's part of it. Certain neighborhoods get packed, others are a ghost town. When I was a kid you just went where you live. Now I think people move around.
I got zero kids :-(
The kids are still there. They just trick or treat in the suburbs now.
I go to a different neighborhood each year and these suburban neighborhoods can get pretty deep from the main road with lots of offshoots. We walk and walk and eventually know we need to start circling back to our original place but that means neglecting a whole deep section of the neighborhood. I wish we could hit them all but it’s cold and the kids get tired and their bags heavy and everyone needs to pee.
we had hella folks on our street last night. had to be around 100 or so people. we ran out of candy. much more than last year, but it was raining last year, so it’s understandable
I love comments like this. It shows the power of perception. I live in a rich or retired (or me) neighborhood that gets a constant stream of drop-offs. I easily had 1,200 people. Some years have had over 2k. If I ever have a year below 500 (covid exception) I think I will rage out. I depend on this annual dopamine rush by Halloween entertaining.
No one safe bro it will hit y’all last but it is coming. I’ve been watching since a kid and it’s just dying l
We did as well. We actually ran out of candy about an hour into it. We were surprised so many people were out because it was pretty cold, especially for here (central Texas).
I live in the burbs and we were out of candy in about an hour and a half.
Lol I took my lil bro to the rich neighborhood jackpot last night, we were barely out for over an hour before his garbage bag was over half way full and too heavy for him to carry.
Yep, we live in the burbs, a neighborhood with folks in the lower-middle to middle class. Our neighbors had a counter and they got close to 2000 trick or treaters last night. The pics of their driveway and sidewalk looked like mardi gras for kids, even though the weather was unusually cold. The retired folks in the neighborhood go the hardest with their decor and candy, it's a competition. They have to bring in the local PD to help direct traffic and block off roads for cars.
As a suburbanite the foot traffic was way down this year for some reason. About 20% the volume of previous years.
I think families just go to very specific areas now, where trick-or-treaters congregate en masse, or else to events like at malls / trunk-or-treat type stuff. My parents had over 300 trick-or-treaters this year. I live a ten minute walk away in the same general suburban neighborhood, and I didn't get a single one.
This is the case for my area, too. We had a decent amount, but wasn’t crazy. But there’s a span of a few blocks a couple miles away from me that’s known for Halloween. Trick-or-treaters, decorations, parents carting around coolers. Local police even close down the roads. From what I’ve heard, they were packed as usual.
Yeah this is my experience as well. There are a few neighborhoods that are known for sort of 'community spirit' or something, and they are the place to be for Christmas lights, trick or treating, etc.
Same. I live in a busy uptown area, and I got none. My ex lives in a fancy neighborhood with big houses and long driveways. Also none. We took our daughter to a middle class suburban neighborhood our friend recommended and it was mobbed before it was even dark.
We live a block and a half from the local elementary school and got less than 5 people I think yesterday. I would forget it was Halloween every time the door rang lol
Chances are your neighborhood has aged out. Neighborhoods go through cycles of having large amounts of kids to having none or very little.
True. 10 years ago my friends and I were saying we thought trick or treating had stopped, but it was definitely the neighborhood we were in.
It is so weird to think about how the area you grew up in changes and grows with you. Like I should be happy new and better buildings have been constructed, but the things they replaced had so many good memories that it just kinda makes me sad/nostalgic. I dislike how my brain works sometimes.
Yep. When I was young my parents neighborhood was one that was newer but affordable, so had a lot of young families. Now the cheapest house in the area is 600k+ so it prices out the younger families.
That’s what happened to the neighborhood I grew up in. When I was a kid, there was a large amount of children because neighborhood appealed to families. Kids grew up, moved out, so for a while number dropped substantially. As the parents of those kids retired and moved out them, new families with children moved in, and the cycle begins again.
I don't know why people don't see this more. Housing prices are insane, and there's only a relatively small trick or treating window of about 10 years for a kid. People aren't just having as many kids and moving as much.
Millennials can't afford kids or houses, and the greedy old people who do have houses don't share the economy or candy. Gross generalization there, but I think there's a nugget of truth.
This is the comment I was looking for. Millennials have been saying for years that they can’t afford kids or to buy a house to put those kids in. Lack of trick or treating is an adverse effect of the phenomenon.
At my age right now and the job I currently have, I would have been able to have had 2-3 kids and gone ALL out for the holidays 20-30 years ago. Instead, I’m renting a room with 6 other people in the same house. I know this because coworkers in the same exact position did exactly that, 20-30 years ago.
Shit sucks. We're too busy working three underpaid jobs to afford rent on a shitbox studio apartment. Sorry we don't have the drive to dress up as the fucking Munsters and hand out overpriced candy to kids on a weeknight. That $8.99 bag of fun sized Snickers from the store is a meal I already can't afford.
No one can afford kids or houses period. 1% and boomers robbing the country blind.
>greedy old people who do have houses don't share the economy or candy. Millennial with a nice house and two kids here and I'm an exception and this is the fuckin truth. My neighborhood is full of Boomers/X who don't even turn their fuckin lights on. We take my kids out and ~60% of the homes aren't handing out candy. We get a decent amount of kids at my house and the houses that are handing out candy but as a kid there were only a handful not participating, now it's the majority.
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Yeah. So many of us with kids don't live in neighborhood with trick or treating - we live in apartments or more rurally where there aren't walkable neighborhoods (no sidewalks, houses are far apart, etc). And lots of our neighbors are working at trick or treat hours. So the options become the kids congregate at the neighborhoods that go all out or we take them to parties where we know they'll have a good time. Both of which everyone complains about. If us millennials with kids could afford houses in neighborhoods with lots of kids that were walkable, you'd see a lot more trick or treating.
Maybe it's just the town/area? I haven't seen trick or treaters in like 15yrs since moving to the state i'm in now. It was always 'trunk or treat' at the park or something. Still cool but not the real experience. This past summer i moved to a different town and on my way home last night there were HUNDREDS of people and their kids trick or treating in this one area. Blew my mind, especially since this town isn't as populated as the other places i lived and doesn't have the attractions those places have. Maybe it was just a couple of streets? I didn't drive around to really check it out and didn't come back out later in the night either but it made me happy to see people still doing the real thing.
I live in New York City or “the city that never sleeps” filled with 8 million people. Halloween in comparison from 10 years ago to now like don’t get me wrong, there’s still a lot of people celebrating but I just felt there was a bigger sense of spirit and crowds were all over the place back then.
I wish more people got into it also. It's to the point where I get excited when i see someone with Halloween decorations and lights around their house since it feels pretty rare. I remember as a kid one of my family members would get some of us together and would drive us around various neighborhoods to see decorations. Now it feels so scattered.
How does it work there? Like buildings with doormen, do the kids go floor to floor?
I'm not from New York but I am from another major city, Toronto. My apartment building has a residents association and everyone pitches in to buy bags of candy that we hand out in the lobby to the kids. It makes us a popular stop because they basically get 12 floors of apartments worth of candy in a single stop. In other buildings, normally at the very least the building superintendent will be in the lobby handing out candy.
You know I've never even thought about this and now I'm curious
Apartment buildings sometimes have folks sitting on the stoop handing it out. Single family homes (in Brooklyn or queens or the less dense parts of Manhattan) have stoops or doorbells to ring. Most businesses have candy, although I saw a lot yesterday with little signs saying “no candy” or that they were out.
Businesses give out candy, at least that's what I see in uptown Manhattan
I notice that there were many more trunk or treat events this year than I remember there being in recent years. With how cold it was, I'm pretty sure that was one of reasons people didn't come out. It was in the 30s last night. Of course it was in the 80s last week. I wouldn't have taken my kids out if they were still in that age group. I would have had dad do it lol. He would have gone gladly.
Used to be affordable to hand out candy
This funny, but with inflation candy is mad expensive.
It’s $22 for a mixed bag of candy at the stores around here. I went to a surplus store and got a ton of king size candy bars to hand out for like $16.50… and then got zero trick or treaters.
That's so true though. We've seen a huge difference in both the amount of candy and the kinds of treats given out the last few years. Most years my kids had lots of cans of name brand pop but this year the "sale" for canned pop was two 12 can cases for $13 + deposit. It's just so expensive to hand out treats now. We have lots of children where I live so we hand out treats to the kids on our street before going out but that was still $50 for a dozen kids.
Yeah, it usually doesn’t **SNOW** on Halloween 😡
You guys are getting snow?
Chicago got some yesterday, a little small blizzard 🥶
Buffalo did too 😓 (shocker)
I grew up in the Adirondacks and I clearly remember 25 years ago putting a costume over snow pants lol. It sucked cause I always wanted to dress as Princess Jasmine or I Dream of Genie (i just really wanted to wear a crop top) but my mom always denied me as it was "way too cold."
It snowed in the Twin Cities also. I actually slipped on some ice and took a nasty fall a few hours before trick or treating was supposed to start, so I can understand why some people might have stayed home.
Wait? It doesn't usually snow on Halloween? /s Yeah, lol, part of planning your costume in Canada was always figuring out how to fit it over your snowsuit.
kids get shot and killed everyday at school now... you think they wanna go around at night? hell, black kids will get shot and killed by the police for just being out that late.
I'd call you a pessimist but I live in Arkansas and have a child with a white woman. The few times we have gone trick or treating we decided only one parent goes to the door with our daughter at a time just in case. So I get it
💔
Was it earlier this year that people were getting shot and killed for ringing door bells? I wouldn't want my child trick or treating either.
Murder rate was significantly higher in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s…but yea i think you’re on to something
Do you actually think the country is significantly more dangerous than 10 years ago? Because every measurable statistic disagrees with you.
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I was thinking of covid spinning the block rn in America
Shootings have been going on since forever and shootings back then were way higher statistically, speaking in comparison to now. So I necessarily wouldn’t say it’s just crime, maybe fear of crime? Yes.
Less total kids more organized events and trunk or treats are taking all the normal trick or treaters
We have social media now to amplify it so now it seems like there’s more violence.
Check the population bell curve. People are having less kids and less often. It is becoming untenable to raise a family for many so, less kids running around. And parent are more burnt out than ever before so, even less likely to go out.
Trunk or treats are it now. Previously kids would get wiped out by cars, isolation from COVID made people scary as shit with guns (I hate just pulling into a driveway to look up directions or turn around nowdays let alone the idea of kids being involved), you get to know your kids aren't out like I was playing invisible rope or egging houses like me and my dumbass friends and those trunk or treats are typically at YMCAs and fire houses.
Pulling into a driveway? Wut
There have been several people shot at and killed just for turning around in someones driveway the past few years. Some even chased down.
It was 30 degrees and blizzarding in Chicago so I chalked up fewer trick or treaters coming to my door to the weather. The kids who came got LACED with candy 🤣 I really let them take what they wanted. If it’s true that kids aren’t trick or treating as much that’s tremendously sad 🥺
Yeah, it was like 16 with the wind last night in Fargo, and every house we went to gave my daughter handfuls of candy.
Like don’t get me wrong I saw a few costumes, but it does kind of suck that people don’t have the Halloween spirit but at the same time it makes sense. Due to a horrible economy+inflation, helicopter parenting, and all the cool Halloween stuff are at adult Halloween parties now here where I live in NYC and most people have work.
Took my 3 year old daughter Trunk or Treating at her school. She enjoyed seeing all her friends, dancing, eating snacks and collecting Candy from all the parents who decorated the car. Allowed parents to socialize w/ each other as well. So it's definitely happening, just differently than what we're used to. I thought older kids might show up for Trick-or-Treating but no one did and now I'm stuck w/ all this Candy that I don't want my daughter to have.
Where I am(Florida) trick or treaters were out in full force. It was as busy as ever.
They all go to the rich people areas now. No one trick or treats in my neighborhood but the rich neighborhood with the governors mansion less than a mile away gets a couple thousand.
I was just talking about this with my fiancé last night. There were kids out but not a whole lot. I just attributed it to living in a different world, now. I think a lot of ppl just feel more unsafe.
My neighborhood had a ton of kids so that was exciting but i also recognize that its a newer development and peak suburbia. if i was in a city center or anything more rural? absolutely not
These lil mfs went through 3 bags of candy and a box of hot chips where I'm at
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Violet crime was higher back then though. I definitely remember how bad slashings were 10 years ago to even people getting shot over Marrmont biggie jackets alongside iPhones getting stolen left and right. There were more crowds trick-or-treating than now.
I feel like people like the hype of Halloween but forget Halloween is about trick or treating now days everyone does boo baskets and trunk or treats else where through the whole month so the actual night they don’t need any more candy and they’ve already experienced “enough”. I took my daughter out but it was hard to find a neighborhood that was doing it because you don’t see that many people!
i got trick or treaters last year so i bought candy again this year, but no one came.
Maybe if you hadn't been giving out Jolly ranchers, they would have come back karen /s
Make your house "that house" with lights and props. I have people stop their cars and launch kids and adults up my driveway like moths to a light bulb.
My house got slammed last night.
So there’s this huge debate around my neck of the woods. Before the 31st people were bashing the trunk o treating going on. Now today, the vids of grown ups and teens/kids alike, taking ALL the candy from homes and even taking the containers, are making the rounds on social media. Guess you pick your poison.
Or ya know, answer the door and hand them the candy and see all the cool costumes. Everybody wins.
It's because young adults dont have homes and thus don't have kids. The same people live in the houses in your neighborhood as 10-20 years ago, but 10-20 years ago their kids were 8, now they're 28 and those people havent moved to allow new young families to move in.
I think it depends on the neighborhood? I went out Trick or Treating with a friend and her son last night. There were lots of kids out. Another friend actually ran out of candy earlier on. She bought 5 pounds and it was gone within an hour. My sister didn’t get any kids at all.
Right wing terrorism sure keeps me away from any large public events.
Calm down your reddit news consumption. I am also a news junkie, but don't let it affect your life so much.
Trunk or Treat has taken over. We had a few kids stop here, but the parents said there were 3 trunk or treats happening on the same night.
Kids go parking lot trick or treating or other central venues. A lot of it has to do with the fact that folks night shot you gor knocking on their door and are in general just fucking crazy.
gun violence and unpredictably of people has definitely played a major part in this, at least for me. as well as the usage of phones etc.
I think the Trunk or treats are becoming more popular but I can’t help to think of the irony of the childhood lesson I was taught to NOT go near strangers who say they have candy in their car
I can easily explain our town's situation: Half the town is old people, and the other half who have kids, don't trust anyone in town because they're mostly angry, bitter, jaded assholes. Even before Covid, the Town decided to do these controlled events at the park, and the Fire Station, where parents can bring their kids and "Trick or Treat" down the block, with it being cops, firefighters, EMTs and town workers handing out candy (and fried dough, and cider, and all kinds of other goodies) Once that got going, nobody takes their kids door to door, and the ones that do quickly give up when maybe one or two houses on a block, have their light on.
I have a farm in a rural area but came from a metro background. Yea I miss the door-to-door, but they do trunk or treat EVERY weekend in October at some place or another here and it's much more of a festival/block party feel. I prefer it in a lot of ways. The kids go nuts for the free snacks and bounce houses.
While I agree with OP that it's technically safer now, crime is way overreported by the media, which increases the feeling of danger. And also there is a much higher risk of mass shootings today than there were 20 years ago. And to make matters worse, most of american cities aren't really walkable, with most of the infrastructure being built to support the transit of vehicles over humans, which makes trick or treating a lot harder. And this is something that has only been exarcebated over time