Bummed out

[Rick Potter]

I love Halloween. Not the Zombie type stuff, the little kids in costume trick or treating at the door.

Our house is on a street where there are not many kids, but there should be 30 or so that come by, but each year the numbers get smaller. To counter the trend we started giving out full size candy bars, hoping to become a 'destination'. Tried that for the last 5 years.

This year we got one group of 5 kids, and that was it. I suppose most of them went to the 'Harvest Parties' at local churches. I know our church had hundreds of kids there, but it's just not the same.

So, here I am, eating Snickers bars, sad and lonely.....and hyperglycemic, with 43 bars to go.

[Jim Koepke]

As any parent knows, kids grow up and forgo the lure of Halloween candy.

Our house is way off the beaten path. Even our neighbors do not come over. They drive into town to trick or treat with family friends.

We no longer buy Halloween candy. When we did we ended up eating it all by our lonesomes.

jtk

[Mel Fulks]

More bad news....we had so much candy and so few undead creatures that I almost OD on a bowl of candy. Now have a hunger for sour kraut

[Dave Anderson NH]

Our numbers have dropped each year too Rick and last night we had about 15. Our houses are far apart at 300-600 feet and the few kids that come by are dropped by car at the end of the driveway. Most kids go to the big celebration at the center of town about 4 miles away. My wife has insisted for years that we buy the full size candy bars. Most of the leftovers get taken to work and put in a bowl and boy do they disappear fast. An interesting note. About 3 Halloweens ago I opened the door to a young woman with a costumed infant in her arms and a toddler by her side. When I held out the basket of candy she commented that we were still giving out full sized candy bars. She remembered receiving them from us when she trick or treated years before. Yikes, second generation neighbors.

[mike holden]

Take heart, this is cyclical. When we first moved here, we had over 100 kids come to the door. That slowly dwindled till a low of 34 four years ago. Last night we had 72 show up.

[Matt Day]

I've seen the cyclical nature of neighborhoods myself over the past 5 years. When we moved into Our neighborhood of 40ish houses had about 7 houses with kids younger than college age, and very little trick or treating. Most kids would go to town for holloween and we had a handful of kids at our door. This year we have about 14 houses with young kids (including mine) and everyone stays in the 'hood, and we went though 10 bags of candy. And we have 2 houses for sale and likely another one soon, and I hope young families move in those houses.

[Stan Calow]

well it was a Monday night and a school night here. We saw about 100, down from a peak of 200 5 years ago. Mostly little kids with parents hovering. Gone are the mid-size kids, presumably to parties and organized events. On the other hand, no TP'd or egged houses in the neighborhood either. I ate most of the Hershey bars and Reeses last week anyway.

[paul cottingham]

50 plus kids last night. It was great, parents dressed up, the whole nine yards. A great night.

[Brett Luna]

We're in a similar boat to the OP. Our house is on an unlit, dead-end street in the sub-suburbs and the outside house lights are on motion detectors. In 12 years, we've seen maybe that many trick-or-treaters...maybe.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

We live in a typical blue collar neighborhood. Last night we had 4 trick-or-treaters.

It's dropped over the years primarily due to worries about safety. Now a lot of churches and malls have gatherings where parents feel safer about their children getting unaltered candies. It only takes a few crazies to ruin for everybody.

[Dave Anderson NH]

You're right Ken. I remember as a kid that everyone except the very youngest went out without parents. Parents still inspected the night's haul however.

In our town the big center of town event goes so far as to have a purple container at each house denoting candies guaranteed not to contain any peanut products or other varieties of nuts. It's a nice touch.

[Frederick Skelly]

We're in a similar boat to the OP. Our house is on an unlit, dead-end street in the sub-suburbs and the outside house lights are on motion detectors. In 12 years, we've seen maybe that many trick-or-treaters...maybe.

Ummmm???? There are SUBURBS in ALASKA? Seriously? Please forgive my total and utter ignorance Brett, but your whole, very enormous State has only 3/4 of a million people - why do you need suburbs? :D:D:D

[Chris Padilla]

Numbers have dwindled in our neighborhood as well. I think this was the first year my daughter, now 14 and a freshman in high school, did not go out with her friends to gather candy. She did dress up for school and did dress up to hand out candy at the door. I'm not sure we had more than 30 kids...was easily double that a few years ago.

I wonder if there is a correlation to the day of the week Halloween falls on? Fridays and Saturdays must be the best days of the week to have Halloween. Mondays? bleh....

Also, going back to standard time seems to keep getting pushed later and later in the year. The weather was a bit balmy here: cool and a tad moist but not that bad.

[Frederick Skelly]

I have fewer every year too. Less than 40 last night. I think the various Church festivals are pulling kids away from the door to door trick or treating.

[Shawn Pixley]

Zero trick or treaters at our house last night. We were the only house with anyone home down the block.

Previously it has varied from 12 to over 200. Difficult to plan for.

[Rich Riddle]

Rick,

I lived in a historic neighborhood in Kansas City where we would get between 1000 and 2000 a night. Guess they figured the "rich" folks gave out better candy. These days we get about 50. The last kid I see walking down the street gets everything left.

[Stewie Simpson]

Halloween seems to have generated a bit of a craze here in Australia the last few years amongst the young kids. Every time there is a knock on the door, I ask them what country they live in. When they answer Australia, I then close the door with no hand outs. Next year I might have some fun and dress up in a scary clown suit. That should put me on the do not knock list the following year.

[Brent Cutshall]

"Rich folks" I see what you did there Rich, good one! Look here, on my street, if you go knocking around someone's house at night, weeellll let me just say that you'll get something but it won't be candy. A mile up the road is the abode of a moonshiner, really nice ol'guy, he got struck by lightning once while he was up on the mountain and his wife drug him back down. People who know him don't go there without letting him know. People who don't know him go there, but they don't come BACK, MWOOHAAHAHAHA!!! (everything was true but the dead people, they wouldn't be able to find him anyway)But seriously, don't go there. A mile down the road is my dad's cousin. He's not into Halloween, and he still might get you if startle him at night. As for my Halloween, I had to do school, eat an apple, work on Christmas orders, and start on a lathe I'm building. Yeah that's right! I'm building St. Roy's treadle lathe!(With my own touches, tweaks, and twists of course) Wish me luck!

[Alan Rutherford]

We're at the end of an unpaved dead-end road where the houses are at least a couple of hundred yards apart and many not visible from the street. No one walks up to houses around here in the dark. In fact you gotta be careful even in daylight. And I don't know how far you have to go to find someone of trick-or-treat age anyway.

Not too many lifetimes ago I lived in nearly the first house from the entrance to an upscale neighborhood where the houses were conveniently close to the street and close together. We'd see parents dropping kids off by the carload. I think some older kids drove themselves. Location, location, location. Another place where the "market" was only local, if we "advertised" - jack-o-lanterns visible from the street, porch light on, house not too scary, we'd get a few dozen but I'd always have a little candy left for myself.

The organized events and the safety articles in the news are a real downer on the spirit of the thing. Next Spring we can talk about the plastic-egg hunts for Easter.

[Bert Kemp]

6 years here and I have never had anyone knock on the door. I admit my house sits about a hundred yards back from the road and away from the other houses on the street, but the neighbors say the kids go to town. They told me they go town and sit in the grocery store parking lot and pass out candy off the back of their truck, they say a lot of people do it just to see all the costumes.

[Chris Damm]

This was the 1st year in 20 that we had any kids. We moved to SC last year and even though we are in a subdivision with at least 35 children under 15 we only had 5 from the neighborhood and 2 that were bussed in. Lots of candy for the grandkids next visit (if there's left).

[Brett Luna]

Ummmm???? There are SUBURBS in ALASKA? Seriously? Please forgive my total and utter ignorance Brett, but your whole, very enormous State has only 3/4 of a million people - why do you need suburbs? :D:D:D

Of course, we're not a teeming metropolis (thank goodness!) but the Municipality of Anchorage is a bit larger land-wise than Rhode Island and comprises about 40% of that ¾-million people. Reaching out a little farther, into the neighboring Matanuska-Susitna and Kenai Peninsula boroughs (each larger than West Virginia) almost half of the state's population lives within 50 miles of downtown Anchorage...as the raven flies. I suppose you could call Peters Creek rural since it's on the outskirts of the Muni, well out of Anchorage proper, and beyond Eagle River for that matter. But I do live in a platted, residential subdivision within earshot of a 4-lane highway. It's true that we're on well water and our mailbox is a little ways down our mountain but we do have electric, gas, broadband cable, and weekly refuse service. Hell, we even have indoor plumbing! Just not too many trick-or-treaters. Or a Woodcraft store. :rolleyes:

[Tim Boger]

10 years here in SC, no street lights, no sidewalks and no trick or treaters.

Prior to SC we were in Southern Cal in a planed community and we'd get cleaned out of candy every year ... we loved the young children in costumes but some of the older teens kinda rubbed me the wrong way.
Tim

[Belinda Barfield]

I live in a "destination" neighborhood, on the main drag. Seriously, people come with van loads of kids. I usually do the trick or treat thing, but this year I was home alone so I didn't. Turned off the front porch light and still had 8 or 10 doorbell rings. The first year in the neighborhood I was completely cleaned out of candy, turned off the porch light, and still had people ringing the doorbell at midnight. Our county did decide of "do" Halloween on Monday night and I think that was probably the reason for less rings than typical.

[Brian Henderson]

I just spent 17 years living in a place where nobody ever came. We had a grand total of 2 people in 17 years. Then we moved into a neighborhood and we got about 40 people on Halloween. I have no idea if that's the norm or not, but we bought enough for 200 and have lots of candy left over. By the time it gets dark, you get nobody, which I think is really stupid, but that's the modern Halloween.

[Gordon Eyre]

Last year we had two doorbell rings with several kids in both groups. This year we had zero. I like seeing the little kids in their cute costumes but it has dwindled to nothing over the last ten years.