OV9

Another good one where we live. There is an American family who go all out, animatronic mummy and scary digital face guy, all the kids are told they can take as much as they can grab in one hand which results in creative hilarity.

Lots of costumes, hardly any idiots and happy children.

The wife does the house up and enjoys doing the whole Halloween “oh that’s scary” etc etc and I get a long dog walk with the youngest.

Oddly, my eldest and his friends went out with another Dad. Knocked at a house with beware, do not enter, you shall not pass etc stuff taped all over it and when they knocked, he gave them the middle finger and shouted “can’t you bloody read”

I don’t think his method to stop the knocking was well thought out considering it looked like most of the others.

Normal rules, lots of decorations, knock, no decorations, walk on by.

A succesful collection of sugary junk for the kids. Over 200 mini bags of haribo given out from ours.

Any other happy Halloween folk ?

Dave!

I rarely ever get trick or treaters around here, however we carved a big pumpkin, lit it with a candle and put it outside the front door, plus had a stock of mini choccy bars, just in case. One pair of little ghosts knocked on the door early in the evening so all worthwhile.

On the other hand there were fireworks going off literally all night (they were going strong at 11pm when I went to bed and my lodger heard some at 5am) for Diwali - definitely the bigger celebration around here.

Had a cute couple of young kids call by early evening. Gave them some haribo and they went away happy.

But the Facebook group is alive with the estate next door and stories of groups of roaming teenagers roaming around with a metal baseball bat egging houses and knocking over the bins. Police should've been called IMO.

First Halloween we've done something with the little 'un, we just kept it to our little Mews so we know everyone and had pre-checked on the WhatsApp group who was happy to receive us. We got that done and then put out our pumpkin and got a few callers (mostly other kids from our street), brought it in so as not to be disturbed over dinner/later and we weren't. All worked out well. Other exciting updates to follow.

That’s bloody excellent

Dave!

We went over to our friends for a "warmup" session before taking an avalanche of children round the local area. Collecting more people we knew along the way we ended up with 13 children and about as many adults roaming the streets. It was great fun, although the eldest told me in a sad voice that it wasn't as much fun as he remembered.

Our village has a Halloween map thing where people who want to take part can put their house on.

My Mrs did a little display with a couple of pumpkins by the front door, we probably had 6-7 small groups of young children supervised by their parents. Have had a lot more in the past, but a lot of the kids are a bit too old for it now.

Is the convention not “Jack-o-Lantern outside the house, knock for sweets, no Jack-o-Lantern, no sweets”

It certainly is where I’ve lived. Kids trying to spot houses with them becomes part of the fun

Our best visitor was the first kid. Brilliant Pennywise costume, complete with Red balloon

dinny_g wrote: Sat Nov 02, 2024 8:32 am Is the convention not “Jack-o-Lantern outside the house, knock for sweets, no Jack-o-Lantern, no sweets”

Yeah, pretty much still the case, but if you have some sort of social media setup locally there are people who potentially CBA with decorations but are still happy to dish out sweets (see also us before we had kids).

It does seem like the prevalence of older kids going round is dissipating a bit... if you're not dishing out pick-n-mix vapes they're probably not interested.