What was Halloween like for you when you were a kid ?

[bearfan454]

I remember a truck would always pull up to the corner with apple cider and plain cake donuts for the kids. We always had to wear our coats because it was cold as hell in Chicago at the end of Oct. My Mom made us bring our loot back every hour so she could give out the crummy candy and keep the good stuff for us. We would run from door to door as fast as we could even before it started getting dark. A few times the older kids beat our asses and took our candy. I would never let my granddaughter go by herself nowadays. What do you remeber from Halloween as a kid ?

[Jade Fox]

1. We always had to wear out coats in Colorado too....

kind of took the fun out of coming up with a great costume!

[Ron Green]

2. It was scary and exciting for us until the age of about 12 or 13, at

which time it became a night for delicious mischief: throw eggs at innocent people, wrap houses with toilet paper, and generally wreak non-permanent havoc.

[patrice]

3. Costumes made out of old window drapes.

Except for in Christmas stockings, the ONLY time we were ever allowed to have candy was Halloween.

[johnnie]

4. No big day for me

I do remember one of them. I went down our side of the street and came back. I liked the horror films they showed and the walking sucked so I wanted to be at home.
I was never in to the Halloween thing, in fact I haven't passed out candy at my house since I bought it. That is four years, but this year I picked up some suckers and am going to pass it out. I like the little kids, they crack me up.

[flamingyouth]

5. Usually rainy

We often carried umbrellas so our costumes wouldn't get ruined.

My dad would take my friends and me around our neighborhood. I think he enjoyed it more than we did, come to think of it. He still talks about how much fun it was taking us trick-or-treating.

There was one house in our neighborhood that really did it up great. They had a son who was "older" to us at the time (I think he was probably in his early 20s) who used to dress up like a vampire and scare the hell out of us when he'd open the door. That house was lots of fun. They decorated their whole yard and really went the extra mile.

I'm really excited to be living in a neighborhood with lots of kids now. For the last 12 years, I lived in a building with a doorman, so no trick-or-treaters. The neighbors told me to expect up to 100 kids, so it will be lots of fun. :D

[Lydia Leftcoast]

6. From the 1950s:

Nobody complained about schools celebrating Halloween or thought of it as "devil worship."

We all went home for lunch, as we did every day, and we came back in our costumes. Then we'd get up, and the whole student body would assemble outside for the Halloween Parade, which consisted of marching around the edges of the attendance district in costume. We would meet up with the delegations from the other schools and cheer for them. After returning to our classrooms, we'd have cupcakes and cider.

In the evening, we'd go out trick or treating in the neighborhood. A lot of kids went out without adult supervision, but my parents wouldn't allow that and allows came along, which was highly embarrassing for us. We made them stand on the sidewalk and not go to the door.

Everyone gave full-size candy bars, and once year, a friend of mine came along and showed where all the rich people who gave jumbo candy bars lived.

[Ready4Change]

7. Masses of kids swarming from house to house.

Rumours passing amongst them about which houses give out the best or most candy, which have old people who might not recognize that you'd been there before, or, highest of all dreams, which house had a big bowl of candy out front so you could take as much as you wanted

The only percieved risks were things like apples with pins or razor blades inserted. (I never got an apple in the first place, so not an issue) or running into a street in the excitement and behing hit by a car. In my last trick and treating years worries of drugs injected into candies started creeping in.

[LiberalEsto]

8. We had 2 days in NJ, -- Goosey Night and Halloween

Goosey Night was Oct. 30. What we mostly did that night was write on car windows with soap, or ring doorbells and then run and hide. The wilder kids did eggs, mailbox cherrybombs and vandalism.

On Halloween we went around to the houses in homemade costumes. We always said "Trick or Treat" and were given candy, raisins, popcorn or apples. We also asked for a few coins for UNICEF, which we collected in little cardboard UNICEF boxes. The teachers sent the money to UNICEF. This was in the late 50s, early 60s.

Interesting bit of old NJ lore -- you used to be able to tell what part of the state someone's from by what they call the night before Halloween. It was called Goosey Night in northeastern NJ; Mischief Night in central NJ; Ticktack Night or Cabbage Night in southern NJ.

[Skittles]

9. in England, non-existent

in America, my brothers and I roamed freely, without parental supervision, for quite some long distance.

[Ezlivin]

10. After carving pentagrams into our stomachs with knives...

...we brought zombies to life and set them loose on the streets.

Actually we had good Halloween fun when I was a kid in the 60s. Very traditional, door-to-door with a costume-on and begging for treats kind of thing. We didn't worry about razor blades in apples and ate the home-cooked treats our neighbors (which we knew) gave us.

But those were the days when there were only 3 television stations and they went off at midnight. No video games, no VCRs, no CDs, no computers. You either played inside or outside. We had a hell of a good time with nothing more than a few cardboard boxes.

Sometimes I miss those simple times.

[riverwalker]

11. we were working poor

really poor and lived in a very poor neighborhood. So our dad would drive us across town to the rich neighborhoods to get really good stuff, drop us off and wait in the car. There was always some suspicious (probably repug) old lady who would bust us by asking "why aren't you over at the school party? Do you live around here"? We would nervously point in some vague direction and mumble something.
;)

[DemOverseas]

12. BAD

We were very bad. It was the night to get back at the teachers that gave the kids a difficult time. The football team once lifted the English teachers car over his fence and left it at his front door. We glued a First National Promotion sign on another teachers window.."Piece of the Week!" (First National used to give away dishes with purchases over 10 bucks.) Lighted bags of shit on doorsteps and then ring the doorbell. We were very bad....worse than what is written here. No one cared about treats it was ALL tricks. The first trick or treater at our house got a bag of rocks just because he or she was out way too early. We hoped their bag would be paper but never got that lucky. My brother always powered this treat into the bag. We lived in rural Maine. Not much to do in your spare time and I guess we saved this up for Halloween. It was wild and hairy. I never let my kids do Halloween when they were young. I would bribe them with a trip to McDonald's and then to ToysRus. That is how it was when I was a kid.......long time ago!