Lots of neighborhoods just don't have that many kids left. They've grown. Easily 80% of my suburban neighborhood is over 65. And they've been here since the 90s.

When young families can't buy homes their trick-or-treating becomes relegated to their apartment complex or (when those complexes are sketchy) to trunk or treats.

For my neighborhood it was the busiest I've ever seen it in 17 years. A lot of home made costumes, even teenagers dressing up and getting in on the action with the gaggles of little kids. A few houses even did mini haunted houses in the front yards and garages. A lot of other houses had people chilling in the driveways with a small fire going. It was in the 50s (F) so not particularly warm either... I'm in a lower to middle class area, no HOA neighborhood so people do what they want with decorating and it's great.

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

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

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

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

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

For years we've had almost no trick-or-treaters come to our house. We know there are tons in the area, but the number who actually stopped at our house kept dropping.

Last year it was warm enough on Halloween for us to leave the front door open, and we saw tons of kids walk past our house and heard one kid say, "That's the creepy house."

Which is ridiculous. There's nothing creepy at all about our house.

Anyway, last year I decided I should make a sign to let the kids know they could stop at our house.

I made a post about the sign.

Anyway, the sign worked. We had double-digit trick-or-treaters this year.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah.

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

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

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

Nope. Still going strong. And I'm in Germany. There were a lot of kids and teenagers around and people had an excellent time scaring the bejeebies out of each other. Standing outside and hearing the screaming was pretty funny.

We sat on the porch, in costume, with candy and the light on. Several people just skipped our house entirely. They went on either side and across the street, but not ours.

We had maybe 4 groups.

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

Edinburgh, Scotland - we had quite a lot of T/Ters (or guisers, as it's often better known here, among older generations anyway). Maybe 10-15 groups. A lot of families round our way and we usually have a fairly busy night, so no change from normal :-)

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

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

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

also, candy prices are insane

No kids around. I'm in a what should be a solidly middle class neighborhood except its like 80% retired folk. Just a handful of families with kids.

If anything, it's gotten worse since this place gentrified.

Used to be, kids weren't allowed out after dark, this was a proper dangerous estate, we had murderers and even one or two people with actual guns!

These days it's all weirdly big cars trying to copy the huge American ones, custom reg plates and live laugh love signs. They can even afford a second car this lot, AND fancy security cameras!

Gone are the days we used to get our cameras smashed so people could nick our motor.

What's the world coming to?

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

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

We had maybe 3 small groups come by. Very young kids with parents. For our kids, we went to a downtown event where businesses handed out candy. I liked that it was pretty dense with costumes and a down/back loop so we got to see lots of costumes and run into other families we knew. It's definitely changed and moved away from neighborhoods but there's also a feedback loop. Fewer kids, fewer houses passing out candy, fewer kids. Now I have to figure out what to do with 95% of a Costco candy bag

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

More kids this year than any other year.

My area was full of trick or treaters. I saw more homemade costumes. Had some teens in the spirit, lots of adults, too. My kid got to hang out with some friends and trick or treat.

However, I didn't dress up this year. Too much to do. My daughter's costume was all stuff we already had. Didn't decorate because, again, too much to do.

Nobody my age can afford a house. I just got lucky with an okay job. All my immediate neighbours are old people. No kids.

That was true for the first 7 years here. I'd get 0 to 3 kids max. Then suddenly last year it's shot up to 30+.

I figure that means as old ppl are dying, landlords are buying. The houses aren't any cheaper yet, Carney.

Steady uptick in trick or treaters over the last 3 years. I think the neighborhood demographic is shifting to having more kids in the area.

We have a pretty large population of new immigrants in the area too, many with kids, and I think they weren't super familiar with the concept of Halloween when they arrived. I mean... it does sound kinda insane if you didn't grow up with it.

But I think they've realized that yes, it is a real thing... strangers will happily shovel candy at your children when they knock on a door.

Makes me very happy, it's such a community building event. I was explaining to my newish-to-canada wife that as a kid it's almost better than Christmas. As fun as Christmas is, as a kid you're still the passenger. Halloween you actually have some agency... what are you going to dress up as? Who do you want to trick or treat with? What route do you want to take? What candy do you want to barter with your friends afterwards?

I live in an urban area and we run out of candy in two hours there are so many kids.

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

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

/S

No kids Trick-of-Treating showed up at my door yesterday, but holy shit it was loud outside. People (adults) were lining up stretching around the block to get into some event, I guess, in an adjacent building. Lots of yelling / very loud talking, honking, etc. Bunch of police sirens at like 3am or so. Some Friday nights are kind of like that normally around here, but this one was extra rowdy.

Downtown area of a city on the US West Coast.

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

Lots of kids in the neighborhoods across town wherre the families now live. In the part of town where I am where it is all rental units filed with childless professionals and retirement homes for affluent snowbirds, there was no trick-or-treating. My husband grew up here and in this part of town it used to be crawling with kids in the 60's and 70's. Then again, that was before rich people "discovered" our city and snapped up all the affordable rentals and converted them to luxury condos.

It was bonkers this year!

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

I do go crazy for decorating and candy delivery mechanism.

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

Definitely a lot quieter here as well - we live in a neighborhood in a rural town. Not many options to go trick or treating here. We did get maybe 40-50 kids last night, but in past years (definitely before Covid), it was more like a few hundred. People would drive their kids from the area here and let them loose. We had to have the cops drive around the neighborhood to make sure everyone was safe. Definitely different last night. Still lots of little kids, but very few teens. Used to be the other way around. We have lots of candy left ...

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

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

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

I got 42 trick or treaters.

Our town had the usual in town loop (Downtown is a 4x4 block grid) all the buisnesses handing out candy a couple of the bars haning mini shots for the parents, etc, with main street closed off, a band playing, fire dept, police, and some of the bigger buisnesses without a storefront down town staging their Halloween stuff in there. There was also the usual lead in- to town (its fairly traditional for all the houses to have candy starting about 1 mile out of town on the main road in- often with the caretakers/ property manager cos doing candy on their properties on the behalf of the rich owners who only visit seasonally)

There were also 4 different neighborhoods sort of actively advertising they were 'open' for trick or treaters- wirh residents telling everyone to make sure to hit up their blocks. 2 of them were blocks with a sort of critical mass of young families, and 2 were somw of the larger, denser areas so better for foot traffic.

Our towns kind of difficult demographics wise though- in addition to the whole young families having trouble affording homes, and aging population problems felt everywhere, were a seasonal beach resort town, so probably 60% of the houses are closed for the season by Halloween.

We had one group of three kids and their parents, that was it. I blame the rain storm. We got hit with an "atmospheric river" that started about 2 bours before it got dark. 😭

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

Trick or Treating has definitely gone down in my neighborhood.

The neighborhood is 21 years old and I posit that is the reason. A lot of new families, like us, moved in 20 years ago and now the kids are all grown up. My kids are 18 and 16 respectively and have not gone out on Halloween for a few years. The family right next door to us have sons that are a bit older than ours.

Halloween never really was a thing in my country. At high times, there were three or four groups during the evening. This year only one.

We're in a downtown-adjacent neighborhood of our decently-sized city and we saw plenty of kids this year (6-8 in small groups and a herd of 15 or so). Other years when we lived a bit further out, we didn't get as many but still a few (usually 5-10).

Hasn't died here.

Fewer kids on the street, they've outgrown the trick-or-treating phase. And with how expensive it is to own a property now, I don't expect young couples to buy a house here anytime soon.

We still get some. Maybe 20 groups of between 2-7 kids, all were with parents, all seemed under 11 years old. No roving groups of older kids this year. We do have kids in our neighborhood, and a couple of apartment complexes nearby with more so there is no way most of them came out but it seemed more little kids this year than last. I don't live in the suburbs, but in a residential neighborhood in the city.

I was in costume because we had a party. Olivia Octavius. And had the pleasure of threatening a wee spiderman, which made his parents laugh but he didn't understand.

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

Kind of yes... When I was a kid (born in the 70s, grew up in the 80s) we went all around the neighborhood.

These days you can put your light on, it won't matter. People drive their kids to the rich neighborhoods and trick-or-treat there.

Why the HOAs put up with it is beyond me.

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

I went walking yesterday during trick or treating to a party at a bar 2 miles away. I saw a few groups of kids, I walked through a business street area and all the restaurants and bars and stores were giving out candy to kids with their parents. Every group had a parent but they were mostly 8-14. Definitely wasn't as busy as it was when I went as a kid 15 years ago, even though I lived in a small town. Also not a lot of houses were participating in giving out candy but I moved to a city so maybe that's it

The volume of salt and sugar in my front room would tend to make me believe, trick or treating is alive and well.

Jokes aside. We live in rural Canada. It's so popular it was moved to Thursday night this year because of a massive rainstorm last night.

ICE, the chances pedophiles, kidnappers have definitely suppressed halloween numbers. also because of covid too.

apartment

I think my house is too far down a seemingly dead court for most kids to bother. We got less than 5 this past Halloween, but I've heard the houses at the start of the street get tons of kids.

Jays game.... Streets were empty after 8

I mean compared to when I was young its come down massively. It got sorta wierd when you had parents driving down the street one house at a time and the kids get out and back in and then you had people coming from far places if your place was known for handing out good stuff. Im in a condo now so it just does not really happen as its just not as accessible as single family homes. My place is also on this busy triangle that is surrounded by busy streets with no side streets.

I stopped bothering like two or three years ago. Number of years in a row before that I had zero trick-or-treaters so just kind of felt like why bother anymore?

We had a wind/rain storm. Did our block and got home soaked. Not as bumping as last year. So I don't think it's dead, just a bad weather year.

First year in my neighborhood 10 or so years ago they went pretty hard, but the streets were completely packed with cars that were obviously from outside the neighborhood and it seems like everyone stopped the following year

Had to leave my neighborhood to trick or treat with my kiddo. She made out like a bandit.

Our small rural town still does it, police and fire shut down a few blocks so the families can wander around safely. We also do Trunk or Treat too mostly for younger kids. One thing that has died out is families going around to homes outside of town limits. Lots of folks in costume in town at least!

This is the second year in a row that we had no trick or treaters again.

We have no kids really. We barely had any even before everything went down. I'm in a very rural town and there just isn't the population or interest here anymore.

Unpopular opinion probably, I'm ready for the down votes: I live in Europe and I hate the fact that it has taken root here. We don't need any more American culture to take over. I didn't grow up with this and I don't need my kids growing up with it. We have no connection to Halloween celebrations like this. What's next to come, Thanksgiving?

End rant. 😅

No, it was still going strong yesterday, despite construction project blocking sidewalks and concerns about ICE.

The past decade or so where I live, almost without fail, there's a huge rain or thunderstorm on Halloween that makes it absolutely miserable to trick-or-treat. You have to wear a jacket and if you wear face paint it just runs and you can't see. The very last time I went out about 8 years ago, the storm was so bad it nearly ripped a chainlink fence off its posts and the people giving out candy just dumped their whole bowl in my bag because they knew nobody else would come.

Had 1 visit, normally 5 or so.

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

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

Maybe it is the fear of being shot for stepping on someone else's property. Many people with kids also can't afford to live in a house, and apartment complexes don't do door to door trick or treating.