I always used to feel cheated on Halloween. My parents never let us go door to door. Not to say we didn't do Halloween; my mother was the queen of Halloween costumes. She invented a pattern to replicate the Wicked Witch costume from The Wizard of Oz as well as Scarecrow for my brother. My brother had a bat costume one year that was pretty fantastic. I had a ghost costume that, well, we didn't realise it at the time, but you know the costume that Principal Victoria makes for Cartman on South Park when she won't let him be Hitler? You know, the costume that pisses Chef off? It looked sorta like that.
Anyway, my mother went to a lot of trouble for Halloween costumes, and just like we had the best Valentine's for school parties, we got to take the best candy for the Halloween parties. My mom, Christi's mom and Jacinda's grandma were almost always the homeroom mom's. But, like I say, my brother and I never got to go door to door. Instead, we went to Trick-or-Treating at the Botanical Gardens, and Trick-or-Treating at the Historical Farms.
I suppose in reality, we ended up getting a lot more mileage out of the costumes because that was always two nights worth of candy, and invariably we'd end up on the news because we were the two kids in awesome costumes when the weatherman went looking for background (we were always measured with our coats on, to wear underneath rather than over and can actually tell what the costume is), but there was absolutely no street cred. You couldn't go to school the next day and talk all about the old lady who ran out of candy and started handing out quarters (this was back in the day when you could still get excited about quarters). Not even being on the news was cool because, well, what eight year olds watch the news? Also, because they were community things, the candy was invariably the same: Tootsies. More Tootsie rolls and Tootsie pops and Smarties than you could shake a stick at. Oh, and Reese's peanut butter cups which I am not a super duper big fan of now, but in those days would rather die than eat.
The exception to this was when I was five (four or five, anyway), and I think that may have been the first and last time. We went with my grandfather's niece's grandchildren (if that relationship makes any sense), Brian and Daniel. They were about two and three years older than me, so most efforts to put us together were generally awkward at best. And actually, all I really remember about that was that it was the one and only time I ever sat in the front bench seat of our 1975 Buick (we had it until 1990).
It was also the first time I'd ever had a Butterfinger. It happened accidently. We were on the way home, and, assuming there wouldn't be anything in my pumpkin I didn't like (didn't the people know?), I reached in in the dark and pulled something out. In the lights of the streetlights my mother saw what it was and warned me against it... Too late. I'm not allergic, but I've never liked peanut butter in anything other than sandwiches, and I especially hate being surprised by it. When I was three I spit peanut butter cookie all over poor Megan Wheeler and her hermit crab in preschool (it was pet day) because I thought they were sugar cookies.
We stopped doing Halloween altogether by the time I was in fifth grade, when I was deemed too old. (I have a feeling my brother, three years younger than me, got cheated sometimes when I got too old for stuff.) The disgusting part of that was that in fifth grade my parents said I was too old, but everyone else I knew trick-or-treated until their senior year. They begged not to have play rehearsals on Begger's Night every single year.
Another thing, DM always had Begger's Night, before or after Halloween for kids to go door to door. For example, if Halloween fell on a Friday, it fell after, if it fell on Sunday it was before, if it was a Wendnesday, I don't know what they did, I don't know that they put it off until the weekend, but I never remember it not having been on a weekend, hmmmm. People I talk to think this concept is bizarre, even though I know other towns do it. I think it's weirder to see pictures of kids trick-or-treating in broad daylight. Six to eight are the hours I think of as "normal", so it's starting to get dark at the beginning and truly dark by the end. But I suppose if you're in like, Chicago, you don't really want to wander around with little kids after dark.
This year, The Boy wants to give out candy, and we're probably going to go buy something in the way of yard decoration. Dunno what yet.
Honestly, I'd like to do a haunted house that was a sort of legitimate scary. I worked one once that was just a jump-out-of-the-darkness-and-scream sort of thing, and I understand that's what all of them are. I'd like to rig something where it looked like a normal house, but you went in, and weird shit would happen, doors opening and closing, footsteps behind you, etc.
Actually, I think it'd be cool to have a house with those kinds of things just built into it anyway. I saw a Hollywood propmaster's house that he'd done some things like that- he had a mirror in the bathroom that he could rig for a face to appear and whatnot. He'd invite people over for dinner and run it all from a control panel in the kitchen.
At the very least, if I ever DO get to build my dream house, there will be a secret passage in it. Whether it'll involve a secret room, I dunno, secret rooms are easy to work out unless they're just monk holes, and I don't think I'd want a monk hole in my house. Maybe I'd make the door to the basement or the attic a secret passage and then decorate the secret room like The Addam's Family or something.