Tell us about Halloween when you were a kid!

Daisy99

Daisy99

Member
The best part, looking back, was that Trick or Treat was always on the 31st and always at night! Of course, back then, I thought the candy was the best part! I also remember wearing our costumes to school and all the kids would parade around the school. Oh, and roasted pumpkin seeds! 🎃👻
 

My mother made me wear a winter coat over my costume because it was usually cold. I hated that. Oh, and we used to have neighbors who had a "haunted" house to run through or a party with bobbing for apples. We thought nothing of sticking our faces in the bucket of apples that everyone else bobbed in.
 

When I trick or treated at my own door, I was rewarded with a new dime or quarter, can't remember which. Whatever, it was the same as what the tooth fairy gave me. I could actually buy stuff with a dime or quarter back then.

My 5 year old grandson lost his first tooth. Tooth fairy likes him better. 5 bucks!
 
Always Trick or Treating in my grandmother's neighborhood. Good salt of the earth kind of families lived there and Halloween was special for all of them. Trick or Treating commenced at sunset and continued until about 9P.M. but my sack was full long before then. Wandering the streets with flashlights appearing here and there. It was magical. Droves of dressed up kids and happy carefree parents ... mostly moms. It was a social event of the year.
 
birdy said:
Oh, and we used to have neighbors who had a "haunted" house to run through or a party with bobbing for apples. We thought nothing of sticking our faces in the bucket of apples that everyone else bobbed in.
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Oh, you're right! I never realized how gross that was... and not only sticking our faces in the same water as everyone else's spit, but if others tried to bite the same apple and missed... !!! 😳 However did we survive?! Today's helicopter parents would be facing apoplexy! 🤭
 
We lived in the country. On Halloween, we went to the local town. There we had a great time pushing over outhouses (this was late 1950s). Boy, did we ever laugh. 65 years later I'm still laughing. You haven't had a great childhood unless you threw over some toilets. Kids today just know know what real fun is!

Mind you, you had to be careful. It was dark and you didn't want to fall into that big hole that was left when the outhouses fell over. Ha, ha, ha!
 
In Scotland we always trick or treated every Halloween... unbeknown to us it was not a thing in England.. (and wasn't until very recently)... however we always went out on All Hallows Eve dressed up in whatever we could cobble together to make, and whatever it looked like , that's what we became, because no-one was buying a costume for us, nor making one... so for example, I had a big party fress my granny bought me, so I wore it , with my hair in bunches and red rosy cheeks.. and said I was Cinderella

Anyway we always had our party piece to do... which we always did whether a poem or a song... and the householders, always wanted us to do it too...

Often we'd be given apples and oranges, lots of nuts mainly monkey nuts , and some money too...3d here, sixpence there...

I remember going to a very wealthy house in the next road to ours.. I'd never been inside a house that had central heating before.. and when they opened the door, there was this huge hall and double staircase decked out in red carpeting..it looked like a wonderland to me.. and it was a very cold night, and raining.. and the heat from the house just flowed out onto the doorstep..sooo welcoming..I'd never felt that before..

They family were so welcoming too, and invited us into their enormous barn house style kitchen where the family were literally roasting chestnuts and we were given some to eat and some hot chocolate to drink...everyone was very friendly and pleased to have us there..



Just as an added fact to that story... as I grew up I never forgot that house, and I was determined that if I ever got myself out of poverty, I would have a house like that... and aside from the double staircase, and mezzanine floor.. ..I pretty much worked for that home ... and even got the red carpet as the very first carpet on my stairs...
 
Packerjohn said:
We lived in the country. On Halloween, we went to the local town. There we had a great time pushing over outhouses (this was late 1950s). Boy, did we ever laugh. 65 years later I'm still laughing.
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Oh, John... I have no trouble believing this whatsoever. 🤭 Almost afraid to ask, but did you ever topple one that actually had a person in it using it?! @Packerjohn
 
The other celebration we had... which is at odds with every other holiday in our childhood was my mums' insistence we play Halloween games at home. She would hang pancakes dripping with black treacle on a piece of string stretched between 2 poles.. and we'd be blindfolded and have to try and bite them... .. and we'd Dook for apples.. ..apples all placed in a bowl full of cold water.. and we'd have to kneel blindfolded and sink our teeth into them to get them out...or kneel on a chair back to front so we were facing the back of the chair, and have the handle of a fork in our mouths, and unblindfolded we'd have to drop the fork into the bowl in the hope of spearing an apple..
 
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My brother and I usually trick or treated in our neighborhood in costumes we had cobbled together and the awful plastic masks that everyone wore. He was three years younger than me and I was responsible for holding his hand. I especiall remember getting home and counting our candy. We would trade for favorite kinds.
 
hollydolly said:
In Scotland we always trick or treated every Halloween... unbeknown to us it was not a thing in England.. (and wasn't until very recently)... however we always went out on All Hallows Eve dressed up in whatever we could cobble together to make, and whatever it looked like , that's what we became, because no-one was buying a costume for us, nor making one... so for example, I had a big party fress my granny bought me, so I wore it , with my hair in bunches and red rosy cheeks.. and said I was Cinderella

Anyway we always had our party piece to do... which we always did whether a poem or a song... and the householders, always wanted us to do it too...

Often we'd be given apples and oranges, lots of nuts mainly monkey nuts , and some money too...3d here, sixpence there...

I remember going to a very wealthy house in the next road to ours.. I'd never been inside a house that had central heating before.. and when they opened the door, there was this huge hall and double staircase decked out in red carpeting..it looked like a wonderland to me.. and it was a very cold night, and raining.. and the heat from the house just flowed out onto the doorstep..sooo welcoming..I'd never felt that before..

They family were so welcoming too, and invited us into their enormous barn house style kitchen where the family were literally roasting chestnuts and we were given some to eat and some hot chocolate to drink...everyone was very friendly and pleased to have us there..



Just as an added fact to that story... as I grew up I never forgot that house, and I was determined that if I ever got myself out of poverty, I would have a house like that... and aside from the double staircase, and mezzanine floor.. ..I pretty much worked for that home ... and even got the red carpet as the very first carpet on my stairs...
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What a great story! Thanks for sharing!
 
I remember wearing some kind of cheap costume with a mask that you couldn't see out of. They pulled them off the market, because they'd go up in a ball of flames- but hey, then, it was the late 50s. I had a plastic pumpkin to hold my goodies. I couldn't figure out why these people were giving me stuff.
My brother is ten years younger than me. I had to take him trick or treating. When I knocked on the door, he wouldn't say anything-just hold out his bag. Some of the people wanted hear a song or 'trick or treat', but he wouldn't open his mouth. He'd start to cry, so I was the one , who had to sing and talk. When you're 16, having to sing Halloween songs for gum ..........I made him promise that at the next house he'd talk, but every time he'd just stick out the bag.
 
I grew up in a small mountain town in Colorado. We usually had quite a bit of snow on the ground on Halloween. Of course, that did not stop us, but we had to wear galoshes, stocking hats, and coats over our costumes. Wearing a mask was not possible so we used to makeup or whatever on our faces. Most people shoveled their walks, if they had them.

Most of the streets were dirt and they did not plow dirt streets. Some blocks in town did not have sidewalks, so we used the roads and walked in the tire tracks. Was sometimes hard to stay in the tracks if you were wearing a mask that limited your sight looking down. But as kids we always managed just fine.... I do recall sometimes it was really cold, but again, we managed.

We carried paper sacks to carry our candy and almost everyone in town participated in trick and treating. I have really good memories of Halloween. There were a couple of houses that we visited every year where the ladies would invite us in to get warm and have some hot chocolate or hot cider. They also had Cupcakes or Carmel Apples we could eat. These became our stop off and get warm places. We would spread them out, so we had two warming places over the time we were out. It worked out well....

I could not eat any candy until my parents had inspected it.... they both grew up in Denver a big town.

It was special growing up in a small town...
 
One Halloween, a friend and I got jumped by several teenagers who took all our candy.

One year, four of us went trick or treating together, we dressed up like old west cavalry soldiers. It was a blast creating the costumes.
 
Growing up I never knew what Halloween or trick or treating was. Partly because I grew up in a rual area where the houses were very far apart but also because my parents didn't bother with things like that.

I only remember going once when I got a bit older, probably twelve or thirteen. I went with a friend to his Uncles house and we walked their neighborhood. I had no costume so dirtyed myself up and said I was a bum.
 
When school started each year, Mom and I moved from the high camp down to the Logging Co's main camp. Adjacent to the camp was a small village with a grocery/gas store, a tavern, post office and cafe. A road ran from the village to the Camp and there were probably 30 company/private houses along its length.

The whole area was rural so this was the largest concentration of homes in one place for some distance. Consequently everyone in the area descended on our road. Parents would drop their kids off at one end and wait for them at the other end. Even back in the early 50's it was common for us to have a couple of hundred wee goblins knock on our door.

I made my candy run early so I could hustle back to our house to help mom hand our treats.
 
Yes, many reports back in the 90's of people inserting razor blades into apples or oranges, pins or staples in cookies or fudge and other such crazy stuff. Parents quickly became paranoid and began checking their children's candies when they arrived home and tossing anything that wasn't in an unbroken manufacturers packaging or box. If in doubt, throw it out! Sad really that there's that many sick-o's around looking to hurt children 😞
 

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