Although the haunted month of October is now behind us, students have no problem recalling their fond memories from Halloweens recent and long past.
It is not Halloween without trick-or-treating, and it is not trick-or-treating without candy. Sixth grader Keegan Kratz comments on his favorite treats, saying, “On Halloween, Fun Dip is just fun to get.”
Seventh grader Oli DeRousse also has strong opinions on the best candy: “My favorite candy, personally, is definitely sweet tart ropes.” But he clarifies that his love is only for the ropes: “Every time I get home I trade with my sister and my friends. I want to give away the regular sweet tarts, the little sour, weird ones. I want to get Reese’s, Twix [and] all the chocolate [candy],” he says.
Similarly, Kratz says, “ I usually hold on to Twix and Kit Kats and then give away Milky Ways and 3 Musketeers.” He also shares that his family is regularly frequented by kids on Halloween, but the items given out are not always conventional: “My mom gave out Play-Doh one year,” he says, adding that “someone near my neighborhood gave out $2 bills.”
Likewise, DeRousse remembers the instance where “One of my neighbors gave out gummy toes.”
There are always worse options. Eighth grader Emma Conde-Hafker says that she dislikes getting “A toothbrush or healthy candy.”
Unfortunately, freshman Max Kuehler’s mom is a “dental hygienist,” and she “actually [gave out toothbrushes] one year.”
On the other hand, some parents are more generous when giving out candies. Senior Raina Bean-Pearce recounts her freshman year of trick-or-treating, saying, “Mrin and I … ran into two different houses, and each house had very little trick-or-treaters, so they gave us each half a bowl.”
Another element of Halloween is the costumes. Conde-Hafker shares her favorite: “The best costume I’ve seen is a thunder storm cloud,” she says.
Kuehler believes the best has to go to “a dino chicken nugget.”
DeRousse has seen “someone who was a spirit walker who [had] stilts on their hands and on their feet.” Personally, he also has had some great costumes: “When I was four, I did a bowling thing with my family … My family were the pins, [and] I was a bowling ball,” he says.
As fun as they are, costumes can create some inconveniences: “When I was really little, I dressed up as Darth Vader, and I couldn’t see out of my mask, and I was wearing gloves, so I had to have my cousins get the candy for me,” says Kuehler.
Kratz also comments on some costume mishaps, saying, “There’s been a lot [of occasions] where somebody has fallen down in one of their costumes … A lot of things have been funny. Going from door to door, you see some wild stuff,” he adds.
Indeed, the most exciting aspect of trick-or-treating is to march around the neighborhood. The decorations get you in the spirit of the season, but they can sometimes be a little over the top: “There’s this house that goes all out [with] over probably $1,000 to $10,000 worth of just skeletons and a whole graveyard in the front yard,” says Kratz.
Bean-Pearce, who goes trick-or-treating in Potwin, Topeka, says, “There’s this one house in Potwin. The architecture itself looks old; it looks like a little castle thing. They always dress it up in accordance to that vibe, so it’s really nice, and they have a little carriage.”
Some people go the extra mile in their celebration. Conde-Hafker says, “There’s a house that has a haunted house in their driveway, and you would have to walk through it to get the candy, and it’s pretty fun.” It is less fun, though, when the night becomes truly haunted: “One time, all the lights went out in my old neighborhood [because] all electricity went out,” says Conde-Hafker, looking back on one trick-or-treating incident.
Similarly, Kratz shares that “the year before last year, there were coyotes prowling a whole area of houses … [they were] no less than 100 feet away!”
As the air gets chillier and the nights get longer, so much of this season can be appreciated through trick-or-treating, just as Kratz says, he simply loves “staying out there very late when it was really cold out, [and] when we got back [inside], that felt really nice, and that was very fun.”
