Topic of the week: What does trick-or-treating look like in your building or neighborhood?

How might Halloween traditions be impacted by different types of homes and transit options? How's trick-or-treating different in an apartment building than in a suburb made up of single-family homes, for instance? How does walkability (or lack thereof) impact the tradition?

I plied our contributors with questions about their experiences:

Some shared how they celebrate living in apartment buildings and dorms. Joanne Tang says:

I’ve I lived in a high rises for a few years and I don’t get any trick or treaters. I get that part of the fun is getting candy outside from house to house but I want trick or treaters! I like giving out candy. I have considered going to my parents’ house on Halloween night and making them leave their light on so I can hand out candy.

Dan Reed adds:

During my freshman and sophomore years at UMD I lived in a dorm where kids from a nearby elementary school came to trick-or-treat. Naturally my hall mates were pretty serious about Halloween decorations, and we always put on a good show, smoke machines and everything.

The condo building I live in used to ask people to sign up for a trick-or-treating list, and then kids would know which units to visit. This year the practice seemed to stop - but it was a good idea, especially for a building with lots of kids.

When I was growing up in a high-rise apartment building, adults might tell me in passing that they were doing trick-or-treating, but it was unorganized, and the building was huge. My parents just told me I couldn’t participate because “we were Christian,” but that excuse mysteriously disappeared when we bought a house when I was in middle school.

Others have lived in walkable neighborhoods where families had rather elaborate Halloween traditions. Sanjida says:

Our neighborhood has had a small costume parade for parents and kids that starts on my corner and goes about a quarter mile or less around the block. It's great, but it seems to mean that we don't get a lot of trick or treaters at the house afterwards, possibly because the kids are already tired or decide to walk somewhere else. This year, we'll show them by buying less candy!

Kristy Cartier says:

Growing up in Vienna, we walked up and down the street. Each house is on 1/2 acre and there are no sidewalks nor streetlights, though the street is wide and houses have their own lamps.

My Dad would sit in the rocking chair on the front porch dressed as Frankenstein with the candy bowl in his lap. We had the spooky music playing and a black light poster on the door.

Tracy Loh says:

Last year in Mount Rainier, I knew I was about to get trick-or-treaters at my door every time I heard the tiny shrieks of princesses and superheros peeling out of the house three doors down towards my address.

It reminded me of my own childhood in Chevy Chase DC, where one family on Utah Avenue would do up a whole haunted house that ended with the dad chasing groups of kids across the lawn with a real chainsaw! Neighborhoods like these are so good for trick-or-treating that families return to them even after they move away. Last year I met one family that had lived on my block…10 years ago.

I love Halloween, because it's a magical day where an adult world is reorganized to thrill and please children. It's also a time to meet neighbors. It reminds me of canvassing when I was running for public office, when else are you out and about knocking on every door?

Tony Camilli says:

I grew up in a relatively normal suburban area, but the lots were rather large so it made trick-or-treating seem like a marathon to reach as many houses as possible by foot. There were people driving their kids around for sure, but me and my friends considered that cheating. Every year we'd compare our “take” and declare a winner, who could then steal 3-5 pieces of candy from each other buddy.

In Takoma Park I've found the lot sizes to be like what Tracy describes - close enough to make it fun for families to do on foot and houses generally make it known if they are participating. Our neighbor counts the number of kids she gets each year and records all of the different costumes. She then shares the results on our neighborhood distro list and it's quite a hoot to read about the costumes. Last year we had about 250 kids come through our neighborhood (many of which are from DC and Prince George's County), which ends up costing us about 500-600 pieces of candy ($40-50). It's worth every penny to see the kids having so much fun. I have become a bit of a destination for Halloween too as I spend considerable time and $ on turning our house into a spooky graveyard.

I think Halloween is one of the best if not the best holiday to bring a community together. In Takoma Park we close the main street (Carroll Ave) and have a big parade and party at the end of the parade - complete with live music and costume winners. To say it's my favorite thing about Takoma Park would be an understatement. I've been asking the City to let us have a public beer garden on the road in the future, which would make Halloween even better for adults.

Some say the suburbs are best for maximizing candy intake. Daniel Warwick says:

Growing up in the suburbs of Seattle I made out like a bandit trick or treating from my dad's workplace where most offices would put out a few bags of candy and we would walk down the corridor collecting candy every few feet. We would then visit a few houses on the cul-de-sac I grew up on where we would get a few full bars to end the night.

Driving to certain more affluent and relatively walkable neighborhoods was also popular. Some people there would give out full bars!

Others argue rowhomes, with their efficient narrow size, offer the most candy per mile. Maxime Devilliers says:

I grew up in Lake Barcroft, in VA and every year we did something different. Some years, if we were really lucky, my parents and the parents of my family friends would drive us down to Old Town and we would go trick or treating on the streets with narrow rowhomes which enabled us to get way more candy per mile.

But we also went trick or treating in my neighborhood, or in Culmore, or in Cherrydale, or Taney Avenue off Duke Street–wherever the parents who offered to host that year lived. We always went by foot once we arrived at the destination, no matter how wide or narrow the houses were.

When I moved to Near Northeast after college in 2014, I loved having the kids come to our door and seeing them run up and down the steps of the identical Wardmans that line the 1100 block of 4th Street NE.

Some have experience living in a variety of places, including rural areas. Justin Lini says:

Back when I was a kid in the 80s I trick-or-treated in some rural areas. You'd hop in the car and ride between groups of houses. You'd walk through a subdivision or cover the group of houses then hop in the car again. We didn't do that too often and mostly stayed in town.

When I lived in a mid-sized apartment building on Capitol Hill I spent most of the time sitting on the front porch giving handfuls of candy to the small number of kids who came by my block. I'd watch as crowds went to the townhouses on surrounding blocks.

Now that I'm east of the river I get a good number of kids early- they're mostly little kids with their parents. It's fun because I know many of them. The bigger kids stop by on their way to Capitol Hill. Also, this year the neighborhood school is opening its doors for little kids to go trick-or-treating.

One thing that bums me out is I don't see a whole lot of porch lights on in my immediate area. My development is less than five years old and the homeowners tend to be in their late 20s and 30s and without kids. I hope they get more community-minded as they get older.

Nick Burger adds:

I live in Capitol Hill, although not on the main East Cap drag. We get a lot of people from all over, probably between 200 and 400 kids depending on the year/weather/etc. It's pretty fun. It's partly fun since it's exactly the opposite of my experience growing up.

I lived in Alaska, just outside of Fairbanks. Our dirt road had two houses on it, so there was definitely not foot-based trick or treating in our 'neighborhood.' We typically followed one of two models: we'd either all bundle up and get in the car and some parent would drive from house to house, with all the kids spilling out clown-car style. Or we'd drive 'downtown' to something approaching a more dense neighborhood and walk from house to house, although usually we weren't out all that long.

The weather that time of year ranges from about 15-20 degrees above zero to easily 30-40 below zero, and in any case the Halloween costumes were downed out by snowpants, coats, gloves, etc. Kind of depressing, to be honest. Hence why Halloween in DC is so much more fun, even if I'm not the one going house to house (yet: our kids are not into prime trick-or-treating age just yet).

Finally, Rachel M says:

Here's another interesting spin - a couple years ago a friend organized a group of adults (also known as kids at heart) to go trick or treating around Mount Pleasant for canned goods to donate to the food bank. It was a lot of fun and very meaningful, but also very heavy toward the end!