Pretty much ignored. When I lived in the 6-family apartment house, the tenants took up a collection, and we took turns standing outside the fence to hand out candy.
The custom of doing it on our main street has definitely caught on. The store and people passing by give out candy. And kudos to the local Dunkies for giving out coffee in addition to Munchkins. It was freezing that night.
I think we had about 50 kids altogether (some were brought in from other areas!). The doorbell rang every 5 minutes or so from 6:30 p.m. for about an hour. From 7:30 till 9, we had a scattered handful and then nothing. I left the light on till 9:30 because I still had some candy, but no go. (I always worry about having not enough/too much candy - I wish I had a bag of those plastic spider rings, they come in handy if I run out.) You never know, you’d think cold and drizzle and maybe snow would keep the numbers down, but not necessarily…And it depends on the neighborhood. I used to take my daughter to my friend’s house so she could go door to door with her kids, and that neighborhood, an older suburb with lots of trees and friendly neighbors, with ‘haunted houses’ set up in garages and MOBS of kids - now THAT was real trick or treating, and a lot of fun for everyone!
And get labeled as Grinches:
FWIW, there’s practically no trick-or-treating in my neighborhood.
I’ve never seen anyone IRL labelled as a Grinch for having the porch lights off. There are many non-Grinch reasons for not handing out candy - for example, because you are away from home (say, at a Halloween party).
There isn’t any Grinch labeling around here. People who don’t put their lights on don’t even get questioned or get a second thought. It’s a non-issue. If anything, parents are more concerned with making sure their kids don’t bother people who don’t want to be bothered.
I love that too. So cute!
My own son and his friends were far more sophisticated and never did that. What they did do is open some lady’s door themselves and ask for a drink. The other moms and I sort of sunk into the yard when that happened.
Yup - I was teaching my 4 year old son the Halloween “code” this year, something like this:
Don’t knock if the porch lights are off. Go to the houses with lights on and Halloween decorations up.
Say “Trick or Treat” at the door and always say “thank you” and/or “Happy Halloween” when you get candy from people. If you like their scary decorations or costumes, tell people that, too. Do not simply stick out your bag and leave silently.
Never, ever trample people’s flowers when going from house to house.
Pretty much exact same rules as us. 
We drove our kids to the nice subdivision where our son goes to school (making us trashy, I guess) and they had a blast. I’d say about 7 in 10 houses were participating. Last year, my wife tried taking our son trick-or-treating in our little complex of apartments and townhouses, but few people were participating - one guy answered the door with an “oh, crap, I forgot” and gave our son a bag of Doritos. This year’s catch was a lot better.
No, it seems to have died down a couple of days ago.
There was one thing that made me sad this year… I saw a dad taking the treats his young kids had just received from their bags. I heard him say “I know they are healthy, but they aren’t pre-wrapped so you can’t have them.”
Yes, I know about all of the fear of tampered treats. This was from a half million dollar home (in California no big deal, but in Indiana a nice house) in a nice neighborhood with an Asian family that has lived there for the last 4-5 years, the kids play in the yard and the parents walk their dog. They gave out apples just like they have for the past few years. My boys even comment on how they are the best apples they have ever had. They were the only ones giving out apples… so do you really think they will suddenly go psycho and decide that this year is the one to start killing the other neighborhood kids?
Did that “Halloween treat tampering” scare thing ever actually happen, anywhere? Seems to me that if I wanted to poision a bunch of kids, I’d do it in a way that wasn’t quite so easily traced to me. 
I was surprised at how many kids we got Sunday night. I wasn’t expecting as good a turn out as usual on a Sunday night but we had double what we had the year before. I think the difference was my daughter had a big Halloween party on Saturday night and our house, although always decorated, was over the top this year. (Grave yard, dead body outlines on the driveway with police tape, played the spooky music out the window etc etc).
Since we live in a subdivision that is self contained on a lake, we tend to get many of the apartment families that live on the other side. I don’t think they are “trashy”. I love seeing all the kids. The more kids, the more fun it is. My daughter literally had to have help carrying her bag back this year from all the treats.
I will tell you a pet peeve of mine though. What annoys me is the folks that send their kids out to collect but keep their own porch light off. That happens with one family on our block each year and I think it is crappy. If you are going to participate, participate fully. Even when my daughter was younger and I had to go with her, I left the bowl outfront with a “take one but leave for others” sign. (For the record, I never came back to it completely empty).
Around here, kids go to school carnivals held throughout the weekends, and many parents choose to keep it to that. Not sure why; they’re expensive carnivals, geez.
Expensive or free, hrm…
(Basically, tampered Halloween candy is a myth)
I shoulda known there would be a Snopes article on this. :smack:
Yeah, it is as I suspected - a self-perpetuating urban myth. Anyone tempted into such a poisioning would, naturally, think better of it when they realized how easily they would be traced by the cops - especially if they were giving out an unusual and distinctive unwrapped treat.
Only to keep the balance -
Daughter told me about her first Halloween away from home. She and her friends lived in an apartment complex and hadn’t anticipated any trick or treaters.
First they handed out all their spare change and were finally reduced to offering packets of instant oatmeal. She said you’ve never seen such a bunch of disappointed faces.
But, yeah, I suppose fig newtons and raisin bran don’t make for the best treats, either.
Not according to Snopes: Pins and Needles in Halloween Candy | Snopes.com
My neighborhood is very into Halloween - the entire district is named after Washington Irving. I had a ton of kids come through, and I ran out of candy about 40 minutes too soon (it’s my first Halloween here, so I’m learning). There were a lot of kids from outside the neighborhood from the surrounding (poorer) neighborhoods. I was glad to see them come through - that’s why our neighborhood makes a big deal of it and puts on a big show.
Read that article again. It says that almost all those cases involve kids putting pins or razors into things themselves. There is one documented case of somebody actually passing out Snickers bars to kids on Halloween with pins in them. One case is not enough to bust the myth.