I don’t remember any tricks that me and my friends pulled on Halloween as everyone always gave us treats. Okay, I guess you might count emptying out the bowl of candy left out on the front porch with the note, “Please just take one”.
One of the better tricks I have heard about was from a college friend of mine that said his parents left him in charge of handing out the candy to trick-or-treaters when he was in high school. He would put two large bowls on the table next to the front door. One bowl was filled with candy. The other bowl was filled with ice. Whenever kids came to the door with paper sacks for collecting candy, those kids would get a handful of candy and ice in their bag. If they had a plastic bag or container, they just got candy. As the night wore on and the paper bags got heavier and the ice melted, eventually whoosh, the bottom of the bag would break and candy would spill out everywhere in the street! Horrible.
Back in the '80s I lived in a suburban neighborhood with plenty of various-aged children, including the occasional teenaged hooligan. I got into the practice of having two pumpkins outside on the appointed night. I did this for ten years.
Recipe: carve both pumpkins well in advance. Sufficiently so that they were all-but-rotten gooey shells by Halloween.
() Place one pumpkin at ground level on the porch. An easy target for those inclined to kick it. Keep illuminated with candle.
() Place the second pumpkin on a piece of cardboard and, using fishing line, hang from a tree branch that extends near the sidewalk. An easy target for those inclined to whack it. Keep illuminated with candle.
() Sit near a darkened window and have two bottles of chilled champagne close by. Waiting…waiting…waiting.
To be honest I only saw a pumpkin get whacked once, and it was a disappointment. But by next morning both pumpkins were usually destroyed.
In my much younger days I placed a “scarecrow” kind of figure in a chair on the dimly lit front porch. A pair of pants and shirt stuffed with dry leaves or straw and plastic mask over a paper bag filled with leaves for the head and a hat. It was pretty obviously not a real person. But then I tied some fishing line to one of the wrists and ran it up through a screw eye in the porch ceiling and then to a nearby window. The trick or treaters would just about jump out of their costumes when I raised the hand as they neared the door.
In my trick or treating days a neighbor’s house had a similarly placed “scarecrow” figure in a chair on the porch, also obviously not a real person. But when I walked passed it going to ring the doorbell, one of its arms slipped off the arm of the chair and dangled at its side. I jumped a little but realized I must have bumped it walking past it. Then, when I rang the bell, it stood up and silently walked up next to me, just staring at me while I waited for my candy. It continued to stand there, turning to keep facing me as I walked back to the porch steps, at which point it roared and ran two or three steps toward me. I ran back to the street, it sat back down and waited for the next victim, who was much younger and ran crying back to his mother.