We had a ton of kids all in a 20 minute window, and then none. No older kids hoping to empty the extras at the end. I wonder why not?
(MAybe 20-35 kids, all in about 6 large groups.)
Am I correct in my understanding that some US neighbourhoods have a defined start and stop time for trick-or-treating?
Are there penalties for disobeying these rules?
Never had a trick or treater until grandkids. My girls had Mermaid outfits. Adorbs.
But I got a treat, the lil’wrekker showed up and brought me some candy. It was sweet of her. She is spending the night. So we’ll get a good visit. I am happy.
It is more the city or the county rather than the neighborhoods, but yes it is common. 5-8 or 9 is normal. Some communities moved the day back because of a forecast of rain. There are no penalties, just that people who want to participate turn on their porch lights when it is ok to come and turn them off if they don’t want any more kids.
Just a guideline. Lets the homeowners and the kids know when to expect people.
For about 20 years I lived on a multi-thousand acre property with a half mile private (and gated) driveway and the closest house several miles away. So - no trick or treaters.
Five years ago I moved to a standard (around here) residential neighborhood of single family homes on 10,000 square foot lots arranged in blocks and navigated via paved, quiet 2 lane streets. Some blocks have street lights, some do not. There are lots of kids around, I see them and their school buses every morning and afternoon. The weather tonight is perfect - 76 degrees, clear, dry, breezy.
Tonight the doorbell rang twice, for a total of three kids. Last year there were zero. I think the record, a few years ago, was four. What the hell?!??!
When I was a kid we roved back and forth through the neighborhood, gleaning goodies. Providers of good stuff were visited several times (the adults would grin slyly and say “OK, so what are you this time?”) while those strange folks who gave pennies or fruit got no repeat business. We kept on until every house was tapped out of candy and each of us had a grocery bag or two full. Then we set about examining, comparing, trading - and of course eating. Great holiday for us kids!
So what has changed, where are the kids going and what are they doing? Something different, apparently. I feel sad for them.
Light turn-out so far this year. So everybody is getting a heaping handful of the Good Stuff. I have a pretty good view down the side streets and there is no action whatsoever. So be it. At 8pm the pumpkins come in, the lights go out and the feet go up.
I completely forgot about it until seeing this thread now. I never turned on the porch light and just kept working in my office. Except when I took a quick trip to the store around 8. It seems weird though that I didn’t see any kids out at all that would have reminded me.
There was some grief around here about it being on church night ( bible belt south Arkansas). Some communities had it last night I heard on the news. Some churches were doing fall festival parties.
Spoke too soon. Seems the neighborhood kids decided to TorT en masse. Halfway through the group I was yelling “The back-up bag, woman! Where’s the back-up bag?”
I’ve been seeing kids in the 'hood lately, so I decided to go all out (again) and put out all kinds of good stuff. Lights, spooky sounds on an stereo outside, a bunch of carved food-items. I even put all the cars away!
Only 4. 
One knock, one group. One was pretty impressive, however.
I just shut it all down. It’s almost 10 and damn cold! Nobody’s coming now. I wonder where those kids I’ve seen around lately were? 
At least I can take back the expensive bag of candy…
Tried to slip out of work a little early so I could get home in time to hand out
the goodies. Some last minute changes kept me from leaving and a one hour
commute put me at home at 7:30pm. Too late for the smallest kids who usually
show up from about 6pm to 7pm. I kept my lights on until nine but had only ONE
trick or treater who was dressed as a vampire.
Does any one here want a mini chocolate peanut butter cup? I have 49 left over.
No, it’s just a helpful guideline. But a critical mass of people follow the local guidelines, and if you try to do it outside of those times, it just doesn’t work because nobody else will be participating.
I live in an area where there is no expectation of a fixed date for trick-or-treating so it’s actually kind of a necessity. A very old regional tradition was that it occurred on the 30th (“Beggars’ Night”), not the 31st, but that detachment from Halloween proper allowed it to eventually wander throughout the last week of October depending on local whimsy and caprice. At times there have been neighboring communities that decided on different dates, which is good for the kids who got to go to both nights, but it was also confusing for people near the boundary who didn’t really have a good understanding of where they live (they never know whether to follow city boundaries, school boundaries, or mailing addresses).
I would guess HOA nazis are involved.
We keep our lights off - with 2 yappy dogs and an escape artist of a cat, there’s no way I want to be going to the door. Plus our neighborhood is full of 3-acre lots with long driveways - too much like work. I expect most kids go to less spread-out areas.
Our daughter and SIL took our granddaughter to go around with friends in their neighborhood. One of the houses had goodies for adults - a small bag with a little bottle of wine, some popcorn, candy, and coffee!! Wow!
Kids are still going out. They’re just not going to your neighborhood. Even in the early 90s we were meeting up with whatever friend lived in the best neighborhood and going there instead of our own smaller neighborhood.
The kids are working smarter, not harder! 
We actually had a few mini-vans pull into our driveway and expel a horde that hit the few houses near ours, then pile into the MV and move on. On reflection, that was a SUPER idea! Less traffic on the street (for a few minutes, at least), better control of the little monsters (and super-heroes). Salut!
No, it’s municipalities here that set the times. The reason why is that they put out more police to patrol neighborhoods to make sure cars aren’t driving nuts while little kids wearing black are running across roads between houses. Every police officer in the city is on patrol during those times and you just have to assume that they are everywhere. It keeps cars moving at a very slow level. It’s also just convenient for homeowners. You know exactly when the kids will start showing up and when they’ll stop. You block out those couple of hours and you don’t have to worry about any other time. The various towns in the area usually stagger their times and days so that kids that are particularly greedy can make their rounds. We always pick a quiet relatively prosperous and level non-development neighborhood and there are usually about 40 other kids on the street. It takes us exactly an hour and a half to do the entire neighborhood, and pretty much that’s exactly how long my youngest wants to trick or treat, so it works out perfectly.
The people are nice and the lady that owns our local toy store lives there, so the kids are always happy to see her. Our own neighborhood is situated along a fairly busy street that isn’t crazy with traffic, but that makes it more dangerous since there are plenty of cars, but just enough time between them that a kid might think it’s OK to cross without looking.
Maybe. But around here there really aren’t ‘better’ neighborhoods - except for the gated communities where outsiders cannot enter and only kids who live inside are present. My neighborhood isn’t blighted, it’s solidly middle class. Folks have nice houses, keep them up very well, and many put up seasonal decorations. And as I mentioned, there are lots of kids living right here.
Not to make this more pseudo psychological than necessary, but I wonder if this isn’t another manifestation of our society’s increasing social fragmentation/isolation? We all used to identify as residents of ‘the neighborhood’ and we felt comfortable ringing strangers’ doorbells and running around in their lawns and driveways. But today it seems many (most?) kids are taken to staged trick or treat “events” at the mall, the church, the civic center. We’re just not comfortable approaching the strangers who live right around us, even though they’re roughly our equivalents in socioeconomic status and choice of neighborhood. So instead we go to managed events where vendors/sponsors serve up a packaged version of stylized and sterilized Halloween, and we consume it as we do most everything else these days. No need - nor opportunity - to actually interact face to face with those people who live all around us.
This, if correct, makes me sad.
It’s also changing demographics. Couple of things happening. The first is the browning of America. White and black children of native born parents (those most likely to trick or treat) are going down both as a percentage of the population and in absolute numbers. There are about 4 million fewer white and black kids today than there were in 2008 (About a ten percent decrease) although the percent of multiracial children has increased, but not nearly as much as the white and black population has decreased. (KIDS COUNT Data Center from the Annie E. Casey Foundation)
This isn’t to say that no Hispanic or Asian kids trick or treat, but they are less likely to than their white and black peers. On net, it just means there are fewer kids out there trick or treating even assuming that behavior is the same.
Secondly, there is a move away from the suburbs and rural areas into urban neighborhoods. What this has done is made it impossible for the ‘walk around to every house’ method of trick or treating to be done for many, many children. It is being replaced in these areas by ‘business trick or treating’ and the more recent fad of ‘trunk or treats.’
The bottom line though is that kids are still having fun and doing things, but they are doing it in a different manner than we did growing up.
Same as usual: Lights off, nobody ringing the doorbell. I forgot to look outside to see how many kids there were, but maybe two years ago there were quite a few down the street but very few on my end (that side of the neighborhood has many more kids than my side). In any case, I wasn’t even sure what day it happened until after the fact (as I mentioned earlier, it’s not reliably on a particular day of the month due to some odd local history).