How to attract more Trick or Treaters?

[MauEvig]

Is there a way to get more Trick or Treaters to your house?
Last year we had only one Trick or Treater, my boyfriend's cousin's son. That was it.
I'm thinking this year we'll just get one little bag of candy. No point in buying a whole bunch if we're only going to get one little Goblin.
Unless you know of a way to get more kids to come to your door? I heard though that churches tend to take over these things. We live in a pretty religious community after all. (Which is also why my boss wouldn't let me dress up or decorate the store for Halloween. She wouldn't even allow fall decorations like Scare Crows and such. Nope. The most we got was a few Halloween candy things like the pumpkin reeses and such. Lame. I noticed the only holiday they decorate for is Christmas. Not even any Easter Decorations this year, just candy.) Kind of spoils the fun for me though. I like seeing all the kids in costumes. I love the country, but I have to say this is one of the things I miss about living in town. At least we don't have to worry about egg bombs.

[Pumpkin_Man]

A lit jack o'lantern would probably do the trick. It looks inviting to the ToTers. If you live in a town that does not have a large population of children, however, then you may be out of luck. My older brother lives in a subdevision that is primarily made up of people in his age group. There are really no children to speak of at all.

Mike

[Kolchak]

It could be a number of things that keep kids away from your house. My first guess would be the cost of getting to your place. A lot of folks are under employed or unemployed right now and simply can't afford to take their kids out for any length of time. The safety factor of kids walking to your house needs to be weighed in too. I don't know how far out in the country you live, but most parents are probably going to frown on letting kids go out that far without some type of adult supervision.

One suggestion I could make would be to make it profitable for the family to bring their kids out there. Offer the parent some hot chocolate or apple cider along with the kids treats. Put up some good decorations and lights to draw them out.

It is true that some church's are not too thrilled for Halloween to come around, but not all. I live in the Deep South here in the bible belt and can say that 95% of the people think Halloween is harmless fun for adults and kids, I doubt if your town is all that different.

Start planning for it early, like maybe in August start telling folks you plan on putting up decorations and you're going to have hot chocolate and cider and coffee for the parents.

Perhaps if that is too expensive or time consuming you can offer to help out at the various churches, fraternal organizations(Shriner, Elks, Rotary Club, etc) I promise there will be other people putting on Halloween themed events, you just have to look.

It's a bummer that some people have a closed mind over things like this, but I promise they are in the minority. If you start searching around you will find plenty of places even in your small town that will welcome your help during Halloween.

As an aside. Don't just volunteer for Halloween. Offer to help out during Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter and the like. It will show people you're open minded in your views and want to help others enjoy the other seasons just as much as you enjoy Halloween.

[Pumpkin_Man]

A lof of churhes and community organizations are sponsoring 'trunk or treat,' because it's safer for the kids. Perhaps you can look into that.

Mike

[MauEvig]

I've thought about volunteering for the school. I'm not exactly sure what I'd be doing there though or if the school itself would have any options for that sort of thing, though schools are all about kids. I wouldn't mind volunteering for things like the Christmas Mother, a program that assists families with holiday food, gifts and fuel assistance to income eligible families. Problem with that though is that I work in a store, and the store is usually too busy for me to volunteer my time outside of it during the holidays. Halloween may be another story, but there isn't too much going on at Halloween to help out those in need. Someone once suggested filling a coffin with cans to do a "Halloween can food drive" which I thought was an interesting idea, but not sure how the locals would feel about that. Girl Scouts are always looking for volunteers as well, I keep seeing the sign on the bill board at work.
I'm a little skeptical of volunteering for a church as I myself am not religious, but I don't think there's too many secular options for me here in this small town and county. It might be a good idea to see what other people do. I've heard of Rotary in New York, but I don't know if they have one around here or not.
I like the hot chocolate/coffee thing, it gets cold here in the mountains and a nice hot drink would be nice to have, especially if I served Pumpkin Spice flavored. My concerns would be the expenses.
I may ask about the trunk or treat thing. If the kids won't come to me, I'll just go to the kids instead. Maybe I can make my car look like a hearse or something lol.

[Pumpkin_Man]

If your car has a decent stereo in it you can get a Halloween sound effects CD to play as background. Maybe a skeleton or scare crow at the wheel.

Mike

[MauEvig]

I'll have to have the CD player fixed up, but I do have one of those spooky CDs from Walmart. Though I couldn't take it seriously when the guy screamed "Now you will die!" I just burst out laughing when I heard that. I liked playing it during October, but I think it scares the cats.
The Skeleton at the wheel or even in the passenger seat is a cool idea though.

Come to think of it, maybe I could do a "trick or treat" story telling session. I had an idea for a story that I wanted to write (I'm always getting these ideas and I never seem to be able to write them down in actual story format) about an old lady who would always tell a different tale to the trick or treaters at Halloween every year. After she died, one girl who particularly enjoyed the old lady's stories, now a bit older (probably in her teen years by that time) found out the stories were true, and that the old lady was actually a good witch who was there to protect the town from these horrors coming to life.

[Pumpkin_Man]

Great story ideam MauEivg. We did something simular in the Halloween writing thread about a year and a half ago. It was more or less a progressive type of story where one poster would start the story, then another would add his or her part to the story, and so on and so on. It made for some interesting reading, but you had to be darn careful that you followed the story line.

Mike

[MauEvig]

I wonder if that's the same one I participated in when I was under the "DemonSlayerMau" account? (I created a new account because I couldn't sign in under the old one anymore for some reason. The Dutchess mentioned he had a similar problem).
It got pretty random if I remember right. lol.

[Pumpkin_Man]

It did get quite random as it went on. It had a wearwolf, a witch, a haunted building, a coroner turned serial killer and even a car scene.

It may still be here at Halloween.com burried in the Halloween stories pages some place. I don't remember the title of it, however.

We also got together to build an imaginary Halloween town. That's likely burried on the Halloween general pages.

Mike

[MauEvig]

Perhaps it would be fun to do a new collaborative story, but maybe not let it get so random. lol I think I remember participating in it, making an appearance as my OC.

I think I remember the Hallowen town. It was called Evilton right? And I think I remember that once you came to Evilton you could never leave. That's the only part of it that scared me really, though I realize it was just for fun and all, but I think my anxiety flares up at the idea of a place you can never escape from. The movie 1408 scared me quite a bit because of that. I like scary movies and all, but there are limits.

[Pumpkin_Man]

I really liked "1408," because it was so scary. As for being caught in a trap, I use to have a recurring nightmare when I was in my mid 20s. I dreampt that I was crawling around inside one of the Egyption pyramids, climed down into a pit, and then a hube block of stone was placed right over the enterence and there was no way out. I allways woke up gasping for breath after that dream. I had that dream about 7 or 8 times.

Another recurring dream I had later in life, when I was in my 30s, is that I would be driving my motorcycle, which was a Yamaha Venture back then, down I 80. I would go over the Desplanes River bridge, and the bridge would just vanish out from under me. I woke up just as the bike and I started to fall. Talk about heart skip a beat!

Mike

[MauEvig]

I like scary movies, but I think that one addresses one of my personal fears. I'll watch it though, along with many zombie apocalypse movies that kind of scared me. (Except for the Return of the Living Dead series and Zombie land. Those movies were hilarious).

I will also turn off a movie if a cat gets harmed in it. I just can't stand to see that. Yet, seeing people getting slaughtered and killed somehow doesn't bother me. I had to sit through and watch a couple when I was at my mom's and step dad's (my step dad is really into horror movies, so he got me into the horror genre quite a bit as well) but at my home, if a cat gets hurt, I'm turning the movie off. I'm not a vegetarian or anything, I just really love cats and feel protective over my cats. It does bother me to see other animals get killed though not as much as cats.

I kind of prefer movies like the Nightmare on Elm Street series, or something along the lines of a good werewolf movie such as the Howling, and then there's one I liked but can't remember the name of it. I think it was Bad Moon, but I'd have to watch it again to see if it's the one I'm thinking of.
I do like what they did with A Cabin in the Woods though, it was a really entertaining and original take on a horror movie.
There's a lot I really liked. But I'm also very particular about which movies I like to watch.

As far as dreams go, mine rarely recur, I might have some similar themes in my dreams, but mine can be pretty strange. One that really stuck to me was the dream I had where I was the Guardian of a Pagan temple fighting off invaders, one came after me and we fell into a hole where he had me by the legs. I told him if he killed me, he'd die as well. Then I knocked him off me into a pool below. Such a strange dream.

I do have a lot of Nightmares though, but some of them are kind of personal. Most of the time, my dreams are just strange. I'll get those dreams every so often where I'm riding down the road which ends, or continues into some kind of loop that's impossible for any vehicle to continue on, as if the road had become a roller coaster, othertimes I'll be driving along in my car and it'll turn into a bicycle and then I'll be walking. They say dreams have meanings. Sometimes I'll come to cross roads, train tracks, and see festivals going on during dreams. I've dreamed of Christmas before too when it was in the middle of Summer. I can't remember if I had any Halloween dreams, but I might have had one once.

[Kolchak]

My recurring dream has me with Sandra Bullock, Neve Campbell and Jennifer Aniston in a giant bathtub full of lime green Jell-O.

[Murfreesboro]

Naughty boy!

I can't take movies that threaten children. That's probably a variation of your inability to watch cats being harmed, MauEvig.