For my neighborhood it was the busiest I've ever seen it in 17 years. A lot of home made costumes, even teenagers dressing up and getting in on the action with the gaggles of little kids. A few houses even did mini haunted houses in the front yards and garages. A lot of other houses had people chilling in the driveways with a small fire going. It was in the 50s (F) so not particularly warm either... I'm in a lower to middle class area, no HOA neighborhood so people do what they want with decorating and it's great.

No sidewalks. And nearby gated communities with sidewalks. Those communities are richer and setup tables outside. Two houses were handing out jello shots to the adults, one had a DJ and light show. My neighborhood still has some houses that do hand outs, but without a sidewalk most people drive up to each house, get out, knock, get back in, drive down to the next house, stop, get out, etc. Parents are worried their walkers will get run over. We can't compete with the other neighborhoods So, in my opinion, communities built to only serve cars and not pedestrians is the problem.

Lots of neighborhoods just don't have that many kids left. They've grown. Easily 80% of my suburban neighborhood is over 65. And they've been here since the 90s.

When young families can't buy homes their trick-or-treating becomes relegated to their apartment complex or (when those complexes are sketchy) to trunk or treats.

We had zero this year. We even put out decorations and every year we give out full size bars and pokemon packs. Live in the center of town in a dense neighborhood. I do think part of the reason is none of the street lights ever are on anymore

Yeah.

I “blame” popular neighborhoods. Used to be you went around your neighborhood or went with a friend in town if you were more rural or something.

Now there are “it” neighborhoods or even small towns that seem to attract large groups, it’s almost like a block party. Tons of people arrive, there’s wild and extreme halloween decorations, effort gets put into costumes, and sometimes even full-size candy bars. My kids started going to popular areas with friends, one friend lives in a neighborhood like that so everyone uses his house as a starting point. It’s cool, but unfortunately large gatherings tend to bring assholes, too, and now there’s a cop nearby on standby because some people have to be dipshits and start being destructive or try to start fights.

We barely handed out one bag of candy in our neighborhood, last year we went through two big ones.

Moved into my house in 2017. Neighborhood has smaller kids. I bought candy for a number of years and had less than 20 groups in the entire ~5 year span. So I just stopped buying candy and leave my lights off now. Even reviewing doorbell footage there were only like a handful of groups walking around this year.

Trunk or treats have blown up out here. Why walk miles through the neighborhood for a couple hours when 30-60 minutes through a parking lot or two gets you the same amount. Especially at malls with hundreds of cars.

We use to trick or treat on rollerblades as kids to cover more ground. Trick or treating has really gone down hill. I remember being a teenager and handing candy out at my parent’s house. We got literal hundreds of kids. Like you basically were better off just sitting at the front door or on the porch if the weather was nice. The stream of kids was practically constant. That was decades ago and their neighborhood has aged out a bit but they still get a ridiculously higher number than I’ve ever gotten.

We normally have kids up until 11 pm, this year we had less then normal, and only 3 after 10 pm. We live on a main street, and are the known Halloween house with the way we decorate. We probably had 1/3 less this year. We attribute it to the trunk or treats. Our next door neighbor took his kids trunk or treating 6 times in the past week. Safer? Maybe. Lazier? Very much so.

Our street only has 2 houses that do it, so everyone drives right on by our block. Some of them go to parties instead, some of them are just lazy and disinterested.

I've kind of shamed people into decorating for Christmas, I made my house elegantly lit with a warm white glow and theirs were dark and depressing. But Halloween, just the 2 of us for years.

We're in a high crime city so a lot of folks do trunk-or-treats and I get that, but, those kids are gonna be adults that have to learn to live here too. There's something humanizing about going up to strangers doors, finding out your neighbors aren't actually monsters or assholes, but kind people.

For years we've had almost no trick-or-treaters come to our house. We know there are tons in the area, but the number who actually stopped at our house kept dropping.

Last year it was warm enough on Halloween for us to leave the front door open, and we saw tons of kids walk past our house and heard one kid say, "That's the creepy house."

Which is ridiculous. There's nothing creepy at all about our house.

Anyway, last year I decided I should make a sign to let the kids know they could stop at our house.

I made a post about the sign.

Anyway, the sign worked. We had double-digit trick-or-treaters this year.

No one this year because of a stupid baseball game and suddenly everyone cares about baseball because go local team. Canada is supposed to be "elbows out" but we throw money at US team sports that over schedule.

It was bonkers this year!

In excess of 650 candy given out, though not my usual Famous Amos packs (wildly more expensive than last year). A solid wall of kids and families from 7-8:30 when we ran out.

I do go crazy for decorating and candy delivery mechanism.

Edinburgh, Scotland - we had quite a lot of T/Ters (or guisers, as it's often better known here, among older generations anyway). Maybe 10-15 groups. A lot of families round our way and we usually have a fairly busy night, so no change from normal :-)