The Trick or Treat Conundrum

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Now comes the week of Hallowe’en, and with it, my perennial question: to buy candy, or not?

I live on a rural road with seven house close together - the way New Englanders settled, with your neighbors near and a LOT of acreage behind. The year Ross and I moved in with 17 month old Smithie and the one month old Boy, we were hitting a wave. Four of the houses had turned over in the past two years, and we all had babies and toddler. 

 

For the first years, that worked out delightfully. Seven houses is more than enough for three to five year olds, and because we didn’t live in a place where others came to Trick or Treat, everyone was generous with their candy bowls. Special shout-out to the late Steve Heroux, who gave out cold Shipyard Pumpkinhead Ale to all the grownups.

But kid get older, and they make friends well outside of your small neighborhood, and they start to hear about the hauls their classmates made in nearby developments and at their grandmother’s suburbs. My kids went to Catholic school in the big city of Portland, Maine (pop. 70,000) and their tiny urban friends made serious Trick or Treat hauls. I’m talking house giving out full sized chocolate bars.

So we began spending the evening at a friends house; Shari would make a delicious chili and homemade bread for everyone, we’d take our pack of youngsters out and about, and everyone had a good time. (Yes, concerned parents, Ross and I did sequester the trick or treat bags and doled out  reasonable portions of the candy. Starting on November 1st.)

Fast forward to 2026. There are still seven houses in our neighborhood, but only two families have children. There’s a new couple with a teenager part-time, and the rest of us are all on Medicare. For at least the past three or four years, no one’s come to my door, despite my lit candles and friendly pumpkins. And here’s the rub - part of the reason I’ve lost thirty pounds over the past 3-4 years is by not buying any sweets. Never have them in the house. Niente.

But. But….

Reds, what would you do? And how is trick or treating in your neighborhood?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: No one ever comes. No one. Ever.  Comes. We live in a neighborhood that has a lot of houses, but they’re far apart, and we have a long driveway. I have always thought that trick-or-treaters make a return- on investment assessment, and decide it’s too far to walk for what they could possibly receive.

But I look out for them every year, with high hopes, because I absolutely love to see little kids in costumes.

We faithfully buy trick-or-treat candy, and we have some unopened bags in our pantry from, I’m afraid, years ago. (But it’s still fine, right?)

Last week at Costco we bought a massive box of individually packaged chips and pretzels, Funyuns and Bugles and stuff like that to hand out instead of candy. Do you think kids would like that?

I am still going to buy some Twizzlers, even if I have to dress up and knock on our door to get them. 

JENN McKINLAY: We were not prepared when we moved into the suburbs surrounded by three elementary schools and a middle school. Lord-a-mercy, we ran through three bags of candy in a half hour and had to shut out the lights and hide. The next ten years we went through 10-15 bags of candy (thankfully, this was the Hooligans’ trick or treating era and they enjoyed it to the fullest). Then the recession hit and so many families moved out. Our neighborhood became an ASU suburb and it was all man-buns and the faint whiff of weed smoke for a few years, then the families came back but not as many. Now we go through a respectable five bags of candy, if we’re home and not traveling.

 

 
HALLIE EPHRON: FIFTEEN BAGS?!? Yikes.

I love Halloween, and we have a pretty active trick-or-treat neighborhood with a fresh crop of kiddoes. We only go through 2-3 bags of candy. I try to buy the kind *I* like just in case there are leftovers, but usually by morning the candy’s gone. 

We get a blast of little ones at around 6PM, then a lull, then older kids. After 8 I just put the leftovers in a bowl on the front steps and by morning it’s all gone and I’ll be lucky if no one’s smashed the pumpkin we had on the front steps. 

I don't buy kids liking these, even back in 1958

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Wow, fifteen bags, that’s a LOT of candy!! I never remember to buy candy in time and the supermarkets are always sold out by the time I think about it. Maybe Hank should send me some of hers?? We haven’t done trick or treating in quite a few years now. There are some blocks in our neighborhood that get Jenn’s amount of traffic, but we’ve never had more than a few. Also, we have to shut up the dog, who barks like a maniac even if the little fairies and goblins don’t ring the doorbell, so it’s easier just to turn off the porch light.

And now I feel like a grinch!

 

 

 

 

 

RHYS BOWEN: I live up a steep hill so have never had many kids coming. When we first moved in there were other families on our block and one big boy was a witch with a cauldron that terrified my kids. Recently it’s two or three at the most, although John always bought several bags of Kit Kat. Oh dear. Now I guess I’ll just have to eat these!

I never did much in the way of decorating, but now I have Anne living with me… former theater person.. And we’re having a pumpkin carving party tomorrow. My house already looks like this:  Going to be fun!

 

 

 

 

LUCY BURDETTE: Rhys, those decorations are priceless–if they don’t give you a heart attack! We’re like Hank, we just don’t get kids. The payoff in our neighborhood is poor. Yesterday at the Stop and Shop I had the candy or no candy debate, and ended up with one bag of Nestle’s Crunch just in case. I looked at the Twizzlers and thought of you Hank! But I knew I would eat them all so I left them on the shelf.

When I got home, I said to John, “I tried to choose something we don’t much like.”

“You were successful,” he said. Now we hope a few kids come because WE WILL EAT THEM ANYWAY. There would never ever be bags of candy left lingering in our pantry!

 

JULIA: And of course, if you or your spouse don't leave for the office, the old trick of taking the temptation away to work isn't available! One year when Hallowe'en was on a Saturday, I dumped the rest of the candy in a bowl and set it out for coffee hour at St. Luke's. Sorry, fellow parishioners on a diet.

How about you, dear readers? Do you expect trick or treaters? And how will you prepare for them? 

 

The Monster Under the Bed

RHYS BOWEN: Halloween is fast approaching and lots of tiny tots are going to be scaring themselves silly by dressing up like ghosts and monsters and going out into the dark streets where there are giant spiders and cobwebs. I wonder why we like to be scared? Maybe it's the delicious thrill of being scared yet knowing we are essentially safe. Having never grown up with Halloween (it didn't really exist in England but it's big there now) I didn't ever experience the thrill of being scared in a controlled environment. And I confess, I am a natural wimp. I have never enjoyed horror stories, horror movies.

Actually I didn't need Halloween to scare me. I grew up in a scary house. It was a big, rambling country house with corridors long enough for me to practice my roller skating. My brother and I slept on the top floor, up a twisting flight of stairs from our parents. And I was convinced the house was haunted. The rug outside my bedroom door would flap by itself.... flap, flap, flap in the darkness. My window opened once in the middle of the night. And I used to dream about a procession of hooded figures coming up the stairs toward me. I suppose in an old house a draft could make the rug flap, the window blow open, and the hooded figures were because that staircase stood between me and my parents. However... years later I mentioned to my brother that I thought Britomart (the name of the house) was haunted. He replied, 'Of course it was."

So I didn't need things to frighten me, but I'm curious as to what scared you when you were a child. Did you think there was a monster under the bed? Did you have to have a nightlight on? Did you like being scared at Halloween? Confession time....

HALLIE EPHRON: No night lights or monsters under the bed for me. And I confess, I never found Halloween scary. Wasn't it about candy? Maybe because those rubber Halloween masks hadn't been invented yet and I'd never been to see a horror film. We lived up the street from a famous 'witch's house' which was built for a movie. Here's a link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spadena_House - The big thing on Halloween was to go there trick or treating. Or to the house around the corner where Lana Turner's daughter killed Johnny Stompanato. We carried pillow cases for our loot and filled them.

LUCY BURDETTE: Ooohhh, Rhys have you written about Britomart?? If not, you must! I don't like to be scared, not one bit. Maybe I'm managing that by writing mysteries?? anyway, I agree with Hallie, Halloween was about the candy. But also about being someone other than myself by wearing a costume. Maybe my favorite ever was going to a party in grad school as Wonder Woman...

RHYS: Lucy, I've just written about a spooky house in Cornwall for my next Royal Spyness book! And I love the uh...breastplates???

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I scared myself in my formative years by watching The Twilight Zone, so my entire pre-teen life was spent trying to  figure out what horrific and life-changing twist was about to happen. and YIKES, the pod people in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I was terrified of that. Halloween, though, doesn't seem scary to me. And yes, Lucy, the good part is getting to dress up as something else. And the Twizzlers. But the decorations some people have in their yards are more grotesque than scary..unless, I suppose, you see them at night . Which, duh, is the point. Never mind.
Oh--I was at an event today with another author--who said  her son was not scared about the monsters under the bed because every night they used a special spray to keep them away.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I love scary books and the old-fashioned scary movies, now and when I was a kid. I had several "Tales of Terror" books which, I realized as an adult, were classic short stories repackaged with a few illustrations for kids. Very smart of my mother, who got me reading Poe, de Maupassant and Henry James before I was twelve. I still think those older tales are the absolute creepiest - I defy anyone to read Shirley Jackson and get a good night's sleep afterwards.

We lived in my grandmother's 1840s country house for a couple of years, and of course slept over many other times. I used to be scared of the mysterious thumps and creaks, until my grandma pointed out that we had owned the house since it was built, any ghosts residing there were family members. She used to swear she could hear her grandmother in the kitchen, rattling pots and pans, getting ready to feed her large brood. Now I own a 200-year-old house in the country, and I'm afraid all the mysterious noises are caused by mice. :-P

JENN McKINLAY: I'm with Julia! I love the scary stuff! Candy helps, too, of course. I was always scared as a kid since my brother, who is eleven months older than me, just thought it was the funniest thing to hide around corners, under stairs, behind doors and jump out at me. I am the scream queen, seriously, Jamie Lee Curtis has nothing on me. I remember one night while I was doing the dishes, we lived in a remote area in a house on a lake, my brother crept up to the kitchen window, which overlooked the lake, and popped up wearing a rubber mask from The Creature from the Black Lagoon. I think I screamed for five minutes straight. And yet, I still love all things scary. There is clearly something wrong with me. By the way, I already have my tickets to Zombieland this weekend!

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I don't like scary. Not when I was a kid, not now. My brother was too much older than me to have bothered teasing me, or I might have developed a thicker scary-skin. And I don't ever remember being scared on Halloween. It was just about dressing up (which I wasn't very good at either) and the candy. But I do love Zombieland, Jenn, so am all in on the new one! My hubby, by the way, is the oldest of five, and LOVED scaring his siblings.

RHYS: So how about you? Who likes to be scared? Who is a wimp (or maybe a sensible person) like me ?

Sweets for our sweeties on Valentine's Day

HALLIE EPHRON: Tomorrow is Valentine's Day. It's a tricky holiday. Not one to be ignored, but in our house more sweet than significant. I always hope for candy and get flowers. Or maybe it's the other way around. My favorite thing is always the valentine card that my husband draws for me.

The best valentine I've ever given was inspired by my husband's ratty old bedroom slippers. I bought him a pair of bright red LL Bean fleece slipper socks. He always leaves his slippers by the bed when he goes to sleep and when he woke up that Valentine's day, the new ones were right there for him to slip them on.

His best gift to me? Letting me throw away the old slippers. He gets very attached to his things.

So what are your best Valentine's gifts, given or received?

LUCY BURDETTE: that's such a cute story Hallie! and we envy your adorable cards. I may have told you all this a hundred times, but John proposed on Valentine's Day, back in 1992. He did it with a hand-crafted poem that started out something like:

"On the court,
A girl named Bert,
Played across the net
In a bright red skirt."

And it ended with a flourish: "Honey-bunny don't leave me in the lurch, let's go do it in the church."

Now how could he ever top that? He doesn't have to--he's good for the duration of the marriage. LOL Which we hope is a long, long time....

SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: Lucy, that's adorable! And Hallie, I love the slipper story! Noel and I try to be romantic all year long, so we don't really do a big thing on Valentine's Day, specifically. I must say the idea of going to an overcrowded/overpriced restaurant on that particular day doesn't appeal. I'd rather go somewhere on a whim on a random Tuesday. Because we both freelance and Kiddo is in school, we tend to do lunch dates!

What I do like about Valentine's day is helping Kiddo buy Valentines for kids in his class (usually Snoopy) and then doing something special for the three of us (usually involving heart-shaped cookies with red icing.)

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Susan, I think your Valentine's Day sounds great. We don't usually do much. I don't eat a lot of chocolate, flowers are twice the price of normal, and restaurants are over-crowded. Trying to remember if we've ever gone out on Valentine's Day... I usually try to cook something nice, and this year will be celebrating our little sweetheart Wren, new addition to the family.

Favorite Valentine's prezzy? Heart-shaped, raspberry-filled Linzer torte cookies from La Madeleine French Cafe and Bakery!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: My celebration is on the day after, when all the candy goes on sale for half-price! No, Ross and I are more like Susan and Noel; we'll skip the hard-to-get reservations on Feb 14 and have a more relaxing meal another day.

I don't know about BEST Valentine's Day gift, but I can share the (inadvertently) funniest: I had been grumbling about losing weight and getting in shape, and Ross gave me a pretty heart-shaped box of sugar-free chocolates. I didn't even open them until one of my besties came calling a few days later. She and I sat by the woodstove, talking and eating chocolates, eating chocolates and talking... we were two-thirds of the way through the box before we turned it over and saw the warning on the bottom label: RECOMMENDED SERVING SIZE - 3 CANDIES. SUGAR FREE CANDIES MAY HAVE A LAXATIVE EFFECT.

So that was the year Ross gave me sweets AND a colon cleanse.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  Oh, Julia. Yes, indeed, memorable.

Valentines Day. I got nuthin. Jonathan and I pretty much ignore it...we are very cozy all the time (you know, all the Reds relationships are like that, it's pretty interesting), and we just never latched on to it.

My best Valentine story was for TV. I did a big experiment about two things: First, whether putting roses in plain water, aspirin water, sugar water, or floral stuff water made a difference in their staying power. I put one rose from the same bouquet of 12 into a separate vial, in the same place with the same light and temp, and changed the water and food every day, and took video every day over two weeks. It was a great experiment.

I also checked the price of a dozen roses a month before and then compared the price of the SAME bouquets on Valentine's Day. HIGHWAY ROBBERY. (Buying champagne on New Year's Eve, too. Ripoff.)

RHYS BOWEN: As we are always in Arizona for Valentine's Day we have an ongoing joke. Our first year here,2007" John bought me a balloon and fake roses at the dollar store. They have lasted to this day so every year he dusts them off and presents them to me again! The balloon refuses to collapse!

We never go out to eat as the service is terrible but I think we will console ourselves with lobster tail and lamb chops and maybe chocolate. And the night before we are going to Bruno's Desert Light exhibit at the Botanical Garden. So no complaints.  

HALLIE: AND AND AND?? Hank, which rose lasted the longest? Deb, linzer cookes are my all-time favorites. I make them with hazelnuts and raspberry jam.

So we're dying to hear what do you hope the Valentine bunny is bringing you this year? And what are your fondest memories of Valentine's Days past?

How Sweet It Is!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  I get it now, I do. They invented Halloween not as an opportunity for kids to dress up, but as an opportunity for adults to buy candy, all they want, with the built-in excuse that it's "for the kids"

Halloween is also an excuse for women of a certain ilk to dress up in skimpy outfits and pretend it's a costume. One year, one of my pals wore black tights and a black leotard--and that is all! And then she the swirled herself in pale blue gauze, and called herself a hurricane. I beg you. In fact, I bet the sales of black tights and black leotards skyrockets at Halloween. but I digress.

Seriously, Reds, I buy Twizzlers and Snickers and Almond Joy, my very favorites, and then I hope nobody comes to the door. :-)  Well, no, that's not true, I love trick or treaters, actually ,and get a huge kick out of them.  But I am also happy to be able to buy Twizzlers and Snickers.

This year I also bought pencils. Yes, pencils. They are cool, funny, Halloween pencils, and I wondered if that was a better (healthier and more useful) treat than candy. I mean--I LOVE pencils! They are not as sweet and swirly as Twizzlers, but they last longer and do not melt. And although you can write with a Twizzler, you cannot read it. And you can never erase Twizzler marks.

But I fear the goblins and hurricanes will not appreciate pencils.

So two things: Are you getting candy?  What kind?

And: Do you think the kids will go for pencils? Or any candy alternative?

No, three things. Do you eat candy corns color by color? Or all at once?

LUCY BURDETTE: Speaking of costumes, Hank, as you well know, the Crime Bake conference banquet is famous for costumes. I wanted to go this year with 2 pals as James Bond and two of the Bond girls. (Speaking of leotards and all...) But whispering now, instead we're going as Poirot and 2 Miss Marples. Sigh. It turns out that I used to dress as Miss Marple in my therapy practice days, so the outfit was a snap.

No candy, we don't live in a neighborhood so no one comes. Pencils for the gluten-free or sugar averse? And the few candy corns I eat, all at once.

RHYS BOWEN: This is so funny, Hank, because John and I were in Safeway yesterday and he actually said, "We need to stock up on Kit Kats for Halloween. Look, two big bags for ten dollars." And I replied, "We only get about five kids at the most."  And he grinned and said, "So?"  He loves kit kats. I deplore this devious way of stocking up with Kit Kats. If I do it it will be with healthy Snickers and Milky Ways!

 

I've been to a couple of fun Halloween parties--I once went as a fallen angel when John was the devil. In those days he had black hair and a little black beard and he stuck on fake horns and looked very scary. But I fear our dressing up days are over.  I'm more concerned about sexually provocative costumes for little girls!

HALLIE EPHRON: Always candy! My neighborhood is full of kids. They play out in the street, such a lovely quaint idea, and Halloween is about the biggest holiday of the year. I mean the street is seriously lit up, more even than Christmas. I used to buy the candy I don't like because otherwise it would all be gone by Halloween. Turned out it was still gone. Now I buy what I like (Hershey's chocolate, Swedish fish) but not until just before Halloween so it can't get Hoovered if up before the kiddies arrive.

My granddaughter will visit us for Halloween and I can't wait to re-experience a 2 1/2-year-old's Halloween. Remembering when my daughter was that age and helped answer the door and told us "Man with four faces" had come. Four was her generic number for anything more than 1. Translation: man wearing a mask.

Pencils? Not so much. But I haven't got a better idea.

I feel outed on the Candy corn. I like the brown/orange/white ones and I bite off one color at a time.

HANK: Well, I do, too,  of COURSE, because that’s the only way to eat  those things. Yucky as they are...

DEBORAH CROMBIE: They truck in trick-or-treaters to a street a few block from us. I'm serious! It's a madhouse. But we don't get many. If it's nice I'll sit on the front porch for an hour or so just in case any "littles" come by. (Once we start getting teenagers in hoodies, that's it.) So of course I have to buy candy! Mini Hershey's from the supermarket yesterday. Now to keep Rick from eating them all between now and Halloween, that's the trick. (I might eat a couple, I admit. I love the crackly ones.)

Hank, good luck with the pencils... I would like them.  As for candy corn, ugh. Cannot stand. Even when I was a kid. It makes my teeth hurt.

Oh, and actually I think the hurricane Halloween costume was pretty clever! Did she have a blue drink to match?

HANK: Yes, fine, it was cute. Sigh.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Debs, that makes me think of one of my life lessons: just say no to blue drinks. I don't know what that blue liquor is, but it's a killer.

We live in the country, and have hardly any trick-or-treaters, but Ross buys the giant bags of Hersey's Miniatures just the same. It used to be my job to get the Hallowe'en candy, but he and the kids complained that I was the only person left alive who still likes those caramels-wrapped-around-the-white-center candies. Our location was wonderful for the children when they were little; we could hit every house within walking range in a half hour and they knew all the grown-ups answering the doors, so it wasn't scary. When they got older and more, shall we say, result oriented, we'd drive into Portland and hook up with friends. Half the fun of taking the kids trick-or-treating is wandering a few steps behind with another couple moms, drinking Sam Adams Pumpkin Ale and critiquing everyone's decorations.

Hank, I think your pencils will go over fine. Every year, Youngest got Hallowe'en pencils, stickers and plastic tchotkes like spider rings and eyeballs. She loved them. And I eat candy corn by the colors, of course. Anything faster is just tooooo sweet - those things are solid corn syrup, right?

So two questions, Reds—what candy do you get? And is it for the trick or treaters? Or for…you?

And the mystery of the universe: do the sections of the candy corn taste different?

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And HANK ON TOUR news: are you in Indianapolis (Carmel Clay Library), Madison WI (Mystery to Me Bookstore)  or Oakmont PA (Mystery Lover’s Bookstore? That’s my Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday schedule—before I come home to see Susan! Please come visit and talk about WHAT YOU SEE!   Click here for the details!  

And Susan's MRS. ROOSEVELT'S CONFIDANTE is out tomorrow! YAY!