Seasoned trick-or-treaters in Coppell, Texas, already have Jeff Logan’s house on their route. To lure the uninitiated, Logan flashes a strobe light down the street and uses a boombox to emit groans and screams.
Count Logan and his wife, Linda, among the adults who love to entertain trick-or-treaters. Ditto for their neighbors, whose Halloween graveyard epitaphs reflect pop culture.
“Last year, one of the tombstones read, ‘RIP Kim Kardashian’s self-respect,’ ” said Logan, marketing manager for a cutting-board manufacturer.
Logan’s decor costs little (mini strobes are about $15, he said) but convey a Halloween welcome mat at the same time.
“If you build it, they will come” is the philosophy that Marlon Heimerl of North Mankato, Minnesota, applies to Halloween.
“Decorate with a theme and dress up and give out king-sized candy bars, and you’re a hero,” said Heimerl, marketing manager of halloweencostumes.com, an online retailer. His site tells new homeowners how to use decorations, fog machines and lighting to attract kids “like moths to a flame,” he said.
Pamela Layton McMurtry of Kaysville, Utah, engages trick-or-treaters with simple games, like tossing glow-stick bracelets onto lollipop posts. “When they score, they keep the glow stick,” she said.
To light the way to her front door, McMurtry hangs tea lights from shepherds’ hooks. Her neighbor uses tiki torches. McMurtry includes other low-cost ideas in her e-book, “A Harvest and Halloween Handbook.”
On the other hand, not everyone wants trick-or-treaters ringing their doorbells every 10 minutes and interrupting their favorite TV shows. And some folks admittedly may have more serious issues — such as disabilities or financial difficulties — that factor into a reluctance to participate in Halloween giving.
The universal “don’t come here” signal is the turned-off porch light, and it usually works. But that still might not protect your home from egg attacks.
If you don’t feel up to answering the door or if you are out trick-or-treating yourself, Heimerl suggests setting out a bowl of candy with a “help yourself” note and a prop like a skeleton. “The prop says you’re a Halloween lover, too,” he said.
However, Heimerl added, if you object to Halloween as a holiday, don’t hang up a sign on your door declaring your beliefs. “That’s like putting a bull’s-eye on your (home),” he said.
In addition to the age-old practices of TP-ing scrooges’ houses and soaping their screens, today’s kids have a new trick up their sleeves, Heimerl said: Fueled by social media, pranksters stick hundreds of plastic forks into a front lawn. It’s cheaper than buying that many pink flamingos, noted one online blogger, and a lot less work than replanting every “Home For Sale” sign in town.
Few trick-or-treaters venture down the long driveway at her mother’s house in Onondaga Hill, New Tirj, said Kerrie Hopkins.
“Just in case they do, she doesn’t turn on the outside lights,” Hopkins said. “After Halloween, she says, ‘I don’t understand; I didn’t get any trick-or-treaters.’ Then she proceeds to eat her treasure-trove of Snickers bars.”
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