Trick-or-Treaters at Your Door: How to Handle the Good & Bad on Halloween

Scene: Halloween Night. Time: 10:45 p.m. The candy has been put away and you assume all the costumed, treat-or-treating kids who wore out your doorbell out earlier in the evening are back at home so you can get some peace. Just as you sit down to relax with an old horror movie on Turner Classic Movies, the doorbell rings with the fortitude of someone with a heavy finger. Even though your porch light is now off, you want to satiate your curiosity on who might be out there this late and open the door. There, standing a few feet away from you is a six-foot-tall male and female wearing clown suits that soon begets their obligatory yell of "Trick-or-Treat!!!"

Fearing a massive trick if you don't comply by digging out the candy bowl, you give them a few pieces of candy and never question them as to why two adults are out doing this late at night let alone at all.

If you haven't experienced this troubling situation, then feel blessed you live in a more perfect neighborhood. For the rest of us, dealing with adults who think they can get away with trick-or-treating or dealing with normal-aged trick-or-treaters with a vicious streak means using an approach not often used enough: Reverse psychology. If you want to consider that a way in deflecting fear away from waking up the next morning to toilet paper strewn across your yard, then paint this process even more valuable.

The process of reverse psychology is a way to put the troublemaker trick-or-treaters at your door in their place without necessarily insulting them outright to put a pall on the night. And if you're open to letting them come to your door every Halloween over a number of years, several common scenarios are going to be experienced by all households sooner or later.

Keep in mind that many of these scenarios will have to be dealt with by the mother of the family, the most common door answerer on Halloween. However, many families take turns answering the door to sometimes face the truly creeping unknown...

Kids reaching in to the candy bowl...

One of the most likely scenarios of troublesome trick-or-treaters is the kid who thinks reaching into the neighbor's candy bowl is standard Halloween etiquette. Based on my observation, picking up the bowl and holding it by the door seems to give this particular invitation to grab several pieces of candy rather than waiting for the neighbor to throw one into each kid's bag.

How to amend the situation: Always keep your bowl(s) of candy on a nearby shelf or table so it's out of reach of the trick-or-treating-or-grabbing kids. Merely walk over to the bowl after answering the door and take out the total amount of what you intend to give. Generally, one each is the best way to keep your candy supply hearty. Although you'll get extra thank-you's if you give two each.

The kid who puts on a routine at your door to try to scare you...

Even I admit I used to put on a mini routine in front of some neighbor doorsteps while trick-or-treating, apparently as a way to prove that I had some acting skills or because young boys have an inner compulsion to scare people. Mostly, it just led to snickers and guffaws more than anybody being freaked out by the mask or costume. And, when I did trick-or-treating as a kid in the 80's, things were slightly more benign in the costumes you'd see and attempts at scaring other people. Now, you'll frequently encounter kids at your door with more extreme costumes and makeup while appearing to be someone who would just as assume make a quick dinner of your brains than stand there and appear scary.

For some neighbors, seeing these more extreme appeals for candy might be a turn-off when expecting cute little kids in miniature Harry Potter or fairy costumes.

How to amend the situation: Always go along with whatever the kids want as a reaction out of you. No matter how diabolical the costume and attempt to scare the living nightlights out of you, always show some kind of controlled fear and appreciation for what they're doing. Consider it akin to appreciation for actors at a classical play in live theater. Theater actor feed off appreciation for attempting to play with your emotions. While maybe unconventional in theory, some trick-or-treating kids come close to being within the same vein.

The role-reversal of attempting to scare the trick-or-treaters...

Perhaps not every household has made the attempt, but some of you have likely tried to scare trick-or-treaters by either answering the door in a costume or by using haunted house sound effects emanating from a sound system in or outside your house. When I was a kid, I encountered everything from women answering the door while dressed in slightly kinky costumes to teenagers costumed as hideously as possible and nearly running us kids off the property. You could say the latter was intentional so a household could leave their porch light on without having to deal with giving all their candy away in an hour.

The best compromise: If you decide to scare trick-or-treaters either directly or indirectly, be sure to keep it lightweight, or it can potentially backfire. Especially with the little ones (who usually go along with their parents), doing something overly scary will just cause bad feelings by your new neighbors who may be stopping by to introduce themselves for the first time.

Inevitably, dealing with adults who decide to trick-or-treat at your door...

Scratch the idea of all adults ringing the doorbell at 10:45 p.m. Some decide to go right out and mingle with all the other little kids at the 8:00 p.m. hour. They're also sometimes responsible for all of the scenarios covered above. Yet you have to deal with them in a civilized manner and not ask them why they're creeping out the neighborhood and likely everybody they know...if they even know they're doing it.

What might startle you more than anything is the sheer lack of embarrassment these adults feel running around door-to-door in their costumes when their height (and timbre of voice) easily gives away their ages.

How to deal with them: When my family dealt with trick-or-treating adults, the best approach was to go along with what they were doing, while sometimes uttering a little joke about their height or obvious deep voice. This way, they'll know, deep down, the neighborhood is aware of this ridiculousness without causing a massive breakdown of embarrassment at your doorstep by your honest chastisement.

Likewise, I know it might be challenging to say "That's cute!" to a little tyke in a cute costume when a male of the family answers the door. While best to let the females of the household handle that, compliments to trick-or-treaters are the way to go on Halloween night if at all possible. Keeping a balance of that with subtle comebacks to troublemakers makes a compromise that not only works here but in every other social situation.