VIsiting the USA this Autumn

[Boo]

Dear All

I'm planning on visiting the States this year in the Autumn and I'll be making sure I stay over the Halloween week.

Apart from Salem, can anyone recommend a good place to really experience a good old fashioned US Halloween?

Cheers

Boo

[JACKRYAN592]

ANY TOWN OR COMMUNITY USUALLY HAS SOME PRETTY GOOD HALLOWEEN EVENTS, EVEN IF IT'S ONLY TRICK OR TREATING.

[MHooch]

If you are anywhere near VA you are totally welcome to come to our Halloween party! New York City is always a plus, too, the Village parade is awesome to either watch or participate in. How exciting!

[tomanderson]

Seems to me nowadays that the "traditional" Halloween still exists but in smaller pockets...in some areas, for example, trick or treating is actively discouraged as a practice (I read about that here!). So just offhand, I would recommend communicating with people here who can hopefully steer you toward something good in their particular area.

One of the most enjoyable things about Halloween celebrations, to me, is the spontaneity of the whole thing...when that time rolls around, people just get up and start doing whatever strikes their fancy. Many interesting things are planned on short notice, things are gathered, displays put up, parties thrown. That's why I think working with one of Halloween's local representatives might help you find what you're looking for. Even living in Los Angeles, I find that to get the Halloween "spirit," it needs to be actively chased around a little bit. Hope this helps!

[Boo]

Thanks for the replies, and the invite Mdm Hooch.

My wife and I are fighting a battle over where we go, I want to head for the North East and Ye Olde America, my wife wants LA, Vegas and San Francisco................madness, but then she is Japanese!

Ever since I went to see ET as a boy I imagined Halloween to be a big thing in the States.......could it be that Hollywood didn't portray America correctly? Surely not?!

[Celtic Ghoul]

Halloween is a big thing; but it is evolving and not static. Trick or treating is dying in some areas but adult halloween parties are booming.

I have not been to a Salem Halloween but I have been told that it is like a really big rock concert because you have literally 100,000+ people descend on the town for the occasion. So it is not exactly a quiet country Halloween, nor does it resemble the atmosphere of the 16th century. On the other hand, I'd bet its uniquely American.

Vegas? Yuch. If she wants the gambling though, you could do Atlantic City which would keep you on the East Coast and Ye Olde America...

[uncletor]

Halloween is still big for trick or treating when you get out of the big cities and hit the small towns. Even here, in London Ontario Canada, pop 340,000 trick or treating is still big time activity..my grand daughter went out and got TWO pillow cases of stuff..lawn displays are big time. Parties are big that night, and the weekend before.
You could probably do a series of documentaries on just the various kinds of Halloweens there are in America and never hit the bottom. You'd have the wild west haunted houses, the Olde Tyme Salem stuff, the southern gothic, the haunted farm houses like Ed Gain, just endless...
One year, one of the biggest kicks we had was showing a resident from Thailand a good time on Halloween. First time in north America, and he giggled all night..he would touch our old copies of MCA classics like they were holy relics..saying these were the REAL ones..in a way, I guess he was right..we got him to Niagara Falls a couple of days before for the wax museums down there and some of their cool stuff, but got him back in town to go trick or treating and handing out the stuff the night of Halloween...
I'd reccomend the same style for you...do the big cities BEFORE the day, and find a nice place to set up shop that night...E.T. had it right..it's HUGE..and goes on long after dark..

[tomanderson]

I'm sure the choices must be overwhelming...

Walk-through attractions generally run for a week or two before the 31st, or sometimes for the whole month.

If you're lucky you can get to a party happening a day or two before Halloween.

If you can locate a friend to visit who gets trick or treaters in their neighborhood, that's a special thing to see...nighttime trick or treating is the activity that got most Halloween enthusiasts "into" Halloween, and the transformation of the atmosphere when this is done is really incredible. Difficult to describe it but there is a very tangible feeling of magic and fantasy and "fun" horror.

Here in my neck of the woods--Alhambra, California--trick or treating isn't done at night anymore, apparently. Folks would take their kids around during the day--and not to houses, but places of business, coffeeshops and stores and things, to see if there was maybe a bucket of candy inside. I never saw such a lame thing! It looked like this basically took all the fun out of it. The fact that it was done during the early sunlit hours was horrible, uninspiring, uninspired. Perhaps traditional trick-or-treating is discouraged in this area because a feeling of community safety and "togetherness" just isn't there anymore. Over the past ten years, I've seen it go from almost nothing to nothing.

[MHooch]

What fun is TOTing during the day???!!! Totally absurd. It is a sad commentary on life in the USA these days that we don't feel comfortable walking in our own neighborhoods at night. Fortunately we still get some nightime TOTers in my town, and you are exactly right, tomanderson, they are the most fun aspect of Halloween. Scaring them is, anyway!

[tomanderson]

Absolutely...now after seeing this decline in TOTing in my area, and also living in an apartment building, which will naturally get less TOTers than if one lives in a house, I was excited at the prospect of helping a friend do Halloween at his newly-puchased home in Burbank, on the other side of Los Angeles. He had just moved in so he had no idea if this was a TOT type of town. But as it turned out, it really was, and we got a lot of TOTers that evening. So, while trick-or-treating is most definitely being phased out in some areas, it is still going strong in other areas.

You remember it when you used to do it...whether the house was scary-looking or not, just the prospect of sauntering up to some neighborhood house and ringing the doorbell would send a shiver up the spine! At NIGHT! In the freaking DARK!! Remember that feeling? I remember trick-or-treating was better than anything--a whole evening of thrills. And I still remember the hauls of candy I would bring home, and the monster movies they would play on TV.

[halloweengirl]

HI THERE BOO, LONG TIME NO HEAR!!!! JUST WANTED TO SAY HELLO MY FRIEND!!!