When I was 8 I went to a haunted house for one of my friend's birthday (day before Halloween). Some creep in a top hat was trying to be scary (an employee of the haunted house... lol) and was creeping close and saying something about dragging us away from my friend's dad. I threatened to sue his a$$ if he didn't back off. LMAO

I don't remember all the details, but I still remember that, and my friend didn't drop it clear through high school. LOL

Mr. & Mrs. Retired, Childless Couple Next Door (RCCND):

• He was a WWII vet who'd been shot in the stomach, spent decades as a professional roofer, and at one point was a card-dealer in a resort town, VERY fast dealing card games for himself and his wife (sooo fascinating for my little self to observe I thought he was magic). Mr. RCCND watched a lot of John Wayne, Kojack, and Westerns.
• Wife was from Texas so she had a cute accent. She walked 2+ miles a day to Sears & back. She also shuffled & played cards pretty fast.
• They had 4 small dogs and 3 cats; all the animals were obese because (maybe because they never had kids and the parental instinct is so strong?) RCCND cooked liver & steak & pork chops for these dogs every day... followed by cut up pieces of Snickers candy bar! Fortunately, the RCCND's themselves were trim and healthy.
• Both me & my brother wished we got to eat like those dogs! Our parents were unemployed hippies on welfare & WIC, plus my mom wasn't a great cook, so we didn't see meals 1/2 as exhilarating as what the RCCND's dogs ate on the daily. We would have preferred to live next door with the RCCND's.
• Every Halloween, Mr. & Mrs. RCCND asked my parents to bring us by as the last stop of our Trick-or-Treat route. All night they'd hand out the Halloween-sized mini-Snickers, but they had King Size (or maybe it was just regular-size) Snickers for me and my bro, one each.

The RCCND's let us know we were special to them, and always said hello and were so kind to me and my brother. Also, their house and yard were immaculate, unlike ours (my dad really let the yard go much of the time and had an embarrassing number of non-running vehicles in the driveway, garage, and front yard at the time). They could see and hear that me and my brother didn't have the best situation, and were always so kind and encouraging to me and my brother. And it was awesome that the RCCND's really loved each other and it showed in how they spoke to, and about, each other. My parents battled a lot and seemed miserable wirh each other, so of course I noticed and loved how the RCCND's treated each other with love and respect. They smiled and laughed with each other. 

That is my most special Halloween memory. Good OT topic!

I am in  England and we do not have a tradition of Halloween.
Or at least where I live we don't.
Of late, a few pubs or bars have started hosting Halloween parties because " 'Merica "...

I have a favourite memory though!
It is a pic of BM looking like a she got dragged backwards through a bush!
Her hair looked it was combed with an exploded grenade, red lip stick smeered like some drag queen after giving a bad blow job, clothes  skanky to the max, glassy eyed drunk...
I asked SO if BM dressed up as a hooker for Halloween in that picture.
Apparently not.
It was only BM on a normal Saturday booze up with her friends.

I grew up on an island where there was a Haunted Castle on a pier.  The first time I tried to go thru I was 8.  Made to the "rat room" and out I went.  The next year I made it to "werewolf" room and out I went.  

The was the last time I was in there before it closed since we moved states away.

We moved back to NJ a few years later and I never had a chance to go all the way thru.  My brother and sister and most of my friends had made it so I took a lot of ball busting for being a chicken.  It closed when I was 16 and never made it

The year I was 18 my then boyfriend and I had a Halloween party and we were playing truth or dare.  They dared me to walk thru the empty castle by myself.  

It was great!!!  Yes broke the law in so many ways, including breaking a trap door out to get in, but everyone at the party took part and were the ones who scared me.  I had a flashlight and that was it.  It took me an hour to get thru but I did it and it was one the best Halloweens I ever had.

http://www.darkinthepark.com/Brigantine/Home/home.htm

I have only spent one Halloween in the US. Unfortunately, I didn't know the holiday was on the second day I arrived. Of course I had no treats. I  didn't even know there would be kids at the front door. (We were renting a house for two weeks).

Well, early evening there is a knock at the door and I answer it. Cute little kids, saying "Trick or Treat".
Me: Sorry, I don't have treats.
Kid: Why not?
Me: Well, I am British, I arrived yesterday and didn't know you would  be visiting me today.
Kid: That's ok. We take cash....

I went to the "grocery store"  and bought "candy bars" ten minutes later.

I remember one Halloween going to a haunted house with my niece. We waited a good half hour to get in but it was worth the wait. Once we entered we saw all types of scary things like the guy from Chainsaw Massacre, Michael Myers, Freddy, etc….in one room there were clowns and my niece is deathly afraid of them. One clown popped out running after us and my 13 year old niece punch him dead in the face that he stopped and started crying LOL…..me and my niece looked at each other, looked at him, and just continued running. We had so much fun! Once we got out we couldn’t stop laughing at the poor guy. Ever since that Halloween every time I see a clown I think of my niece and the expression on her face when she saw the clown *ROFL*.

We had great laughs indeed!

Halloween is my favorite holiday. We dress up, decorate the yard to the max, have a fire pit and hand out candy...we usually get a pretty decent haul of people.

When I was in college in downtown San Diego there is a famous hotel that is supposedly haunted, and during Halloween they do a haunted house and I went through it with my best friend and her husband at the time, it was so well done and we had such a good time screaming and running. After that we stopped to have a drink and a guy was handing out flyers to see a real haunted museum, we were interested so we decided to stop in. It was actually a death museum that had all things pertaining to death, body bags from the morgue, a t-shirt from a person on death row who had been electrocuted..it was creepy.

Honestly that museum scared me more than the Haunted House had.

Halloween was always my favorite holiday ( the skids killed my excitement, but trying to get it back) I have a few favorite memories.

As a kid my parents didn't have alot of money so my mother would make alot of costumes for my sisters and myself, she made everything from Picnic lunch ( one sister and myself wearing a checkered tablecloth that had paper plates, cups, plastic spoons, forks glued on and we wore KFC buckets on our heads lol) to a Chewbacca I wore in 5th grade and it was over 7 foot tall when I wore it !  The list goes on and on but she was amazing and creative.

We would decorate the front yard as a graveyard, with one "fresh" grave with a stone that read " This one is for You" and a dummy standing over the grave with shovel in hand, while all the neighborhood kids were changing into cuostume, eating dinner, whatever, my father would change places with the dummy and everytime someone came to the house he would start digging and laughing, we had alot of left over candy that year.

Finally from my adult hood, when we first moved here it was the fall and the only work I could find was at a Haunted House, every night for two weeks I would have fake blood dumped over me and I would scare unsuspecting strangers with a skill saw (no blade), I would sit in this corner and people would get up real close because they thought I was a manaquin, when they got inches away I would rev up the saw and start screaming, it was awesome ! One night afterwork i stopped at the local fast food place for a soda ( I was parched from screaming), the drive thru attendant went and brought her manager to the window, he asked me , "Sir, are you ok?" , at first I was just like, " Ya great, how bout you?" then I realized what i looked like to them with blood dripping down my face and head. I explained my appearance to them, the young girl actually thought I was injured and was concerned for my well being, not bad for corn syrup and food dye !