How do I give trick or treaters a surprise?

[tigermoth]

When we open the front door to trick or treaters on halloween evening how can we make things more fun? Often they are children we know quite well. I feel it's a bit limp to smile and hand out sweets which is what we've done before. I want to add more of an unexpected thrill element this year. Any ideas?

u dress up as well!!!!! pumpkins out the front, go the whole hog.

oh, dressing up - is that what people do? I can do dressing up no probs. And screaming

Anything else?

Turn all your lights out and hold a torch under your chin when you open the door. That should liven things up.

We more-or-less did that tonight, Janh as we had a random powercut after dinner! I didn't think to get dd's pumpkin lantern fired up.

SueW, she wants an unexpected thrill for them, not heart failure!

My friend cuts a hole in the bottom of a plastic container, just big enough to get his hand through. The he fills it half way with sweets, enugh to cover his hand....on which he wears a horrible hairy, warty claw-like joke-shop glove. He holds the box out with one hand and as the kids reach in for sweets, he grabs their hand with the claw.
I think he will get arrested on of these days.

My dh does card tricks, coins etc that he buys from joke shop.

blu - perfect! and I've got at least 30 mins to find a box and glove in the house. Better dash!

Thanks for the replies!

DH said to get the garden hose and post it through the letter box, this should be a nice treat for them. Our doorbell is not working, so if they don't bother knocking it looks as though we are right killjoys!

Trick or Treat was last night for us (Saturday morning now) and there were loads of kids going up and down the road but no one came to our house ... our house looks really old and spooky ... and so we think they are all too scared - ha ha ha!!!
Oh, well, will have to eat the treats myself

DS2 just came to our door with his gang. Normally he has blond hair, gappy teeth and specs but tonight has black hair, fangs and dead white face (no specs obviously - did you ever see Dracula in specs?) and we honestly didn't recognise him - how scary is that???

Very quiet here tonight - only 5 or 6 calls so far - think we'll be joining Ghosty and eating pounds of sweeties ourselves!

tigermoth, did you do the hand? How did it go down?

howsa about passing them dd's nappy sack!!!!!

We've got a sound activated spider that shoots down from it's web whenever it hears a noise. We hung it above the front door and every knock we had tonight was followed by screams and expletives! Then dh answered wearing a mask and simply held out a bowl of goodies for them. Needless to say none of them hung around for too long!
Dd was delighted with this tactic as she was frightened by it all last year, so she was giggling away when we told her how scared they all were!

We've only had 2 groups tonight, I didn't think we were that scarey !

I have been ROFL about this thread! MN, that haven of motherly saintliness re the welfare of children, and here we are thinking up ways to scare the living daylights out of them! A hosepipe, NaughtyNoonoo, A 'sound activated spider'Rhubarb? I love it!

Tigermoth - did you really do the glove/box thing? How did the kids react? I keep remembering this thread and chuckling to myself ...

I have only just read the glove thing - veery good

A friend who lives in Germany has a box like that with a light-activated hand attached!!!

yes we did and it worked a treat! thank you again blu.

I like the idea of a sound-activated spider, too, and the hosepipe.

I decorated the front of the house and windows with skeletons and spider webs. Never done this before - I've always played down halloween festivities. However it was just the right thing to do. My oldest went out trick or treating but my youngest had fun too. He was happy to say indoors for most of the time, answering the spooky door and helping me 'hand' out sweets and enjoying the reaction to our trick.