Halloween night, around 9 o’clock. Perhaps even later. The wind whips, the branches wave. The candy bowl is empty. The doorbell has not rung for 90 minutes.
And then… DING DONG!
What infernal hell hath befallen us? Your spine stiffens and your blood runs cold. But you know the truth. The real Witching Hour has arrived. There’s a persistent second doorbell, followed by irritated mumbling through the walls — Dude, I saw a guy in the window, they’re home. … You open the door.
Teenagers. No costumes. No “Trick or treat!” They can barely deign to raise their leaden pillowcases. Something here — the bored stares, the nascent mustaches, their inability to read the room — feels off. You mutter that it’s late and have no more candy and they say nothing and spin on their heels and you close the door and sigh. Ten minutes later, another doorbell.
Oh, Great Pumpkin, please, an answer: How old is too old to trick or treat?
At least in Illinois, the answer — or rather, an answer — has more complexity, contemporary resonance and fascinating history than you might have considered. It is partly rooted in a chaotic Halloween party in Ogden Park exactly 100 years ago, a night when Chicago police found themselves shooting at teenagers, a night once defined by packs of older kids and vandalism. Before we embark, know this: There will be echoes of class resentment, and screams of gentrification. Here lies a holiday predicated on the idea that, for one night, we open our doors to our neighbors, even if we don’t recognize their masked faces. And yet, in the past century, that’s led to serious campaigns in Illinois to outlaw trick or treating.
For the record, there is no statewide age restriction on trick or treating in Illinois.
No state has such a law.
But many small communities around the country set formal and informal age limits. Some have for decades, including in Illinois. Virginia seems to have the most. As recently as 2017, Pennsauken, New Jersey, near Philadelphia, made an official statement: “Trick or treating is for kids, not adults. Anyone over the age of 14 cannot go out trick or treating, unless you’re acting as a chaperone. … And unfortunately, chaperones can’t ask for any candy.” Last fall, New Jersey’s Fairleigh Dickinson University asked 800 people nationally: How old is too old to trick or treat? The average reply was 13 and a half.
“People have always pointed out when a kid looks too old to be trick or treating, or when they didn’t put enough effort into their costumes,” said Dan Cassino, professor of government and politics at Fairleigh, and executive director of its polls, “but the problem (for a village or town looking to formalize age limits) is you get into race and class issues. People overestimate the ages of Black children. There are kids who want to trick or treat yet have less resources for costumes. That’s all true. I live in one of those neighborhoods where people arrive from outside to trick or treat, and so some people have a tendency to police who supposedly belongs or doesn’t. And doesn’t that go against the spirit of the holiday? Most teens will eventually opt out of trick or treating on their own.”
Still, since 2008, Belleville, Illinois, south of Springfield has had a controversial “Halloween solicitation” ordinance making it illegal for anyone older than 12 to wear a costume on a Belleville street any day other than Halloween “without permission of the Mayor or Chief of Police.”
“That’s in place to keep everybody safe,” said Mayor Jenny Gain Meyer. “We have a large senior citizen population not comfortable answering the door after a certain time of night.” But she acknowledges “We do get complaints (about the law),” and when she was a child, “You got home from school, got into your plastic costume, got a pillowcase and took off for hours on your own and got more candy than you knew what to do with. But I think the holiday just has a different feel now.”
In Marion, on the southern border of Illinois, the age limit is also 12, but according to city officials, it’s there primarily to allow room for smaller children to roam. In Forsyth, outside Decatur, village administrator Jill Applebee said there’s never been a call for age restrictions: “There are worse things kids could be doing that night.” But the village will also fine trick-or-treaters (up to $750) if they approach a home without its porch light on.
That’s one of the ways that towns, intentionally or not, discourage trick-or-treating into old age. In fact, the sporadic irritating surprise of a teenager on your porch is among the reasons why so many suburbs mandate specific times for trick-or-treating.
“Times are in place for that reason,” said Jan Tomaszewski, deputy city clerk of Palos Heights, “and it seems to work, we’ve never had trouble. If a doorbell rings after 7 p.m. now, you know it’s not a child.”
William, 4, left, and Zachary Schulte, 7, trick-or-treat in a neighborhood in Gurnee on Oct. 26, 2025. Gurnee does trick-or-treating on the Sunday before Halloween. (Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune)
Many Lake County communities including Waukegan, Gurnee and Zion relocate trick-or-treating to several days before Oct. 31: “It’s become our tradition, for a long time now,” said Maurice Cashin, office manager of Wadsworth.
It’s also quite a way from the breathless dash of freedom Halloween night once offered, that classic autumn image popularized in part by Ray Bradbury, whose Halloween memories of Waukegan filled his beloved works: “Galloping, rushing, they seized a final sheet, adjusted a last mask, tugged at strange mushroom caps or wigs, shouting at the way the wind took them … just letting the sheer exhilaration of being alive and out on this night pull their lungs and shape their throats into a yell.”
Today, Bradbury would have to trick or treat five days before Halloween, from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.
“I bet 90% of the kids who trick or treat now have no real idea what the ‘trick’ part of what they’re saying really means anymore,” said Lisa Morton, a Halloween historian.
On the unlikely chance your child stumbles onto a time machine this Halloween and finds themselves in Chicago, Oct. 31, 1925, they might not even recognize the holiday.
That night, according to Chicago police, 25 drunk teens attacked a Halloween party in the field house at Ogden Park. Police arrived, found themselves outmatched and called for reinforcements. Some teenagers beat a few police, who responded by shooting at least two people. Nobody died, and one civic leader (unfortunately named R.O. Witcraft) told the Tribune the evening had otherwise been relatively sedate for the holiday. And in a way, it was.
Sure, besides the “Halloween riot,” the Tribune reported in the same article that several cars had been set on fire across the city; and several buildings were set on fire; and Chicagoans reported smashed windows and destroyed fences; and a 13- and 14-year old were arrested for hurling rocks at “L” trains; and 62 boys were caught in Evanston disrupting traffic and jumping on cars; and someone had attempted to burn down the stands at one of Northwestern University’s sports fields.
But “Otherwise,” the article decided, “Night Is Quiet With Usual Pranks.”
Because, by 1925, not just in Chicago but nationally, Halloween was nuts.
“We have a vision of the holiday as child-centered, innocent and by sixth grade, you’re too old,” said Joel Best, a sociology and criminal justice professor emeritus at the University of Delaware who studied crime and rumors of crime on Halloween. “Most of the traditions in the early 20th century were adolescent — a young woman who went into a dark room with a candle on Halloween could look into a mirror and see the face of the man she’d marry. That sort of thing. But on the other end, for years, there had been lots of violence and vandalism — and a lot of frustration over it.”
During much of the 19th century, Halloween gathered steam in the United States partly because of an influx of immigration from Ireland and England, where the holiday had ancient Celtic roots and early precursors to trick or treating included asking for candles to ward off demons and begging for money to pay for feasts on All Saints’ Day. A degree of class resentment, and pranking, carried into the New World. Doors were found barricaded in wealthy neighborhoods and soot was blown into the faces of well-to-do passersby. Newspaper accounts were of two minds about the hedonism: The Chicago Daily News ran a front-page editorial suggesting homeowners drive off Halloween pranksters by loading shotguns with rock salt and shooting. Conversely, many of those same papers welcomed a single night of letting off steam, jokingly reminding readers to tie down everything on their porches on Oct. 31. A Rock Island, Illinois, newspaper said Halloween was “license to do just the thing (youngsters) wouldn’t do any other night.”
A kind of non-lethal Purge.
Except people were getting hurt, and worse.
Children shot beans into the eyes of drivers and strung fishing line across public sidewalks. In 1924, two Chicago police officers were killed in a car crash when trash was stacked on a dark street. People were fed up with the holiday. In 1926, following the Ogden violence, Chicago school superintendent William McAndrew pushed for giving away movie tickets, good only at Halloween — as long as a child pledged to behave and sit through speeches by “prominent citizens.” He told the Tribune that he wanted kids to promise “garbage cans will preserve an upright position, swings will not barricade sidewalks, tires will remain inflated and cows will not be perched in trees.” The city said it handed out 80,000 free movie tickets that year.
Vandalism declined.
But by the end of World War II, and into the 1950s, communities found that trick or treating — which had been more of a sideline until midcentury — was an even better distraction, especially as suburbs grew and residents were feeling eager to meet new neighbors. Candy and costume companies, which finally went all-in on the holiday in the 1950s, agreed. “(Widespread vandalism on Halloween) was a problem that would solve itself,” said Best, “but then again, certain people are just wound a little tighter than others.”
On Long Island, in 1964, a woman was arrested for handing out dog biscuits, ant poison and steel wool to older trick-or-treaters; she swore she adored Halloween — her own sons, 14 and 16, had been trick-or-treating that night. By the 1960s, older kids without costumes, trick-or-treating late into the night, were a common gripe in Illinois town meetings.
In 1961, the city of Sparta, Illinois, proposed limiting trick-or-treat hours to combat the scourge. Others followed. Within a decade, as white flight was transforming suburbs, stories of trick-or-treat candy laced with razor blades and poison became conventional wisdom (despite being almost entirely apocryphal). Children from working-class communities trick-or-treating in wealthier communities were more common. As towns and villages increasingly fretted over safety on Halloween, a holiday once defined by lawlessness was gentrified. In 1972, for a brief time, Park Forest banned trick or treating altogether, on the rumor of razor blades in apples. That same year, after Burbank also banned trick or treating (on the grounds that it violated a solicitation ordinance), children picketed and the mayor set restricted hours for trick or treating — within two blocks of your home.
Fifty years later — and one Halloween season fueled by the 1982 Tylenol murders in Chicago — chances are, in your community, there are standardized civic guidelines for Halloween. Vandalism on Halloween does happen, though not nearly like in 1925.
You will still get a knock on your door late at night. In a way, that older kid on your porch is the last link to forgotten traditions. “When I was a kid, trick-or-treat lasted for days before, and sometimes after,” said David Motley, director of communications for the city of Waukegan. “You’d be gone for six or seven hours and come back with a pillowcase of candy and it was like magic. And now, conventional wisdom says tighten up, strive for less lawlessness and give it a timeline.”
Something mediocre this way comes.
cborrelli@chicagotribune.com
Leave a Reply