Trunk or Treat - A growing Trend.

Hey Frightners.

I ask you this...what happened to the days when you got home from school, put on your costume that you (or your mom) worked so hard on and ran out the front door to meet your best friends to go Trick or Treating? I remember staying out until the street lights came on. We would run up and down the streets kicking through the leaves with our candy sacks while looking for the next house we would say "Trick or Treat" at. It was one of the best nights of the year to be a kid and now times or I should say traditions seem to be changing for Halloween.

Kids today and their parents seem to enjoy the door to door Halloween adventure less and less and perhaps it is because of a new tradition that is growing ever popular, a tradition that makes it easier or more convenient for our little tot's and their parents. These days some parents feel it's not safe to let their kids go walking door to door. They don't know all their neighbors or trust what kind of treats are being handed out by the ones they are not all to familiar with. Because of this a new trend has begun to pick up these past few years. A trend that seems to be a threat to our classic way of trick or treating and it's called Trunk or Treat!

Trunk or Treat is a Halloween event that is often conducted by your local church or school. People gather and park their cars in a large parking lot. They open their trunks or backs of their vehicles and decorate them. Once decorated they pass out candy from their trunks to the parade of little trick or treaters thus providing a safe family environment for all to experience.

If you ask me handing out treats from the back of your car sounds just as creepy as going door to door maybe even worse but I suppose it's the idea of doing it in a safe environment in daylight hours that makes this the type of Halloween experience most parents today want for their youngsters but I can assure you that with a ToT of my own on the way I will be kicking it old school going door to door in classic Halloween Style! Maybe my tune will changes in the years to come but for now home is where the haunt and Halloween is and should remain.

Now I am not knocking Trunk or Treating...actually I applaud the efforts of some trunk or treaters as a few could be deemed mini haunters. As a matter of fact it's almost an entirely new style of haunting in and of itself. Before I wrote this post I decided I should really give Trunk or Treating a chance and look it up just to see if anyone was taking the decorating part to the extreme because lets face it...if your just opening your 67' Chevys rust old trunk and handing out candy that's just pretty weird and ummmm lame!

So what did I find?? Well there are actually a few websites dedicated to Trunk or Treating and people do actually get pretty creative with it so here is a quick inside look at what some of these Trunk or Treat Haunters are doing to haunt our their cars.

First I'll take you to the website I came across when I first started to research this new trend. The site is called Trunkortreat.homestead. This site provides the perfect explanation of Trunk or Treating. They go over almost every detail of it down to the actual decoration of the vehicles and they even provide a nice size photo album dating back to 2006 so Trunk or Treating has actually been around a bit longer than I had even known. As a matter of fact I believe this was the first year I ever heard of it and actually finally saw it in action at two local schools I live near.

It was nice to see all the kids dressed up in their costumes of choice and there even a few who looked to have made their own costumes. Now I didn't see many cars decorated to the extent of the ones you can find on the TrunkorTreat website but overall I could tell that the spirit of Halloween was still there, maybe not in the way that I know or love but it was present.

Here are a few pictures of decorated cars which will provide you with the extent at which this new breed of Car Haunters will go to decorate for the kids....

I particularly like the one with the dragons lair and smoking dragon on top of the car and the one with the haunted house facade and witches cauldron out front. These two really go above and beyond and I guess if you can't get the door to door experience at least these Car Haunters are bring the right kind of Halloween memories to the kids because what would Halloween be without a few cool decorations that will haunt our memories for a life time (in a good way of course mwuuhahahaha!)

I will always be a home haunter at heart decorating my house with ghoulish tricks and treats for all who dare to come ring my bell and hope that this new trend can coincide with our classic way of doing things but with a ToT of my own on the way I begin to to wonder if a future of Trunk or Treating will one day be upon me? If it is let it be known now that Frightguy will be pulling all the stops but for now, at least for a little while, my feet are securely planted in the ground as a home haunter fighting to keep Halloween the way I have always known it to be..an adventure!

Stay Frightful!