When I tell people what Halloween is like in Waterville, they often respond with a sense of (justifiable) skepticism. So I have put up this page to provide some evidence.
In Waterville, a tradition has developed where many of the city's kids (and presumably also some kids from neighboring towns) do their trick-or-treating on a particular two-block stretch of road in the middle of the city. It's the road I live on. The first few years I lived here, we averaged in the neighborhood of 1200-1300 trick-or-treaters each Halloween. I estimate this by counting the number of pieces of candy that were in each of the empty bags I have left over at the end of the evening and then comparing estimates with my neighbor. But over the past few years, we have been getting about 1800 trick-or-treaters. Here are some pictures...
This is the front of my house before the onslaught. The kids start showing up
as soon as it starts getting dark. In Maine on October 31, this is somewhere
between 4:30 and 5:00. Things let up by around 7:30 or 8:00.
To get into the spirit of things, my standard costume is something along these
lines:
Although there are some lulls during the evening, most of the time there is
a line up to the door.
Here are some pictures of the general ruckus in the street. A few years ago
they started blocking off the street because it was a real safety hazard
with cars trying to maneuver through all those people. With the street
blocked off, it creates a really nice (if you like that sort of thing)
"block party" atmosphere. The first two
pictures show the crowd in front of my house. The next two are other parts
of the street. They are kind of dark because I don't have a good camera
for taking nighttime pictures.
Now, I am claiming that we have about 1800 kids come
by in about three hours and 15 minutes. If you do the
math, this works out to an average of
9 or 10 kids per minute. "Impossible!" you protest. Well, with the help
of my parents and sometimes handling two kids at a time, we do manage it.
Here's a short clip of what the scene typically looks like during the
evening. A veritable assembly line of sweets.
Rapid candy delivery video