6 Halloween Neighbor Fights That Leave Ohioans Taking Sides

With Halloween about two weeks away, your porch may already be ready for trick-o-treaters.

But not every neighbor sees the holiday your way.

Reddit’s popular AITA forum, where people ask strangers to judge whether they were in the wrong, has hosted Halloween standoffs like these.

What would your verdict be on these six situations if they happened in your Ohio neighborhood?

1. Doorbell at a Dark Porch

A mom trick-or-treating with her young son rang the bell at a neighbor’s house with a dark porch.

She says nobody answered at first, though she could hear someone moving inside.

Would you have kept ringing?

She says she rang again.

A third ring followed a couple of minutes later.

The mom says the homeowner then opened the door and explained that a dark porch light means visitors should skip the house.

She says she had never heard of that custom, and she called the homeowner’s reaction rude.

She criticized the homeowner for having no candy on Halloween.

In her telling, the homeowner replied that not everyone joins in on the holiday, then shut the door.

She says the homeowner posted doorbell video of the exchange in a local Facebook group.

She left the group, she says, and is still getting harassing messages.

She asked Reddit whether she was in the wrong for confronting the homeowner.

2. Chips for Halloween

Halloween at one household means potato chips instead of candy, according to a homeowner’s Reddit post.

The homeowner says the household does this every year, buys the bags ahead of time and lets each kid pick from a bowl.

The post says leftovers are saved for barbecues later in the year.

In the homeowner’s telling, a neighbor then asked for something different.

As the post describes it, her son doesn’t eat chips, so she wanted other options offered.

The homeowner says they refused.

In the homeowner’s view, asking people who hand out free treats to change plans for one child is rude.

The neighbor’s answer, the homeowner writes, was that other neighbors accommodate her son and that the homeowner should think of others.

The homeowner took the dispute to Reddit and asked whether refusing made them wrong.

If the bowl on your porch held chips, would you change it for one kid?

3. Scary Decor on Nextdoor

One homeowner says they put up a scary Halloween display every year.

The new additions, they say, include a butcher figure and a deli case of prop body parts.

Skeletons sit on the roof, and the yard has a graveyard, a gravedigger and a headless horseman.

The poster says many people enjoy it.

Not everyone does.

According to the poster, a neighbor then criticized the display on Nextdoor.

She wrote that it scared her toddlers to tears and that it didn’t belong on a street with families.

She wanted the whole display taken down.

If your toddler cried at a neighbor’s yard, would you ask for changes too?

The homeowner asked Reddit whether putting up the display made them wrong.

4. Zombie at the Curb

A woman who walks her dogs past a neighbor’s house says an animatronic zombie with an axe sits on the neighbor’s property line, at or partly over the sidewalk line.

It jolts, chops and cackles at anyone who gets close, and her anxious dog struggles to handle it.

In her account, walkers have to step well into a busy road to avoid setting it off.

She adds that kids leaving a nearby school have to skirt fast traffic to pass it.

So she asked the neighbor to move the figure back a few feet.

The neighbor, in her telling, laughed and went back inside.

Two more decorations followed.

A lunging grim reaper and a noisy skeleton went up at the curb, according to the post.

She adds that another neighbor told her the homeowner had been calling her insulting names.

We only have her account of what the neighbor did.

She asked Reddit whether she was in the wrong for making the request.

If you walk a dog on a street like that, you may already have an opinion.

5. Candy at the Family’s Feet

Would you open the door to a neighbor you were feuding with?

A homeowner in a long-running feud with a neighbor says he vowed not to answer the door if she came trick-or-treating.

She had reported his aunt’s parked car, he says, which earned him a fine.

He says her kids knocked several times and were polite enough that he would have given them candy.

In his account, the mother then knocked herself and asked why nobody had come to the door.

He writes that he refused the whole family because of how the mother had treated him for years, not because of the kids.

She yelled at him for not joining in on the holiday and threatened to tell everyone he was stingy, he adds.

By his telling, after a couple of minutes he grabbed some candy bars, went outside and found the family a few houses down.

His post says he threw the candy at the family’s feet and called the mother an insulting name.

She looked terrified, he wrote.

He asked Reddit whether losing his temper made him the one in the wrong.

6. Candy Sign for the Neighborhood

Trick-or-treaters from other areas visit a 24-house neighborhood that one homeowner says is known for its candy and its decorations.

Visitors come for the baked goods and haunted houses too, in her telling.

She says her fancy gift baskets ran out at an earlier Halloween before kids from the neighborhood got one.

Visitors stomped her pumpkins, stole decorations and took candy from younger kids, as she tells it.

You may sympathize with her frustration, or you may not.

Her fix was a driveway sign limiting candy to kids who live in the neighborhood.

She took the idea to a homeowners association meeting, where she says many of the neighbors sided with her.

One fellow member of the association objected.

The two argued about it, she adds.

That member proposed paying an off-duty officer to handle kids who steal.

One objection to a sign like hers is that it would turn away kids from outside the neighborhood who never took anything.

Would you have backed her sign?

She asked Reddit whether she was in the wrong for planning to hand out candy only to kids from her neighborhood.

The post is now deleted.

Dark Porch Lights

The mom in the first Halloween story says she had never heard what a dark porch light means.

Nationwide Children’s Hospital says a house that wants visitors on Halloween should keep its lights on, inside and out.

Police in Savannah, Georgia, go a step further and say to turn the porch light on only if you’re welcoming trick-or-treaters.

If you’re unsure what your street expects, ask a neighbor before Halloween.

Teal Pumpkins

Food Allergy Research & Education (FARE) runs the Teal Pumpkin Project, which aims to include Halloween trick-or-treaters who have food allergies or other conditions.

In the chip story, the neighbor wanted the household to offer other options for her son, whatever the reason.

Candy isn’t banned.

If you hand out candy, the project says the non-food treats should go in a separate bowl.

If a neighbor asks for a different treat, you’ll have an easy answer.

Sidewalks and Neighbor Mediation

Nationwide Children’s Hospital asks parents of Halloween trick-or-treaters to use sidewalks and cross only at crosswalks or well-lit intersections.

If you’re handing out candy, the hospital asks you to keep the path to your door free of hoses, toys, wet leaves and decorations.

In the fourth story, the woman says walkers have to step into the road to pass the zombie.

Tallmadge, Stow and Cuyahoga Falls offer a free, voluntary mediation program for neighbor disputes, run with the University of Akron School of Law.