Woman says she hates 'dangerous' Halloween as trick or treating is like begging
Halloween isn't a holiday for everyone.
While some find the prospect of being confronted by a hoard of ghosts, ghouls and goblins rather terrifying, others simply can't bear the harassment of trick or treaters.
And this weekend, one grandmother from Kent has revealed she hates Halloween for a whole different reason altogether.
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Rae Radford believes the spooky season itself 'encourages mixed messages' for easily influenced youngsters, and has compared trick or treating to begging.
Insisting that her own two children never knocked on neighbours' doors in the hope of bagging a few bags of chocolate buttons or drumstick lollipops, after she actively discouraged them.
Believing that trick or treating is unsafe, Rae simultaneously blasted the activity as 'wrong', as well as unsafe, and hit out at parents who celebrate the season.
Emphasising the importance of maintaining the 'stranger danger' message with children, she told Daily Express readers: "It is like begging and I just don't like it at all. It's wrong."
Rae continued: "I hate Halloween. I just think it encourages mixed messages and it's a waste of money. I can't stand it and think it's stupid.
"You spend most of your year telling your children not to knock on strangers' doors and not to take sweets from strangers and then, on one day of the year, you go 'no, that's fine.'"
She also takes issue with celebrators of the global festivity decorating their house with elaborately horrifying decorations, putting the same effort into Halloween as they do into Christmas.
"It's a waste of money as well, particularly all this dressing up," Rae criticises Halloween. "People dress their houses up and some houses are really over the top. It's all come from America and I really don't understand it."
The published writer believes she is speaking on behalf of many disgruntled parents and neighbours when she shuns the idea of trick or treating.
"You're giving children mixed messages, which is strange," she says. "You can't say 'don't' and then, one day of the year, say 'do'. I know an awful lot of parents go with small children but I've had 10-year-olds knock on our door."
Rae adds: "I have two children, who are grown up now and I have a grandchild. When my children were younger, I just told them 'it's cold outside. Do you really want to go?' and they didn't. They never went at all.
"I never made a big thing of it. I didn't ban it but I didn't encourage it either, and I didn't go on about it.
"If I had my way, I'd close the curtains and turn all the lights off to prevent trick-or-treaters on Halloween but I actually live with someone who is really kind so we don't. I just let him answer the door."
Rhianna Benson