Dear Editor,

What has become of Halloween? I remember when my son was small. My wife or I took him trick or treating.

We went to the neighbors around the block and we stayed by the street and let him go to the house and trick or treat. When we went around the block, we went back home and my son was happy. When he got to be a teenager he stopped trick or treating.

That’s not the way things are now.

My wife and I live on Woodvalley Road not far from Fort Dale Academy and it seems like that area is fair game for everyone on Halloween.

There are small kids without supervision running out in the streets sometimes in front of cars. There are groups of teenagers who should have quit trick or treating years ago.

My wife and I had gone to a senior citizen party at the hospital in separate cars and after the party, I had gone home and my wife stayed to help clean up.

Some time later my wife called me and said that every street that she had tried to turn in had so many people running around that she was afraid to turn in. She finally stopped in front of Debbie

Martin Realty and called me from there and said she was waiting for it to clear up and she would try going down Forest Drive and on to Woodvalley Road and then home.

We stayed on our cell phones until she got home because I was concerned for her safety and she was concerned for the safety of the kids running out in the street without looking to see if cars were coming or not.

I stayed in our front yard and waited for her and it probably took 20 or 30 minutes to make what should have been a five minute drive.

What would happen if there was a serious emergency and someone had to get through that crowd and possibly have to go to the Emergency Room or something? What if an ambulance had to get through? It would just be tough luck because the trick or treating crowd would probably not get out of the way to let anyone through.

It’ s not safe for people to even open their doors on Halloween night because we don’t know who will be there.

Our elected officials need to find a way to control who can go trick or treating and it should only be parents with their children and it should only be children of a certain age or less.

And it should be the children who go to the doors of the homes and not the parents. And it should only be in their own neighborhood. Halloween has gotten way out of hand.

Lavergne Manuel

Greenville