ECHO readers share their favourite Halloween traditions from their childhood
09:30, 31 Oct 2025Updated 09:30, 31 Oct 2025
Children celebrating Halloween in Liverpool. L-R Amy Hicks, Cerys Lloyd, Sian Lloyd and Sophie Edwards. 15th October 1992.(Image: Mirrorpix)
We all have our own ways of celebrating Halloween. Some of us may go all out with a fancy dress party, take their children trick or treating or spend the night celebrating spooky season in one of the city’s many events or club nights. Some of us won’t even celebrate the occasion at all.
But decades ago, Halloween was very different to how it is for many of us. Halloween costumes may have gone as far as a bed sheet with holes or a black bin bag as a witch’s dress. Nowadays it is on a much bigger scale.
The ECHO asked members of its Memories and History Facebook page to share their favourite Halloween traditions from their childhoods. From foods to games, readers responded with their fond memories of the traditions they used to love.
Many remember the treats their families used to make such as treacle toffee and cinder toffee. Bonfire toffee, also known as treacle toffee, is a traditional British hard toffee. The treat has a strong black treacle taste.
Children celebrating Halloween in Liverpool. 31st October 1989.(Image: Mirrorpix)
Honeycomb toffee, known as cinder toffee in Britain, is a sugary toffee that has a sponge-like texture.
Pauline Margaret Dempsey said: “Dad always made Toffee Apples, Cinder Toffee and Treacle Toffee.”
Other members of the group shared memories of the fun games they played as children.
Pete White said: “Traditions? All we had the task of carving out Swedes, (no pumpkins in our day) and then ‘ducking’ for apples. Which was basically nearly drowning ourselves for a bite of an apple in a bowl of water.”
Swedes were once an alternative to pumpkins in Britain, which were not easily available decades ago. Children would carve the vegetable and create Halloween lanterns.
Pupils of Granby Street Secondary Modern School, Liverpool, enjoy a Halloween party, traditional Bob Apples and turnip candles. 31st October 1960.(Image: Mirrorpix)
June Ann added: “We didn’t have all this dressing up and going round collecting sweets but we used to have bob apple. My dad would put string up across the room with apples dangling from it and we would be blindfolded. It was so much fun. What great times they were.”
Jennifer Mahoney agreed and said: “Duck apple from a bowl of water or apples hanging from the ceiling rack and thought it was great.”
Duck Apple involves players attempting to bite a floating apple out of a large tub of water without using their hands.
Let us know your favourite Halloween traditions in the comment section.