[Steve_Seattle]

"Used to be that Hallowe’en was an adult party thing, was not until after WW2 that the holiday was reoriented towards the kiddies."

That's not how I remember it, although I don't go back to pre-WWII. But growing up in the 50s and 60s, Halloween was almost entirely a kids' thing, and it seems that adults only started picking up on it in the 70s and 80s, when New Age and "goth" ideas began to spread.

[Jamestown1630]

This is true. We loved Hallowe’en as kids; but it seems to me that adults didn’t get into it until later. (Though I think a lot of the old folks in my childhood neighborhood really liked having the kids come around. We made out like crazy on candy, and sometimes went out two nights.)