On Ledgelawn Avenue, where more than 1,000 trick-or-treaters fill the street each year, the candy, costumes, and decorations tell a larger story about the people who make a community.

Carrie Jones

8 minutes ago

MOUNT DESERT ISLAND—The boy came down Ledgelawn Avenue with a little bag in his hand, moving through the Halloween crowd as if he had somewhere important to be.

Trick or treaters surrounded him as he moved through the darkness.

All of that is incredibly normal on the street that tends to host well over 1,000 trick-or-treaters each year.

But, in Reuben’s hand was a little bag, sealed and it had a note on the outside.

“For me?” one woman asked as he stretched out.

“Yes!” He laughed and wiggled the bag.

She took it. “For Halloween?”

“No! For love!” He smiled.

And he galloped back to the main road.

“That is so nice!” she yelled. “Thank you! It’s lovely!”

Reuben’s words were lost to the noise of Halloween music, giggles, laughter, and a chorus of “trick or treats.”

There are three houses for sale on Ledgelawn Avenue right now. There are year-round homes, mixed with short-term rentals and two churches, though one faces Mount Desert Street. Most of the houses have their lights on.

Candy is expensive.

One woman who lives on Mountain Ave knows that, so she brings bags of lollipops or other candy and drops them off to houses that might need them.

“Just to help,” she said. “I don’t get many trick-or-treaters up where I live.”

So, she—like Reuben and his sister Niamh from England and like all the homes with skeletons out of the closets and doing jigs on the lawns with ghosts—chooses to give instead.

That giving extends beyond Ledgelawn and all across Bar Harbor, Mount Desert Island, and Trenton.

People give their time to create community events for kids and adults. They happen at homes, businesses, camps, tracks, fields, and even social media posts. Events are organized, trunks and trails decorated, Pat Foster even has Halloween decorations for anyone who stops by her office.

Throughout the area, decorations are hoisted, staked into the ground, hung on trees, displayed across bar counters and restaurant walls.

All of that takes time and labor; some of that takes money.

But it’s all about giving to strangers and friends with no expectation of getting anything back.

Bar Harbor Police Officer Travis Frost put up barricades to keep the street safe. Sgt. Soren Sunberg parked a tricked-out trailer for the town’s police department to welcome kids.

Marie Yarborough had distributed donated Halloween candy the week of Halloween to other Ledgelawn residents, and around 3:30 p.m. on Saturday home owners and renters on the .46 mile stretch tacked up the last of the skeletons, bats and ghosts, checked on inflatable pirate ships, made sure that spider webs were spread out just right, and prepared for an onslaught of cows and Scream faces, princesses and pirates, demons, ghouls, and a mouse trap complete with an adorable mouse.

“I love it!” Yarborough had said about Halloween last year after explaining her candy disbursement system that she volunteers to do and organizes year after year.

Her husband, Kyle, had sat behind the steering wheel nodding. “She does.”

Yarborough, a Ledgelawn resident and also the Bar Harbor School Board chair, has organized the candy drive since 2016. She distributes the candy to each resident that has requested some. Everyone gets an equal share to help them meet the demands of those 1,000 or so trick-or-treaters. In the past, homeowners paid around $100 and more for candy without the help or donations. This year it was closer to $150 and that is just for run-of-the-mill bags of candy.

It sounds like a lot of work and it is, but for many it’s also an act of joy.

This year the street hosted well over 1,000. The official accounts are still trickling in.

“I love Halloween,” Bobby Glover said back in 2022, smiling on his neighbor’s lawn.

So does Kate Jordan across the street from the Lamberts. So do most of the people who invite the ghoulies into their homes.

They all said it again this year. Neighbor waved to neighbor. Families, friends, and even strangers, walked together, holding hands, some skipping, some trudging, some running so gleefully their feet barely touched the ground.

The trick or treaters trickled in around 3:45 and police officers like Officer Frost were stationed at various places to make sure that cars and trucks didn’t use the road during the prime trick or treating time. By 7:30 a lot of houses that had about 1,000 pieces to distribute were running out, lights were turning off, and some decorations were pulled inside.

For a town where people have argued in courtrooms, newspaper opinion pages, social media sites, and in Bar Harbor Town Council chambers, it was a reminder of something that two kids visiting from England know already: a community is more than headlines. It’s more than outrage at social media posts. It’s also about celebration, recognition, and the good feeling that comes from seeing your friend walking down the street dressed up like a pickle.

One boy got the last Oreo pack from the bowl. The boy next to him was disappointed. So the first boy gave the other one his.

“This is Halloween,” one speaker poised on a porch declared.

Indeed, it was.

This year, it wasn’t just about the tricks or the treats, it was—and maybe it always is—about the love.

The arguments would still be there Monday. The courtrooms, the newspaper opinion pages, the social media posts and the disagreements in Town Council chambers would not disappear with the Halloween decorations.

But for a few hours on Saturday, Ledgelawn Avenue belonged to something else.

It belonged to the neighbors who bought the candy, the woman who shared what she had, the people who spent an afternoon hanging ghosts from trees and the police officers who stood watch so children could run safely from one porch to the next.

It belonged to the children, too, dressed as monsters and princesses and animals and things nobody could quite identify.

And somewhere in the middle of it all were Reuben and Niamh carrying little bags through the darkness, telling strangers what was inside.

It was love.

Because sometimes a community is built that way: one porch, one piece of candy, one small kindness at a time.

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OTHER EVENTS

According to History.com, “Trick-or-treating—setting off on Halloween night in costume and ringing doorbells to demand treats—has been a tradition in the United States and other countries for more than a century. Its origins remain murky but traces can be identified in ancient Celtic festivals, early Roman Catholic holidays, medieval practices—and even British politics.”

Most believe the tradition is rooted in Samhain, a Celtic festival in Ireland, parts of France, and the U.K. that began before Christianity, about 2,000 years ago. It was the night the dead came back. So, people gave their respects via bonfires and sacrifice, sometimes wearing animal-skin costumes to get rid of some of the less savory phantoms that were visiting. Eventually, people would sing or perform in costume and receive food or drink. One teenager continued this tradition in Bar Harbor, beautifully playing a short tune on an Irish tin whistle as she went door to door.

“Trick or Treat” is a phrase where the origins are unconfirmed, but was heard up and down Ledgelawn along with “Merry Christmas.” It’s believed that it was fully cemented in the US by 1951. It was featured in Peanuts’ comics that year. The next year Disney created a “Trick or Treat” cartoon that starred Donald Duck as well as Huey, Dewey, and Louie, his nephews.

For more Halloween photos, please check out our Facebook page.

Photos unless otherwise specified: Carrie Jones/Bar Harbor Story

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