Dear ‘Hauntlake’ Neighbors:

We want to thank everyone for their contributions in making Trick or Treat Street a safe and fun Halloween experience for our Montlake community. We pride ourselves in having created many memories for folks over the past seventeen years. Many ‘now young adults’ have shared a favorite scenario from years past. It’s a delight to hear their stories.

We also very much appreciate your support for our annual food drive for Chicken Soup. Over the many years we’ve donated several thousand pounds of food and monies.

As much joy and neighborhood support that Halloween brings us, we want to make some changes. We were exhausted by the time everything was over, packed up and put away. We’re not sure why it was more tiring and stressful. Perhaps it’s just the fact we are getting older. Maybe other unrelated life stressors were contributing. Maybe it’s the crazy times in which we live. Most likely a combination of all the above.

Another factor prompting the need for change is that for us Trick or Treat Street has gotten big, maybe even too big and we fear it will get bigger. We prepared 800 goodie bags this past year and we ran short. We could have done with another 30 or 40. Our inner ‘little kids’ revel in the notion that ‘more is better’. We want to rein them in.

In all honesty we don’t really know what the change looks like other than we want to do less. Trick or Treat Street is magical. We don’t want to give that up. It’s just time for us to scale back.

So this letter is a heads up. We will be making some major changes this year. Also, since we are still in recovery mode, we’ve decided not to do our annual egg hunt this Easter. We don’t know what that means for future egg hunts but at present we’re taking a break.

We want to thank you in advance for understanding our desire to implement what we’ve coined ‘Halloween Lite’ here at Trick or Treat House. Please help us get the word out. Let friends and family know of our change. You can direct folks to www.trickortreathouse.com.

We would also appreciate someone coming forward to do the block party permitting process that allows us to close the street for Halloween night during trick or treat. The Harry Potter House does that end of the street. We need someone to file the permit for this end.

We do plan to continue with the food drive.

Thanks everyone,

James & Don

(aka: Phil Angeez & Skull)