Trick-or-Treat tradition spooks St. Louis residents

In the St. Louis area, young ghosts and witches have to earn their trick or treat.

A tradition has developed in the city that requires trick-or-treaters to tell a joke or share a humorous story before they can receive candy. This custom is foreign to the Kansas City region, as well as to Iowa and Illinois, where no narrative is required or even expected. Some students from St. Louis feel strongly about their adolescent practices, no matter how foreign they might be to others.

Freshman Frankie Bruning is from Union, Mo., which is about 50 miles west of St. Louis. Bruning said her Halloween rituals included getting dressed in a costume and going out with her family.

"Usually my parents would drive us all around because a lot of the houses aren't so close, or we'd walk around," Bruning said. "We'd always dress up and usually people would want you to say a joke or do something funny before they give you candy."

Bruning said she enjoyed telling a riddle she learned from her father.

"The riddle went like this: One dark night in the middle of the day / two dead boys got out to play. / Back to back they faced each other / drew their swords and shot each other. / A deaf policeman heard the noise. / He got up and shot those two dead boys. / If you don't believe this lie is true / ask the blind man, he saw it, too," Bruning said.

Freshman Bryan Goh, who moved to St. Louis County from Singapore about three years ago, said the tradition was entertaining but that it wasn't the first thing he noticed about Halloween in America.

"In Singapore, not many people celebrate Halloween," Goh said. "But in America, it's pretty big, and it's explicit. You have people wearing the kinds of costumes you would never see in Singapore."

Goh said the tradition might not seem very important to trick-or-treaters, though.

"I mean, for the most part, kids just want the candy," Goh said. "I think the jokes were mainly for the people passing out the candy."

Making kids tell a joke before getting candy made the night much more fun and interesting, Bruning said.

"[People who never did it are] definitely missing out," Bruning said. "Besides, who can't come up with a joke to tell?"