Free Republic

It's easy to forget that Halloween isn't the same carefree holiday for every child in our community.In the central city, some neighborhoods can be scary places all year round. These are not places where you feel comfortable allowing young children to go from house to house accepting treats.In areas where drug dealing, gunfire and other negative elements exist, you think twice before allowing young kids to knock on every door. Mac Weddle, executive director of Northcott Neighborhood House, 2460 N. 6th St., thinks some of today's children will never get to know about the kind of Halloween fun their parents...

VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- It's almost Halloween - and all those ghosts, goblins, tricks and treats are giving Hans Kohler the creeps. So the mayor of Rankweil, a town near the border with Switzerland, has launched a one-man campaign disparaging Halloween as a "bad American habit" and urging families to skip it this year. "It's an American custom that's got nothing to do with our culture," Kohler wrote in letters sent out to households. By midweek, the mayors of eight neighboring villages had thrown their support behind the boycott. So had local police, annoyed with the annual Oct. 31 uptick...