I remember the first time a trick-or-treater knocked on our front door. It was 1984, and we gathered, looking out into the darkness at three children with painted faces, wondering what on earth this all meant and what we were supposed to do. Growing up, we always celebrated Halloween at our house with bobbing for apples, dressing up, and a special evening meal with a themed menu (for example, spaghetti became ‘worms’, etc.) Mum and Dad would tell us stories of guising in Scotland, and instead of pumpkins, which I don’t ever recall seeing before, we carved turnips. It’s fairly well established that the American version of Halloween as it is today was introduced to the UK by the film ET, released at the end of 1982 and, memorably for us, by a trip to the Stag Theatre in Sevenoaks on New Year’s Day 1983. The Halloween scene was especially interesting, and we wondered whether it was based on reality or just constructed for the film. America in those days seemed like a distant place; we had never met anyone who had been there, and we imagined it was just like the movies.

Fast forward to the early 2010s, when my own children were small, and not very much happened in Wrotham Heath in terms of trick-or-treating (you had to go to Platt for that). To compensate, I would venture into Valley Wood during the day and hang tiny blue LED lights, wrapped in bubble wrap, from the trees with twine so that, after dark, they looked like Will-o’-the-Wisps dancing between the branches when the wind blew. The kids would dress up as witches and wizards, and after dinner and pumpkin carving, we’d head out into the night in the hope that we’d see ghostly spirits, which, of course, we always did. I’d be interested to know if anyone else passing through saw them too and wondered what they were.

In recent years, Halloween 2020 sticks in my mind, primarily as we were again in some form of lockdown (Tier One, from memory), and so some of the local parents, unable to take their children trick-or-treating, created a Halloween trail in Stonehouse Field, with a couple of the dads dressed in costumes, comically hiding along Piggy Path. It was a very cold, foggy evening, and as usual I was out photographing and filming around the parish, capturing as much of the ‘alternative’ Halloween as possible. As I passed the church, I spotted Revd. Turner standing in the mist, silhouetted against the open doors, and we had a very informative conversation about Halloween’s Christian roots. Ever since, every year, I have made a point of photographing as many displays as possible and on Saturday evening I enjoyed a ramble around the village on what had been a beautiful autumnal day.

This is Platt at Halloween, 2026