A spooky Halloween tale with missing children, a creepy kidnapper, a ghost story and a desperate search of a family. 

• Entertainment factor: ★★★★★
• Scare factor: ★★★☆☆
• Halloween factor: ★★★★★
• Originality factor: ★★★★☆

The 31st Trick or Treater is a ghostly spooky tale that is perfect for Halloween. Vanished children, a mysterious kidnapper, ghostly realms and a desperate family that does anything to get their child back. It’s full or tricks and a tale of revenge, that has a surprising twist at the end. 

It consists of 327 pages.

If you want to read more books that are set at Halloween and have that special Halloween vibe, you take take a look at my Halloween Horror Books List. There’s something for everyone. Or if you want to watch a Halloween film but don’t know which one, you can find more in my Halloween Horror Films List.

Plot

Rob is taking his kids 8-year-old Sam, 4-year-old Mary and 2-year-old Emily out trick-or-treating at Halloween in their neighborhood Maple Creek. When Mary sees a house decorated in The Nightmare Before Christmas style she is over the moon and wants to go. Sam is tired and Bob encourages her to go alone. She is brave enough to do so, but when Bob takes his eyes off her for just one second, she is gone, vanished. And she is not the only one, 29 other kids have vanished that Halloween. 

Now almost a year later it’s October again. And none of the kids have been found, nor is there any trace of the kidnapper, not to mention the mystery about how he pulled it off. The last year Bob has been building a community online, making YouTube videos, posting on Facebook and other social media groups to find out anything that could lead to Mary and getting her back. His wife Joann is already mourning Mary, which Bob resents. Joann is taking Emily to church to pray and find comfort. But Bob refuses to believe that Mary is dead. So he has been breaking in to houses in the neighborhood looking for suspicious things. Thus far he has found noting. 

Meanwhile Sam feels guilty and has nobody to talk about. Right before Mary vanished he saw a man in a dark orange hoodie holding a pink glowing turnip carved just like a Halloween Pumpkin. Nobody believes him, until his best friend Jeremy says he saw a pink light a couple of months ago. They take a look and find something strange. Something he already saw at home. A projection on the tv with a pink glowing classroom with the man in the hoodie. Now the projection is on the ceiling of a shed. 

When a new friend Walter says he saw the man in the dark orange hoodie last Halloween in a classroom in the Old Pine Elementary school that is not used anymore as a school but was decorated as a haunted house tour for Halloween. Sam is convinced Mary is kept there. So he decides to take a look.

Then October 1st one child comes back. She is found outside the Old Pine Elementary school, still in her Halloween costume. Each night one of the children comes back. Not every child comes back alive though. There’s not a clue of how they got there. Time is ticking for Bob and Sam and Joann to find Mary, before it might be too late.

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Short Review

This is a great story about Halloween and set during Halloween. With Mary gone each member of the family deals with it differently. Bob is all consumed by his investigations, while Joann is grieving. Neither understand each other and they drift apart. They don’t even have eye anymore for Sam who feels guilty for letting Mary go alone up to the house. The story is mostly told through Bob’s and Sam’s perspective, being the two who are the most proactive in the search for Mary. 

Bob has his online community and Sam has his real-life friends. Bob might have a lot of viewers but he misses the face-to-face contact. To actually connect to people. Although 29 other families have lost a child in his neighborhood they don’t seek each other out. That’s a big theme of the story. Everybody has retreated in their own home, their own grief, instead of working together, grieving together and standing as a community. When that does finally happen at the end, it turns out that everybody was probably wrapped up in their own investigations. They become an angry mob, not even a community but individuals seeking revenge with an ironic twist.

It’s a big contrast to Sam who has real-life friends who help him look for Mary, which gets Sam much faster and much closer to her than Bob ever did. It’s therefore a story about the importance of having a meaningful community where everybody knows who you are, instead of just meeting online. 

The story itself might be a bit slow sometimes, partly due to the fact that there are 31 chapters, that can be read every day during October. That’s a fun concept, but you probably want to read ahead, to solve the mystery. It’s a ghostly tale of Halloween and the legend of Jack-o’-the-Lantarn. Bob  makes some discoveries and Sam does as well. It’s until they all join together, Bob, Joann and Sam and form a family again that the pace of story is faster but it also gets more dire. 

The 31st Trick or Treater is a fun Halloween tale with an original spooky story that also has something to say about our communities.