I walked up to a toddler and he looked up way up to me and fell over. No costume needed. I was 198cm tall. It is not rare.

Set-up screen door with wires to open when the kids approached. Porch had a window and we had a black light and someone had an arm painted in glowing green, they passed the candy out the window. Also had sound effects, spooky sounds .

Parents stopped on the driveway, some about peed in their pants laughing !

I can’t describe this well enough, only a video suffices. It’s works on everybody, not just kids.

The first minute of this video has the fun. Everybody screams when your head falls off.

For a better explanation skip to 2:00 in this one.

I did something I thought would be interesting but it ended up terrifying for a child. I still feel bad about it.
I put grains of a low grade contact explosive in the walk to my front door. The grains were virtually invisible and would pop with the sound similar to a cap gun when stepped on.

I heard the pops and knew someone was coming. Then they suddenly stopped. The doorbell didn’t ring. When I went out to look I saw a kid about 8 years old crying, standing frozen on my sidewalk. I walked out there and picked him up while the caps were going off as we walked.
We gave him a lot of candy.

I had a scream mask, I wore it when I opened the door to hand out candy and a little kid cried and ran away. I had to take it off and follow him to give him candy.

My ex forbade me from wearing it when handing out treats.

I had decorated my house with giant spiders and webs and it looked good. The two little kids from just up the road came up on Halloween and stopped just at the end of my walk. I could hear them talking. One said it looked pretty scary and he wasn’t sure. The other bragged that he wasn’t scared and boldly started walking up the sidewalk towards my porch. I reached out with my foot and keyed the fog machine which made a loud whisk/hiss sound and fog started pouring out. The brave young man stopped, his eyes got huge, and he turned around and ran, screaming for his dad (who was still at the neighbor’s house). The youngster came back…in dad’s arms…and I apologized for scaring him so badly. Once he got a good look at everything and a couple pieces of candy, he was better.

@LuckyGuy Nitrogen triiodide?

Of course I have, but why wait for Halloween? ;-o

@RedDeerGuy1 You were 1.98?

@Tropical_Willie Maybe…. Maybe not. ;-)

I never have. It just seems mean.
However, my sister and Bro In Law scared the living shit out of my daughter when she was 4. They rigged speakers up to face their open windows and cued up the intro to Thriller. Jenny and I were walking up to the house when Vincent Price’s voice BOOMED out with that spine chilling laugh. Scared me too, but I quickly realized what it was. By that time Jenny was sobbing in my arms.

@rebbel Yes. Almost two meters tall.