Treat Count 2021: Help CBC find the spookiest neighbourhood this Halloween

Seasoned trick-or-treaters know there are some neighbourhoods with better decorations, scarier vibes, and — most importantly – more candy.

Will your neighbourhood feature as a hub of horrors this fall?

Let the rest of the province know by filling out this form on the spookiest night of the year.

Count the number of costumed visitors knocking on your door, tell us what you gave them, and show us how you prepared for their arrival.

CBC British Columbia and the SFU City Program, which promotes citizen participation in civic issues, have teamed up once again to help track the neighbourhoods with the most visitors on Halloween night.

"Folks would collect a tally and after an evening of ghoulish visits, they come onto the CBC website to report the number of trick-or-treaters they had by listing the general intersection," explained Andy Yan, director of the city program at SFU. 

"[In 2020] we had a decline in the number of reports but then we also had some unique innovations. People came in with the candy chutes," he said. 

With vaccinations and more knowledge about COVID-19, Yan suspects numbers will increase this year compared to last. 

"Trick or treating is conceptually this moment of social trust — a series of masked strangers come to your door asking for a treat."

Use this form to report the number of trick or treaters who came to your house.

Then, watch as a colour-coded marker appears on the map below. The more intense the colour, the more spooky your neighbourhood.

To get an idea of how it works, you can view the results of the 2020 trick-or-treat count here.

Based on previous counts, Yan said the Hastings Sunrise and Riley Park neighbourhoods in Vancouver and Queen's Park neighbourhood in New Westminster "really get into the spirit of things." 

But he notes that things can change year to year, and that there is a natural bias to the map based on who inputs their numbers in the database.