It depends on the neighborhood and the neighbors, but Halloween is a tradition that’s alive and well in the United States, including in southeastern Minnesota.

From Austin to Lyle and throughout Mower County, houses are decorated with bats and skeletons and spooky cobwebs.

The fright fest also falls on a Saturday this year, meaning no school the next day.

Residents such as Lyle’s Gary and Margaret Harrison are ready.

The couple’s Pine Street front yard is packed with pumpkins and blow-up decorations, including a Frankenstein and a tree with ghosts coming out of it.

The Harrisons have been married 47 years, are long-time Lyle residents and enjoy Halloween.

“You betcha we do,” Gary said. “(We like) watching the little ones. We’ve been here so long watching kids that they’ve graduated and now they bring their kids.”

The Harrisons are indeed prepared.

Their candy stash includes a little bit of everything — from candy bars to taffy to milk duds to mints.

“I just hope the weather holds, so it’s nice for the kids to enjoy,” Gary said.

Some residents feel the popularity of trick-or-treating has declined over the years.

Gary said he thinks it’s simply a changing of the times.

“I think the scare factor is there,” he said. “I think parents are a little leery of sending their kids out at night and what might be in the candy.”

Alyssa Wagner, a young adult who lives in west Austin with her boyfriend, feels her generation has yet to embrace handing out candy — preferring parties to staying home.

“I loved Halloween when I was a kid, and I want kids to still have that opportunity,” she said.

Wagner will be home on Oct. 31, and she’s going all out.

Trick-or-treaters in her Fourth Avenue neighborhood will be treated to fun dip candy and animal crackers for the younger kids.

The house will also be decorated with bloody hand prints on the windows, and a fog machine near the basement will set the scene for a witch’s cauldron.

“I wish more people would plan on the trick-or-treaters because it’s a fun tradition,” Wagner said.

Wagner — pardon the pun — might consider herself a dying breed.

“My generation doesn’t take the time to decorate,” she said. “Most of my friends go to their own parties.”

Remember 1991?

Wagner said she was so into Halloween as a kid that her mother still took her out during the Halloween blizzard/ice storm of 1991.

“We still went out,” she said. “Granted, every door we went, they had to ask what we were because we were so bundled up in our coats.”

The National Weather service has an entire page devoted to that blizzard and ice storm.

“Snow moved into southern Iowa during the afternoon of Oct. 30 and then spread into northern Iowa and Minnesota early on Oct. 31,” according to the site.

A mixture of snow, sleet and freezing rain moved across southeast Minnesota, and two to three inches of ice accumulated.

In Iowa, Interstate 35 was closed by fallen power lines, and 80,000 homes were without power.

The Harrisons also remember that storm well.

In 1991, Gary was a part-time police officer in Adams and a corrections officer in Mower County.

The couple lived on a farm, which lost power during the storm.

Margaret, known by many as “Margie,” left the farm to be closer to Gary that night.

“My wife actually slept in the jail,” Gary said. “I put her to sleep in one of the cells. It was actually the exercise room, but there was a bunk in there.”

Safety

Mower County Sheriff Terese Amazi also feels the popularity of trick-or-treating has declined. One reason for this, she said, might be that there are more alternatives.

“They never used to have trick-or-treating at the mall,” she said.

This year, trick-or-treating will be held at the Oak Park Mall from 4 to 5 p.m. Oct. 31, giving youngsters a chance to go from store to store in search of candy.

“It’s a safe environment where you don’t have to worry about your kids,” said Lynnette Jarvis, the mall’s marketing coordinator. “It works well for the parents and the mall. We enjoy doing it.”

Sheriff Amazi urged people to use flashlights when trick-or-treating, to make sure reflective clothing is used and to make sure masks have the widest holes possible for eyes.

Amazi also urged motorists to especially be aware of trick-or-treaters this year because Halloween falls on a weekend.

“Drive very slowly through the neighborhoods,” she said. “You don’t know which goblin is going to come out, and we don’t want to turn that into a tragedy.”

As for the weather, it looks like temperatures will be below normal, but National Weather Service experts also said — as of now anyway —Oct. 31 appears to be dry.

That, of course, would mean no ice-caused power outages like the one in 1991 that led to “Margie” Harrison spending the night in a jail cell.

“She slept like a rock,” Gary said.