Adults in strange costumes escorting their inner child from door to door! Relationships ripped apart at the seams like an overstuffed bag of candy!
Today, on Halloween eve, we examine twentysomething trick-or-treaters: Are they aging sociopaths desperately trying to cling to their childhoods, costumed candy addicts or frighteningly free spirits?
Join us as we study this little-known disorder.
A case study
Jennifer Koerner is an otherwise normal 23-year-old assistant for marketing at Towson University. Yet each Halloween, she still dresses up and goes trick-or-treating, even dragging reluctant roommates along.
When questioned about this developmental abnormality, Koerner doesn't sound like a sugar freak with a wicked case of arrested development.
In fact, she seems relatively well-adjusted. And her alibi is seamless: With her birthday just two days before Halloween, she's always plunged head-first into the holiday.
"Birthdays and Halloween have always gone hand in hand," she says. "Every birthday cake I had was shaped like a pumpkin or a cat."
But below Koerner's enthusiastic surface, frightening truths may lurk.
A panel of experts has a lot to say about trick-or-treaters who have been around the block too many times.
Meet Marcia Summers, a professor of educational psychology at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind. She says kids generally give up trick-or-treating around the age of 12.
"Most kids usually get embarrassed and they stop," says Summers, who specializes in early childhood development. "That's the natural dividing line."
But the transition isn't always so natural. It certainly wasn't with Koerner.
Sadly, it hasn't been with Summers' 14-year-old daughter, either. Despite her mother's pleas, she still goes door-to-door every Oct. 31, showing symptoms of chronic trick-or-treating.
Summers says she is determined to stop her daughter's degeneration dead in its tracks.
"I think she's too old," Summers says. "Anyone with a bust size bigger than mine is too old to go trick-or-treating."
Covering up
Fredrick Koenig, a professor of social psychology at Tulane University in New Orleans, cites the lure of the mask as a chief component of the affliction.
These so-called "bagheads" are often seduced by the thrill of becoming anonymous or assuming another identity on the wildest night of the year.
