I GENUINELY FEEL bad for anyone who never experienced Halloween in Ireland in the 1990s.

And I’m sorry, but your Pinterest-worthy front door display doesn’t even come close to the rush of standing beside an unsupervised bonfire in a highly flammable black plastic bag, dressed as… something scary that definitely required the black bag (only the one though, we weren’t made of money), topped off with a £1 mask from Tuthill’s with a string that was way too tight and cut off circulation from the neck down, and had the strongest smell of plastic that left you light-headed within minutes.

They were the glory days. Sweets tasted better when we didn’t know what artificial colours and flavours did to a developing brain, and we were able to eat unwrapped items because germs and wild rumours about razor blades and drugs being hidden in the sweets didn’t exist back then.

This flexible approach to what was acceptable to hand out to a bunch of seven year olds must have been so freeing for the adults of the time. We mostly got Penguin bars or a Drumstick lolly that would drag the teeth out of your head, but I can still distinctly remember the house that gave me a handful of Polo mints and a bookies pencil one year.

If you didn’t buy your mask, you could cut one out of a cereal box, which was very sustainable of us in hindsight. Someone always had a pair of vampire fangs that you could borrow, and you really wouldn’t even think of the many other mouths they had been in before yours.

File photo of kids dressed up for Halloween in 1997. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

Every estate had a roaring bonfire that was entirely free from parental supervision, with hundreds of children standing much too close, inhaling the fumes of God knows what was burning (that wasn’t very sustainable of us in hindsight) and slightly delirious from the sugar.

The older kids had plenty of eggs and terrible aim, and since they couldn’t trick or treat, they were going to try swipe your sweets, which were obviously collected in an old pillowcase. It was like a cross between Lord of the Flies and The Purge, but it was beautiful.

Chaos was not only permitted, but expected.

We were told to spray fake blood on every available surface, to make a mess cutting up old bedsheets and to knock on doors and take sweets from strangers. We were expected to run wild, out late at night and then come home to watch scary movies that we had no business watching.

There were fun snaps and sparklers, and we were definitely knocking on the crankiest neighbour’s door. Even though you knew he was fuming, but you were hoping he’d give a chase. We were looking for trouble, that was the whole point. The spirits of Oíche Shamhna were unleashed and mischief was rampant.

Getting older

All too soon we were teenagers, still feeling the madness of the night coursing through us but wanting to express it in different, though equally risky, ways. We swapped the bin bags and masks for eyeliner and costumes that covered much less surface area, and although Halloween looked slightly different, it still incorporated all the tricks we could manage.

There was no more knocking on doors but there was still a lot of talking to strangers as we hung around outside the local off license, battling hypothermia and profiling the people going in – because if there’s one thing a group of teen girls are going to do, it’s know on sight who will agree to buy them a crate of Dutch Gold, and who will warn the shop staff that they are outside.

We’d still go to the bonfires, only now it was even more dangerous as everyone was half cut and definitely not in any state to be around large, open flames. Someone would inevitably get injured, and someone else would convince everyone to hold a séance that would haunt us for months to come.

It was like we still felt entitled to this one night of madness and debauchery.

We had to push the limits, and the bigger we got, the bigger the rules were that needed to be broken. So each Halloween involved newer and even more stupid ways of going wild. Often in ways that had much more serious and longer lasting consequences for us. Sometimes I wonder how we survived it all, and if it was the Dutch Gold that contributed to the feeling of invincibility.

Of course, it’s all behind me now. I still carry the memories, the microplastics and a handful of scars, and now a deep sense of dread as we approach this time of year. In a cruel twist of fate, I have two daughters who have swapped Haribos for house parties in recent years, and I can assure you it is far scarier than any horror movie could ever hope to be. Halloween is no longer fun. None of it is funny anymore.

It is shocking to realise I am closer to being the Fun Police than I am to being the carefree teenager.

For now, the scariest part of Halloween is the things that my kids might get up to, because they are mini versions of me – except faster, smarter and with online shopping and iPhones. At this point, I would rather be haunted by an actual demon. Can they not test boundaries in ways that don’t cause me to age prematurely? What about celebrating Halloween with a nice cardigan, or a cup of tea?

No? Okay. Maybe next year.

Margaret Lynch is a mother of two and a parenting columnist with The Journal.