The day started with down-pouring rain, but by 10 a.m., the sun was shining into my office on Camden Harbor, and the Halloween prospects were looking good.

For the last several years, Halloween in Lincolnville Center has become a town tradition, and 2025 did not disappoint. The Lincolnville PTO had arranged Trunk or Treat in the school parking lot; participants elaborately decorating their vehicles and often dressed themed costumes, handing out treats to the hordes of Lincolnville kids.

One thing I love about living in the new millennium is how Halloween has became a holiday for all ages, with nearly as many adults in costume as kids.

The kids, from infants dressed up in their carriers, to the teenagers, so much less self-conscious about being “too old” for Halloween, often coordinating themed outfits with their buddies. If they want to throw on an inflatable dinosaur costume and get free candy with their friends, we should embrace this.

Hope Road down to the Center was lined with illuminated pumpkins, donated by Beth’s Farm Market, and carved by LCS students. In the Center, most houses participated enthusiastically, fully decorated, with older townspeople visiting friends just to see the kids in costume. Maybe they were remembering the time, decades ago, when they also created disguises and scoured their neighborhoods for treats. My own mother once dressed up, with her best friend, as dancing packs of Chesterfield Cigarettes. 

At the end of Main Street, the Library was prepared for the Trick or Treaters as the made their way down from the school.

After Main Street, the place to go was the Lincolnville Volunteer Fire Station, a half mile away, where for the last few years they have held an ever-more elaborate Halloween Party for the community. They outdid themselves this year. Their haunted maze alone, should I have encountered it at age seven, would have lived in my memory for the rest of my life as the platonic ideal of Halloween. Just scary enough to be awesome.

Special thanks to Nick Watts, of the LVFD, for coordinating the whole thing, and to the myriad sponsors who supported the effort.

My own days of Trick or Treating are long gone, and the days of planning costumes for my family and going door to door with my kids is gone for just long enough to hurt a little. But I will never not be happy to see a little monster, or princess, or Jedi, or witch grinning behind their mask or make-up.

Happy Halloween, Lincolnville. You done good.