One evening a year, and it has to work the first time. This guide is about the parts that decide whether it does: what a costume actually contains, what matters when children are out on a street after dark, how a house reads as decorated rather than cluttered, and what makes people stay at a party.
Every figure inside carries its source, and all of them are public — the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Fire Protection Association, JAMA Pediatrics and Safe Kids Worldwide. Nothing in it is a safety certification: it is a reading of published data, offered so that a few decisions are easier to make.
It is free, it asks nothing in return, and no product is promoted inside it.
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Written by the Halloweeners team · 2026 edition. Halloween 2026 falls on a Saturday — chapter five works through what that changes.