Notably it is celebrated by children, who dress up in costumes and go door-to-door collecting sweets, fruit and other gifts as a tradition known as trick-or-treating. Other traditional Halloween activities include fancy dress parties, watching horror films, visiting "haunted houses", and participating in traditional autumn activities such as hayrides (which may have "haunted" themes).

Halloween originated under the name of "Samhain", a Pagan festival celebrated by Celts in Ireland and Great Britain. Irish and Scottish immigrants took different versions of this festival to North America in the nineteenth century, and it eventually developed into an aspect of late twentieth century American pop culture. Today, many western countries have embraced Halloween and adopted it as part of their culture.

The term 'Halloween' is the shortened form of 'All-hallow-even', as it falls on the evening before "All Hallows' Day", also known as "All Saints' Day". It was a day of religious festivities in various northern European Pagan traditions.

Many European cultural traditions such as Catalan mythology about witches and Irish tales of the Sídhe, hold that Halloween is a liminal time of the year when spirits can make contact with the physical world, and magic is most potent.

Candy apples, which are also known as toffee, taffy or caramel apples, are a common Halloween treat because the holiday comes in the wake of the annual apple harvest. They are made by rolling whole apples in sticky sugar syrup, and sometimes by rolling them in nuts as well. Candy apples used to be given to children all the time as presents, but the practice waned rapidly after widespread rumours that some individuals were embedding items like pins and razor blades in these apples. While there is evidence of such incidents, they are quite rare and have never resulted in serious injury.

Nonetheless, many parents assumed the worst and thought that such heinous practices were rampant; at the peak of the hysteria, some hospitals offered free x-rays of all the Halloween goodies the children collected to reveal any evidence of tampering. Most of the incidents involving poisoned candy were caused by parents who poisoned their own children's candy. There have also been occasional reports of children putting needles in their own (and other children's) candy in an extreme bid for attention.

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Halloween, or Hallowe'en, is a holiday celebrated on the night of October 31.