A small beachside community in Horowhenua has come up with a novel way to keep Halloween safe and socially acceptable.
The good old days of door-to-door trick-or-treating, where youngsters go from house to house asking for lollies, is becoming less popular as some parents are reluctant to have their childrenknock on a stranger's door.
Cody Pothoven at a Halloween festival at Waitarere Beach Domain at the weekend.
And while some home owners have bags of lollies at the ready, others simply don't believe and support the concept, or may be elderly and living alone and are averse to the disruption. It can be a scary experience.
But Boots and Boos at the Waitarere Beach Domain saw participating families park their cars and open their lolly-laden car boots, and where children - and adults - were able to dress up and play at the park in a safe a family-friendly environment.
There were witches aplenty at the Waitarere Beach Halloween party.
There were food trucks, lolly scrambles - even pets were dressed up in ghoulish wares, including a pet pig.
Waitarere Beach resident Brook Ristow was one of the organisers and said in recent years a group of children and their parents had dressed up and taken to the forest for their Halloween fun.
There were enough lollies to go around at the Waitarere Beach Halloween party.
But it made sense to bring it to the park domain.
"It makes sense because everyone is together. You can have a lolly scramble, there are toilets there ... we wanted it to be an event," she said.
There was plenty of blood on show at Waitarere Beach domain.
The local Cub Scout group got on board too, led by Scout leader Sandy Green. The club decked out the hall as an amazing haunted house as a fundraiser, charging a coin donation for anyone brave enough to enter.
There were screams heard coming from the hall as the Cub Scouts had dressed up and created a series of scary room settings to wander through.
There were some very punny gravestone sights to be visited at the Waitarere Beach Halloween party.
Green said 280 people managed to safely get out of the Haunted House and they raised $350 for their club.
"The kids were amazing. It was amazing," she said.
A bloody clown was waiting at the top of the hill at Waitarere Domain.
Most people got into the spirit of the event by dressing up. There were the usual zombies, vampires, mad scientists, werewolves, ghosts and witches.
There was a scary operation going on behind the curtain in the haunted house.
Even zombies take selfies.
Batman and and the boy wonder Robin made an appearance.
There were crazy chickens, swamp things, and mad scientists at Waitarere Beach Domain.
There was a werewolf on guitar.
One Halloween-goer wanted to go as a mad scientist.
