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Halloween has never been my thing.

It strikes me as one of those occasions when, collectively, people are given the thumbs up to behave really badly, and cheerfully oblige. It’s like Canada Day, when yobs set off fireworks in dense urban neighbourhoods of Victorian-era row homes which spontaneously combust if you look at them sideways, and St. Patrick’s Day, or as college students ought to call it, groupdrink.

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I carve a pumpkin, load up on candy and invite the local kids up on the porch to trick or treat, of course, and this year have even bought a knitted Halloween hat for my bull terrier to wear (he is most fetching), though I have the sinking feeling that even the sound of giggling children and their helicopter parents whirring madly on the sidewalk won’t get him off the couch.

But now, I have a new good reason to abhor the night.

I refer to the complaint from a Markham, Ont., woman about the “Scary Peeper Creeper,” the realistic face of a hooded man that you can stick on the outside of a window (it has suction cups) and give the people inside a fright.