Derry people's favourite Halloween memories

Gary Stewart from the Waterside: "I remember going round the doors looking for nuts and sweets. Halloween is massive now in Derry, there’s been big changes, but it was good back, too, then when it was simple.”

Bridgen Sharkey: “I remember dressing up in my mammies clothes. We got a shawl, a long skirt and a cardigan and dressed up like an old woman. We had no costumes like you do nowadays. We had family games, too, like dunking apples. We had a clothesline in the kitchen and we would hang the apples from there. You had to take a bite of the apple with your hands behind your back and it was all them things. You never forget good memories like that.”

Steve Grant said: “My daughter saw the parade last year and she absolutely loved the people standing on the big stilts.”

Viv said: “Probably carving pumpkins with my dad as a kid. I remember drawing the design and him fixing it because it was too ugly!

Eddie: "We put fireworks in the pumpkin! It was those wee tiny ones that me and my brother got a hold of. The pumpkin went everywhere but the birds got good eating from it.”

Siobhán McIntyre: “My birthday’s at Halloween so I always remember it. I remember dunking for apples in the bowl and putting the apples on a string from the ceiling. So there was lots of party games and sparklers, there was no big fireworks or anything then. We always made things out of whatever we had about the house. There was never any halloween costume shops then so everything was homemade. But that was all better craic anyway.”

Leonard Doherty: “We were all gathered in the house back then as a family. We got nuts and apples and we used to put an apple in a dish of water and you would try to take a bite out of it. We always dressed up too but you couldn’t have gone out and bought a costume then, we made them ourselves. We played games like blind man's bluff. We’d the house wrecked by the end of the night!”