I don't know that there are real ghosts and goblins, but there are always more trick-or-treaters than neighborhood kids.

Robert Brault is an American aphorist known for wry, contemporary observations often circulated online and in quotation compilations. This line is a Halloween-season quip that plays on a familiar suburban experience: on October 31, doorbells ring constantly and the number of costumed visitors can seem to exceed the number of children who actually live nearby. The remark fits Brault’s typical mode—skeptical about the supernatural while attentive to the small social mysteries of everyday life—using the ritual of trick-or-treating as a setting for humor about community boundaries, anonymity, and the way traditions draw people in from beyond one’s immediate neighborhood.

The joke hinges on a mock “proof” of the uncanny. The speaker doubts literal ghosts and goblins, yet observes something that feels inexplicable: more trick-or-treaters appear than the local child population would predict. The line gently suggests that the real “mystery” of Halloween is social rather than supernatural—how crowds materialize, how strangers temporarily become welcome visitors, and how a neighborhood’s sense of who belongs blurs for one night. It also hints at modern mobility (kids driven in from elsewhere) and the way communal rituals can create the illusion of abundance, even of being “haunted,” without any need for the paranormal.