As temperatures dip, multicolored leaves crunch beneath our feet, and ghouls and goblins stare at us with inhuman eyes from storefront and homes’ windows, it can only mean one thing: Halloween is here!

This goes not just for us, but for our beloved soap characters, families, and towns.

Halloween has always been a time of storyline advancement, complication, and various twists and turns we fans couldn’t have seen coming on our soaps. We get both tricked and treated by our soaps at this time of year. And I don’t think I’m wrong when I say: we love it!

Soap characters love to get decked out in elaborate costumes and throw parties. “General Hospital” (GH) took this one step further this year and scheduled Carly and Franco’s wedding for Halloween (as if weddings were not events of seminal change and plot advancement already!). I won’t spoil it for those of you who haven’t seen the last couple day’s episodes yet, but boy, did GH have some surprising tricks and treats in for us viewers on Halloween!

And who can forget last year when Robin dressed up in a costume, complete with a mask, before revealing herself to be alive, to get the chance merely to see Patrick and to hug and be near Emma.

Now, fans with better memories will have to correct me on this, but before “One Life to Live” (OLTL) was cancelled, didn’t original Todd show up as his son’s favorite crime fighter, Spider Man, to a party in order to get a glimpse at the family he had been kept apart from for ages, and to enlist his son in his plan to get rid of Second Todd?

Soap characters are always having fun and being together at Halloween, but a few of them are always up to something, even a little extra something, at this time of year. And isn’t that part of why we love our soaps: the fun and family bonding, coupled with villainous plots being set in motion or heightened. Halloween has always been a pivotal time for soaps (characters and storylines) and soap viewers.