Halloween is usually a night when a kid’s top goal is to collect as much candy as humanly possible. But a trio of young trick-or-treaters in Rhode Island who came upon an empty candy bowl on a neighborhood porch this year surprised the woman who’d left it there in the best possible way.
Kristen Wells, of Westerly, R.I., decided to leave a bowl of treats on her front step as she took her own children out to trick or treat. She left a note on the front door with instructions on how much candy to take. “Please take 2. Leave the rest for another guest. Happy Halloween!” the note read.
The bowl was filled to the top with chocolate bars, which is shown in a photo Wells shared on Facebook.
Upon coming home, though, Wells found something unexpected in her nearly empty candy bowl.
“When we came home, it was dark,” Wells told Providence-based WJAR-TV. “We were going in the house, I looked in the bowl [and] there were a few pieces. It wasn’t any of the type of candy that we have, so I’m like confused like, ‘How did this get here?'”
Luckily, Wells has a security camera above her door, which she used to solve the mystery of this unexplained candy. After seeing a number of children take too many pieces from the bowl, Wells noticed three kids do something unexpected on her porch. When the costumed trio came upon the empty bowl, they took candy out of their own stashes and dropped them in for other trick-or-treaters to enjoy!
You can even hear them banter as they decide what to do.
After at first deciding to turn the bowl upside down so that other trick-or-treaters know it’s empty, one of the kids comes up with the generous solution.
“Guys, we should put some candy there … for other trick-or-treaters,” one of them says. Although one of his friends balks at that suggestion, the other one agrees and two of them deposit some sweets from their own bags.
After being pleasantly surprised by the unexpected moment, Wells was disappointed she had no idea who the generous children were. She wanted to recognize their good deed, so she first posted the story without the video so the neighborhood would know what happened. Then, she added a screenshot of the trick-or-treaters to see if anyone could identify them by their costumes.
“I’d love to send the video to their parents and maybe get permission to share the video,” Wells wrote in her initial post. “After all the posts I’ve seen about kids taking entire bowls, I think even more that this story needs to be shared.”
Fortunately, the kids’ parents did see the post and gave permission to Wells to share the video on Facebook.
The clip caught the attention of the local news channel who asked to talk to the boys.
Jack Binger and Jackson Panciera, both age 10, and their friend, 11-year-old Andrew Kitchen, chatted with WJAR about the generous moment that was caught on camera.
“We walk up, none of us looked down at the bowl yet, we all just standing there reading the sign to ourselves and then we all looked down at the exact same time and we’re like — ‘There was nothing’,” Andrew told the station. “We started to walk away and then [Jack] says, ‘You know, we should put some candy in there for other trick-or-treaters’.”
What made the boys decide to do it?
“I was like, ‘Guys, we should put in candy because there could be other trick-or-treaters that could come by,” said Jack. “Honestly, we’re all done with COVID and candy is the best thing we could do to help everyone.”
Not only did these boys help make other kids’ Halloween night a little sweeter, their actions also brightened up a world that can use a little happiness.
This story originally appeared on Simplemost. Checkout Simplemost for additional stories.