On the last Friday afternoon of October, the main parking lot at Vermont State University's Lyndon campus will fill with cars whose trunks have been turned into candy stations. The Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, known on campus as SAAC, hosts its Trunk or Treat on Friday, October 30, 2026, from 4 to 6 p.m. in the main parking lot off 1001 College Road. There is no admission charge, no ticket, and no reservation. Families from Lyndon, Lyndonville, and the surrounding towns in the Northeast Kingdom simply drive up the hill, walk the rows, and let their kids collect candy.
The event is a modest one, as local gatherings go, but it has a longer history than most people outside the campus would guess. SAAC is the body through which varsity athletes at the Lyndon campus organize service projects and campus events, and Trunk or Treat has become one of its standing traditions. The student newspaper, The Critic, documented an early edition held on Saturday, October 31, in the Vail parking lot, timed to follow a Spooky Soccer Game that wrapped up around 12:30 p.m. and running until 2 p.m. Each athletic team decorated a car trunk and handed out candy, masks, and gifts tied to different charities. Athletic trainers Megan Barnes and Chantal Jean supplied hotdogs and popcorn. Teams arrived before 9 a.m. to claim their parking spots and decorate, then left to compete and returned for the giveaway. There was a competition, too: Women's Lacrosse took best trunk with a Radiator Springs theme out of the Disney-Pixar Cars films, while Cross Country won the most Halloween spirit award with a Rick and Morty trunk.
The following year brought a second edition, again at the S.H.A.P.E. entrance of the Vail parking lot, and this time a club joined the teams: the Twilight Players hosted a car. With Cross Country away at a competition, the trunk contest was wide open. Women's Basketball won with a Candyland theme, Softball took second with Toy Story, and Baseball placed third with a Sandlot theme. Barnes, who also serves as SAAC advisor, said afterward that it had been another successful year and that it was exciting to open the event up to local children so they could join in the fun. She added that they were looking for an even larger crowd next year. The Critic noted that the event might become a tradition on campus, and SAAC was already planning the next one. The 2026 gathering is that tradition, carried forward through a period of significant change at the institution.
The campus itself has been renamed more than once. Lyndon State College, founded in 1911, merged with Johnson State College in 2018 to create Northern Vermont University, and in July 2023 NVU-Lyndon, NVU-Johnson, Castleton University, and Vermont Technical College consolidated into Vermont State University. Through all of it, the athletic programs and their advisory committee kept organizing the fall event, and the parking lot kept its name.
That name carries a surprising amount of history. The Theodore N. Vail Center is named for Theodore Newton Vail, born in 1845, who served as general manager of the Bell Telephone Company from 1878 to 1887 and became the founding president of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company in 1885. Vail viewed telephone service as a public utility and worked to consolidate the country's telephone networks under the Bell system; in 1913 he oversaw the Kingsbury Commitment, which opened the system to greater interconnection. Less known is his Vermont life. In 1883 Vail bought a farmhouse in Lyndon, and his farm there became known as the Speedwell Estate, where prizewinning cattle were bred. The mansion he built and expanded on the property, erected in 1883 as a private home and much enlarged before his death in 1920, was acquired by Lyndon State College in 1950 and used as Vail Hall, housing classrooms and faculty offices in English, mathematics, and education. The original mansion was condemned in 1973 and demolished the following year; the college preserved light fixtures, chairs, and other pieces from it. The modern Vail Center that stands today is the building whose lot hosts the candy.
For a family in the Northeast Kingdom, the practical appeal is simple. Halloween falls on a Saturday in 2026, so the Friday evening Trunk or Treat functions as an early, daylight, and contained alternative to door-to-door trick-or-treating on the holiday itself, or as a first stop before it. The lot is paved and flat, the route is short, and parents can see their children the whole way around. Vermont State University directs visitors to park in the Theodore N. Vail Center lot, and no special permits are required, though on this afternoon the lot itself will be the destination rather than the parking area.
Getting there is straightforward. From Interstate 91, take Exit 23, follow US-5 South, turn left at the light onto Back Center Road, continue about 1.5 miles to the stop sign, go straight 100 yards, and turn left at Lyndon Institute onto College Road; the campus is about a mile up the hill. The drive is roughly three hours from Boston and three and a half from Hartford or Portland, Maine, which tells you most of the crowd will be local.
What the afternoon will look like in 2026 follows the pattern set in those earlier years: student-athletes standing behind open trunks, decorations built around a theme, bowls of candy, and the low-stakes rivalry of a best-trunk contest. The hotdogs and popcorn have been part of it before, supplied by the athletic training staff. Whether the same teams return with the same themes is not something the university's listing promises; the event page offers only the essentials, describing it as trick or treating for the community presented by SAAC, at the main parking lot on 1001 College Road, from 4 to 6 p.m. on October 30.
That brevity is fitting. A trunk-or-treat is not a production. It is a handful of cars in a college parking lot named for the man who built the telephone system, and a few hundred kids working their way down the row before the light goes.