Still need Halloween candy? Map shows how many kids you can expect

Buying Halloween candy can be a tricky task – buy too little and you could end up with a mob of angry ghosts and goblins at your door, but buy too much and you run the risk of devouring it all yourself (hello, sugar hangover).

Luckily, Jens von Bergmann, a software developer from Vancouver, has come up with a clever way to use census data to help gauge how much candy you should stock up on ahead of Saturday night’s Trick-or-Treat fun.

The map shows the ratio of children in your area at “prime trick-or-treating age” – defined as ages 5 to 14, by Statistics Canada.

To see how many kids you might expect on Saturday, hit the “locate me” button on the map to zoom in on your neighbourhood (note: you will have to enable location services on your web browser to do this).

The map is searchable across the entire country.

Looking for a good scare on Halloween? Von Bergmann has also mapped some “haunted houses” around the country. Mind you, they are technically “houses not occupied by usual residents,” according to the census – so they may not be haunted at all.

But he brings up a good point, “If usual residents don’t live there, who does?”

“Haunted” dwellings include spaces like Vancouver’s Olympic Village and student housing facilities.

Vancouver has the highest percentage of “haunted” housing stock at eight per cent, but in Calgary, Toronto and Montreal about five per cent of the housing stock is haunted.