By Peter Lattman October 29, 2010 7:49 pm October 29, 2010 7:49 pm

By PETER LATTMAN

Saturday, 6:59 p.m. | Updated GREENWICH, Conn. — In recent years, hundreds of costumed children have celebrated Halloween at the waterfront mansion of Paul Tudor Jones II, the hedge-fund billionaire.

Every Halloween, Mr. Jones, who lives in the exclusive enclave of Belle Haven here, transformed his home into a spooky wonderland. A headless horsemen welcomed children, who feasted on buffet tables of candy, held live snakes and spiders shipped in for the occasion and freaked themselves out in the haunted house built on the grounds overlooking the Long Island Sound.

But this year, Mr. and Mrs. Jones have canceled Halloween.

“My kids are very upset,” said Michael L. Finkelstein, an insurance executive from Greenwich, who took his two children to last year’s bash. “This was such a great and generous thing he did for the town.”

In a town teeming with hedge-fund kingpins, Mr. Jones stands out. He started out trading cotton and founded the Tudor Investment Corporation 30 years ago. Today, he manages more than $11 billion. Forbes magazine estimates his net worth at $3 billion. Mr. Jones also founded the Robin Hood Foundation, a charity that fights poverty and has huge support from the Wall Street crowd.

Word of the canceled Halloween event at the Joneses spread through this affluent suburb after residents of Belle Haven received the news in a letter this week from the board of The Belle Haven Land Company. The land company oversees the management of the neighborhood, a gated community of 106 families.

Belle Haven has historically opened itself to outsiders for Halloween. But that has changed this year.

“Due to safety and security concerns of the neighborhood, on Oct. 31, 2010, Halloween, only Belle Haven residents, guests of residents, members of the Belle Haven Club and guests of Belle Haven Club members, shall be permitted to enter Belle Haven,” the letter said. It also said that the Joneses party would be canceled.

So that means that only Belle Haven residents like the singer Diana Ross. the hedge fund manager Edward S. Lampert and the Egyptian businessman Ali al-Fayed can trick-or-treat in the neighborhood on Sunday night — along with their invited guests.

In past years, nonresidents would join Belle Haven families gallivanting around Belle Haven, gathering their candy stashes, and then end their evenings reveling at the Joneses. But not this Halloween.

The reasons are shrouded in mystery. A spokeswoman for Tudor, Mr. Jones’s hedge fund, did not return multiple e-mails and calls seeking comment. David F. Ogilvy and Robert Jamieson, directors of the Belle Haven Land Company, did not return calls and e-mails seeking comment.

Frank Creamer, the manager of The Belle Haven Land Company and a former Greenwich policeman, said he wasnt sure what led to the decision but suspected that the board was tired of the masses descending upon the neighborhood for the holiday.

Halloweens okay for the kids but I guess the board felt they didnt want large crowds in here anymore, said Mr. Creamer. Its an exclusive community.

Belle Haven residents still seem to be getting into the Halloween spirit. On Friday, their homes were festooned with Halloween decorations. Long, majestic driveways were lined with giant pumpkins. The trees, ablaze in fall colors, were tangled with cobwebs.

Even more popular than Mr. Jones’s Halloween festivities is his Christmas offering, local residents say. Every December, he stages an elaborate choreographed holiday light show, and for two weeks leading up to Christmas, streams of cars drive past his home to watch.

On Greenwich Avenue, the town’s main thoroughfare, several residents on Friday wondered whether Christmas would be canceled at the Joneses, too.

“They can’t cancel Christmas,” said a woman sipping coffee at Starbucks. who asked to remain anonymous because, she joked, Belle Haven residents were very powerful. “Now that would be a shame.”