BOSTON – About 1.8 million people in at least five states remained without power Monday after a rare October snowstorm buried parts of the Northeast under more than 2 feet of snow.

Utilities throughout the region reported significant progress in restoring power, but the cold, snowy conditions and house-by-house nature of the damage was slowing the work, officials said.

The weekend storm prompted emergency declarations from the governors of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts, and also put Halloween trick-or-treating plans in jeopardy. At least six Massachusetts cities have postponed the annual ritual, Lt. Gov. Tim Murray said.

One of them, Worcester, Massachusetts, asked residents to postpone celebrations until Thursday, when temperatures are expected to climb to 60 degrees. Trick-or-treating, the city said, would “put families and our youth in harm’s way as they negotiate piles of snow and downed limbs.”

Murray and Connecticut Gov. Daniel Malloy said they were leaving it up to city officials in their states whether to cancel festivities for Monday night.

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick said some roads in the state are expected to ice up again after dark, and he warned that downed power lines continue to pose a threat of electrocution in the wake of a storm that he said warrants a federal disaster declaration.

“It was a particular challenge not just because it comes unseasonably soon, but because there are leaves on many of the trees, which caused a number of limbs to come down on power lines,” he said.

Authorities blamed at least eight deaths on the storm.

Some of the heaviest snow fell in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey and New York, but snowfall amounts of at least a foot were recorded from West Virginia to Maine. The Berkshire County community of Peru, Massachusetts, received 32 inches of snow during the storm.

“I never have seen this and I’ve lived here all my life, and that’s more than 90 years,” 92-year-old Genevieve Murphy of Westfield, Massachusetts, said in an interview with CNN affiliate WWLP-TV.

Aaron Kershaw in Mahopac, New York, about 50 miles north of Manhattan, told CNN he was using a 4,000-watt generator to provide power for his family of five.

The wet, heavy snow brought down a number of trees while coating the area in a thick blanket of white.

“Thank God no homes, cars, people etc. were harmed,” he said. “But Mother Nature left us beautiful scenery.”

About 1,300 people were staying in Massachusetts shelters, state officials said. In Connecticut, 50 shelters were open, Malloy said.

With no electricity and no heat at home, Jessica Taylor took her six children and spent the night in a shelter in the Hartford, Connecticut, area.

“We’ve been eating meals here,” she told CNN affiliate WTIC-TV. “They’ve been serving us, taking good care of us.”

Connecticut power officials told reporters Monday that about 756,000 people were without power, down from a peak of more than 900,000.

“It’s all hands on deck,” Mitch Gross, a spokesman Connecticut Light and Power, the state’s largest utility, said earlier. “We have a lot of work to do.”

Power crews from across the country are converging on the state to help restore power, according to Gross, who said every town Connecticut Light and Power serves was adversely affected in some way by the storm.

In Massachusetts, state officials said utility crews had come from as far as Louisiana and Texas to help. Patrick said utility crews had made a 23 percent dent in the number of buildings without power as of Monday morning.

“A 23 percent reduction overnight is pretty great, but we have a whole lot more to do and a few days yet before power will be restored to everyone,” Patrick said.

About 508,000 people remained without power on Monday, state officials said.

Elsewhere, about 90,000 customers were without power early Monday in Pennsylvania; 277,000 in New Jersey; 180,000 in New York and 191,000 in New Hampshire, according to figures from emergency managers and power companies in those states. Thousands also lost power in Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia.

Kimberly Lindner, of Chappaqua, New York, said the family whiled away the hours by building a “jack-snow-lantern.”

“It’s October and there are 12 inches of snow on the ground,” she said in a submission to CNN’s iReport. “But the kids think it’s great. They’ve been playing outside all day and really don’t care that there is no power. Why not make the best of things and have some family time in the snow? A snowman without a head, a jack-o’-lantern without a body… enough said.”

For others, however, the unexpected storm brought unexpected misery.

Forty-eight passengers were stuck in an Amtrak train for nearly 13 hours when a rock slide blocked the tracks late Saturday night, the transit service said. A bus was later sent to pick up the passengers.

“The noise of the branches when they were falling and hitting the windows, they made us all sit in the aisle seats,” Ann Amphlett, a passenger, told CNN affiliate WHDH.

Airline passengers left stranded by the storm spent a restless weekend night on cots or airport floors.

“Whatever kind of system they had, it completely and utterly broke down,” said passenger Fatimah Dahandari, who spent a night in Hartford, Connecticut’s, Bradley International Airport while trying to get to New York. “It looks like a refugee camp in here.”

Passenger Mara Dhaerman was also stranded in Hartford and said her JetBlue flight, initially from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to Newark, New Jersey, spent nine hours on the tarmac in Connecticut. Passengers were told the plane was refueling, then de-icing, and that it was going to try to get back to Newark, but eventually a stairway was brought in and firefighters and troopers helped passengers off. She said she received a cot to sleep on about 1 a.m. Sunday.

“It’s just very annoying,” she said.

As of Monday, authorities were attributing at least eight deaths to the storm.

Three people died in Massachusetts, Patrick said, including a Lunenberg, Massachusetts resident who died in a fire and a resident of Hatfield, Massachusetts who succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning, apparently from an improperly vented generator.

The third death happened in Springfield, Massachusetts, when a man in his 20s ignored police barricades surrounding downed power lines and touched a metal guard rail, which was charged, said city fire department spokesman Dennis Legere.

Three people died in Pennsylvania — two of them in a crash Sunday on Interstate 95 in Philadelphia, CNN affiliate KYW-TV reported. The third death happened in Temple, Pennsylvania, where an 84-year-old man was resting in his recliner on Saturday when a part of a large, snow-filled tree fell into his house and killed him, according to a state police report. With numerous downed trees in the area, rescue crews took two hours to safely remove the victim, police said.

At least two people died in Connecticut, Malloy said. It was unclear whether that included a motorist who died in a previously reported traffic accident in Hebron, Connecticut.