Among the top Halloween urban legends that circulate each year is the idea that the candy your child accepts from strangers while trick-or-treating could be poisoned.
It was in wide circulation when I was of trick-or-treating age; I vividly remember my parents inspecting my candy haul piece-by-piece while I stood by impatiently. Of course, this was back in the ’70s, which means we didn’t have the Internet and we didn’t have Snopes.
According to this article, there’s no actual police record of people handing out poisoned candy to random children on Halloween. “Whew,” right?
Of course, in this day and age, it’s always good to be cautious. Besides, the article does not state that there’s never been a case of Halloween candy poisoning. If you follow the article to the end you’ll read about Ronald O’Bryan, whose eight-year-old son died of Cyanide poisoning in 1974. The source of the Cyanide? Pixie Stix. The identity of the poisoner? It’s shocking and sad, and worth a trip to Snopes to find out.
Monsters, it turns out, really do come out on Halloween.
Blu Gilliand is the managing editor of Cemetery Dance Magazine and Cemetery Dance Online.
I read about that O’Bryan case years ago. Gave me the shivers. Thank God our police are smart enough to figure these things out. Meanwhile, I don’t think anyone these days honestly thinks poisoning candy (or slipping razorblades into the bars of chocolate… that was the rumor we heard all the time in my hometown) is a ‘perfect murder’. It’s far too easy to track down which house was giving away which candies. If you think about it, the variety of candy this time of year is actually a great deterrent to murder! 😀