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Well, it's that time of year again... Halloween is coming and among the stories about community haunted houses and which costumes are popular this year, your local news will report about hospitals offering to x-ray your kid's treats for free. All because of an urban legend. Follow me below the fancy squiggle for more....
Since the early 1970s we have been regaled by stories of Halloween sadists. Poisoned candy. Razor blades in apples. Needles in candy bars. The reason they keep being repeated is two-fold: parent's fears for their children are easily stoked and there is enough truth in them to make it all sound reasonable. It's usually a hoax but the few actual cases have been enough to keep the myth alive...
Case #1: In 1970, a 5 year old boy in Detroit fell into a coma after consuming his uncle’s heroin. The family tried to cover it up by claiming the heroin was in the Halloween Candy.
Case #2: In 1974, in Pasadena, Texas, Timothy O’Bryan died after eating a cyanide-laced Pixie Stix. Police investigation revealed that the boy’s Father, Ronald Clark O’Bryan had murdered his son in order to claim life insurance money. To hide this, he had also given the Pixie Stix to his daughter and three other kids. Luckily the other kids did not eat the poisoned candy. Ronald O’Bryan was convicted of murder.
Case #3: Helen Pfeil of Greenlawn, NY made up joke treats to give to teenagers, whom she thought too old to be trick or treating. She gave out dog biscuits, steel wool pads, and ant poison buttons, telling the kids that these were joke treats. The police weren't amused and she was charged for endangering children.
Case #4: Traces of strychnine were reportedly found in a box of gummy dinosaurs. This was reported by the New York Times, but later the suspicious powder was found to be corn starch. The NYT would later print an update to the article, but not before the manufacturer of the candy destroyed 9400 cases of the product. Unfortunately most remember the destruction of the products, not the followup.
These incidents are repeated and continue to feed the fire of the urban legend of dangerous Halloween treats. Joel Best, a sociologist from CalState Fresno, said in a 2002 interview:
Since 1983, I have followed stories about contaminated Halloween treats in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune going back to 1958 and every time a case has been reported, the cause of death or injury has turned out to be something other than Halloween candy. We checked major newspaper from throughout the country, and found a total of 78 cases and two deaths. Further checking proved that almost all of the 78 cases were pranks. The deaths were tragically real, but they, too, were misrepresented in the beginning. The pranks were all perpetrated by kids – after years of hearing similar stories – inserting needles or razor blades into fruit, not realizing (or maybe realizing) how much they frightened their whole town. My favorite was the kid who brought a half-eaten candy bar to his parents and said, "I think there’s ant poison on this." They had it checked and, sure enough, there was ant poison on this – significantly, on the end he had not bitten, Of course, the youngster had applied the poison himself.
Best has tried mightily over the years to destroy this particular myth, but obviously to no avail. “It’s the old problem of trying to prove a negative,” he says.
This is not to say that parents shouldn't be concerned with their children's safety at Halloween. They should. Check your child's candy for opened wrappers but remember that these dangers are overblown. But a very real danger comes from cars. If a parent needs to be overprotective on Halloween, don't worry about candy or stranger abduction - not anymore for the latter than at any other time of year, anyway - worry about cars and making your child highly visible in the dark. Have an adult take the child or, better yet, a group of children, out for trick or treat. Give the children strict rules about staying together and not entering people's houses. Make sure they know how to safely cross the street.
After the fun, make sure the kids don't eat too much of their haul. Tummy-aches and sugar highs are the dangers then. Ultimately, having the candy x-rayed and throwing out unwrapped treats can't hurt. But let's not be so preoccupied with phantom threats that we ignore the very real ones.
And, considering my platform and readers, I don't think I even have to address the "it's the devil's holiday" nonsense, right?
Have a Fun and safe Halloween! Here are some websites to help you:
http://myhalloweenideas.com/
http://www.scared-out-of-your-wits.com/...
http://www.101halloweenideas.com/
http://www.hgtv.com/...
http://familyfun.go.com/...
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