Always check your candy...
You're myth-taken!
Now that the trick-or-treating is done, you might be sitting down to go through your kids’ spoils… and perhaps inspecting for anything “suspicious?” Throwing out anything “oddly-shaped” or homemade? Tossing out stickers? POCKETING PENNIES?! (Okay, I’ll let that one slide…)
There are a lot of myths and urban legends surrounding Halloween. Here are some common ones, and why they’re absolute balderdash, I say!
The candy thing
You know the drill: check your kid’s candy because there might be razor blades in it. Or LSD. Or marijuana edibles. Or is it poison? Wait…
Researcher Joel Best has a paper/website entitled Halloween Sadism looks at reports of such incidents, which seem to have really picked up steam since around 1958 or so. The five reports of deaths attributed in the media to Halloween candy were all either misreported or were intentional misdirections by a guilty party.
Obviously the record keeping on the particular topic isn’t the tidiest, as best research can tell, kids are far more in danger of choking than they are encountering something dangerous in the candy itself. In fact, that danger is like a speck of dust stacked up to the real Halloween killer: automobiles. (Children are around three times more likely to be struck and killed by a vehicle on Halloween.)
Lately, alarmists have been insisting that people are going to drop hundreds of dollars to hand out marijuana edibles to children on Halloween. This is absolute hogwash. I have heard of some people handing out adult consumables (wine, weed, beer or brats) TO CONSENTING ADULTS during trick-or-treat in states where that sort of thing is perfectly legal. But again, that’s just not as sexy a headline.
There’s LSD in the stickers
The story goes that, again, hippies are wasting hundredsssss of dollars to lace stickers and temporary tattoos with LSD and hand out to kiddos.
As best we can tell, this is absolutely never happened.
This comes from the fact that LSD can be distributed on sheets of dissolvable paper that are printed to look like sheets of stickers. This isn’t to trick kids into taking the stuff; it not only offers a little safe cover for those transporting the goods, but also offers an opportunity for #branding.
No, wait, it’s the apples that are poisoned!
Okay, Snow White.
Bobbing for apples is a time-honored Halloween tradition. So naturally, it gets a few urban legends of its own. The apples are filled with razor blades or poison. No? Okay, then the water is poisoned.
Not true. Just like the tainted candy, there’s just no evidence of this ever happening. Actually, doctors warn that children may scratch their eyes on apple stems or aspirate water. And also? Germs. Bacteria. Snotty noses.
So, basically poison, as far as I’m concerned.
Halloween is dangerous for black cats
I talked a little bit about this in my post on black cats. There have been rumors of ritual sacrifice or torture of black cats surrounding Halloween. But most animal advocates and shelters agree that it’s a myth that might actually be contributing to some black cats not getting adopted in a timely manner.
That said? It’s a good idea to keep any pets inside on Halloween. Distracted drivers and slow-moving cars can be a real danger for your pets.
KILLER CLOWNS
Does anybody remember the 2016 clown panic? There were reportedly people dressed as rather threatening-looking clowns just… standing. Staring. Waiting.
While this was my own personal nightmare come true, it seems like it was just people doing “social experiments” (God, remember YouTube?!) or promoting their own movie projects. No murders, despite the heavy serial killer vibes.
One that’s true: Super-realistic decorations
So this really happened a couple of times: people just shrugged off the presence of a body because hey, it’s Halloween.
The most famous case is that of Elmer McCurdy, an outlaw who through a series of mishaps ended up as a carnival ride decoration in Long Beach, California some 60 years after his death. When the Six Million Dollar Man was filming in that location, a set dresser noticed Elmer and realized it wasn’t just convincing prop work. Elmer was finally laid to rest in 1977.
In two more recent cases, people simply ignored the presence of a body, assuming it was merely a decoration. That caused two deaths to rather unfortunately go unreported for several days.