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For a number of years, incidents of sharp objects hidden in Halloween treats have plagued our holiday ritual of accepting candy from strangers. Now the concern for our children’s safety has grown even larger. Fringe and militant groups around the nation have organized to make this Halloween deadlier than those of the past, and their methods have grown more sophisticated and diabolical. As part of a terrorist movement against the general population, these militant groups have begun growing biological weapons of destruction. Contaminants such as botulism and the even deadlier anthrax are to be added to candy handed out this weekend in an attempt to bring about mass public panic and a response from government entities. The media re-hashing of the incident in Waco has only added fuel to this already well burning fire of hatred. Treat this Halloween as you would any other day of the year, do not accept candy from strangers.
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| First, let me begin by stating without reservation that "HALLOWEEN CANDY TAMPERING IS BASICALLY A MYTH." This tale, and others like it are based more on our unreasonable collective fears, fueled by the media and hearsay, than on factual information. The fear surrounding tainted Halloween treats goes back for decades, and may have originally stemmed from the "...case of Helen Pfeil, a Greenlawn, NY housewife who was arrested in 1964 for handing out arsenic-laced ant poison buttons as part of a self evident Halloween joke. Annoyed that many of the trick-or-treaters were too old to be asking for free candy, she made up packages of inedible "treats" to give to the teenagers. The packages contained dog biscuits, steel wool pads and the ant buttons (which were clearly marked "Poison" with a skull and crossbones.) She also took the precaution of telling the teenagers that the packages were a joke when she handed them out, and there is no record of anyone being harmed by her actions. Even so, the potential for harm was there so she was charged. She pled guilty to endangering children and eventually received a suspended sentence" (Mikkelson, 1999 [1]). National panic about candy tampering didn't reach epidemic proportion until the New York Times ran an article in 1970 claiming, "Those Halloween goodies that children collect this weekend on their rounds of 'trick or treating' may bring them more horror than happiness. Take for example that plump red apple that Junior gets from a kindly old woman down the block. It may have a razor blade hidden inside. The chocolate 'candy' bar may be a laxative, the bubble gum may be sprinkled with lye, the popcorn balls may be coated with camphor, the candy may turn out to be packets containing sleeping pills" (New York Times, 10/28/70, pg. 56). Since the Times article first ran, the media has kept the fear of tampered candy alive. In 1975, Newsweek reported, "If this year's Halloween follows form, a few children will return home with something more than an upset tummy: in recent years, several children have died and hundreds have narrowly escaped injury from razor blades, sewing needles and shards of glass purposefully put into their goodies by adults" (Newsweek, 11/3/1975, pg. 28). Even "Dear Abby" got in on the action by reminding parents of the danger that, "...somebody's child will become violently ill or die after eating poisoned candy or an apple containing a razor blade. An ABC News/Washington Post poll in 1985 showed that 60% of parents feared that their kids could become victims." (The Culture of Fear, Glassner, 1999, pg. 30). This pervasive myth may have never been exposed had it not been for California researchers Joel Best and Gerald Horiuchi who studied national criminal data going back to 1958. In their 1985 published study (spanning 28 years of data), they found only 76 reports of any kind of tampering. Most of them turned out to be mistaken or fraudulent. Out of the 76 reports filed, there were only three incidents of children dying in what were reported to be tainted candy cases. It turns out, however, that in one of these cases, a boy by the name of Timothy Mark O'Bryan was intentionally poisoned by his own father, who gave him cyanide-laced pixie stix, then made up the story about tainted Halloween candy to collect a substantially large sum of insurance money. The second case involved a 5-year old child who stumbled upon and ingested his uncle's heroin stash. The child's family members sprinkled heroin on the boy's Halloween candy in hopes of fooling the police and keeping the uncle out of jail. "The third case concerned a Los Angeles girl with a congenital heart condition. The girl had a fatal seizure while trick-or-treating, and even though her parents immediately notified the authorities about their daughter's heart condition, television, radio and newspaper reports blared shocking news reports of yet another incident of poisoned Halloween candy. Needless to say, no evidence of tampering was ever found" (STATS online, "Holiday Mischief" [2]). Bill Ellis, associate professor of English and American studies at Penn State Hazelton, commented that the first two cases above, at first reported as stranger murders, "reinforced the moral of having parents examine treats-ironically, because in both cases family members were responsible for the children's deaths!" (Halloween and Other Festivals of Death and Life, Santino, ed., 1994, pg. 27). Has tampering of general food-stuffs ever occurred? We all probably know that the unfortunate answer is "yes." Following the aftermath of the 1982 Tylenol murders, there was a sudden increase in tamperings that reached a level never before achieved. During this brief moment in time, there were various objects inserted into Halloween candy and poisons introduced into non-Halloween foods and medicines, however, no significant injuries were reported over the Halloween weekend. So where does this leave us? Unfortunately, the media hype of the few events that have actually occurred, serves as a potent enough reinforcer of our beliefs that an article like this will have little effect in the long run. However, you now have the information that you need to make a reasonable decision regarding the practice of accepting candy over this holiday weekend. The real question is, "Will you use it?" -The Folklorist |
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