Poisoned candy for Halloween 2023

About poisoned candy and other Halloween legends

Lock your door and lock the kids away!

It's Halloween!

The curbs are littered with gasping schoolchildren and in the woods behind the house, Satanists are currently slaughtering the youth of the city's American football team.
Not to worry.
The world is much more peaceful than the conspiracy theorists would like it to be... Even on Halloween.

The creation of such legends is supported by isolated actual incidents of poisoned candy being distributed to children.

Poisoned candy as a warning

For years and decades, radio, newspapers, and local TV stations have warned against tampered Halloween candy, recommending instead, the "dangerous" home hallways rather than the safe Halloween party at home. Contrary to public sentiment, the number of actual incidents is vanishingly small. To date, there is no known case of poisoned Halloween candy being distributed indiscriminately.

The closest thing to this scenario is the famous case of Helen Pfeil. In 1964, the woman decides to punish children who seem too old for her Halloween walk with inedible gifts. Among them dog biscuits, packets of steel wool, and candy laced with ant poison. To be on the safe side, however, she warns the children involved when she hands them over, explaining that it's just a joke. Consequently, no one is hurt.

Equally well known, but far more tragic, is the death of eight year old Thimothy Mark O' Brian, who dies of cyanide poisoned candy on Halloween 1974. However, it soon turns out that none of the stations on the Trick or Treat train had distributed the poisoned brand of candy that night. The police investigation, on the other hand, reveals that the father, Ronald Clark O' Brian, had purchased cyanide days earlier and, along with a neighbor, had accompanied the group of children on their hayride. The boy's life is insured for a large sum of money. In order to disguise himself and make the act appear to be that of a sadistic maniac, he also poisons his daughter and three other children. The father is arrested and executed almost ten years later, on March 30, 1984. It is gladly told, it would have been October 30, 1984.

Back in 1970 on Halloween, five year old Kevin Toston falls into a coma in Detroit and dies four days later. Upon examination of his Halloween candy, it turns out to be sprinkled with heroin. The final (and not so public) police report states that the boy had poisoned himself with his uncle's heroin. To protect the addicted uncle, the family had subsequently spiked the boy's candy with heroin.

Razor blades and statan cult on Halloween

The mood at Halloween soon becomes so sensitized that many incidents are simply due to confusion of cause and effect. In 1990, for example, seven year old Ariel Katz dies of a congenital heart defect during Trick or Treat. So does 31 year old Kevin Cherry in 1991. Until police can determine the actual cause of death through an autopsy, they seal off entire neighborhoods. Panicked parents destroy rows upon rows of their children's sweet souvenirs.

So it's not surprising that many of the incidents now produce themselves out of their own urban legends. Joe Bell, professor of sociology mentions in an interview the story of the boy who comes to his parents with half a poisoned candied apple. Later it is revealed that the boy knows the legends and has poisoned the apple himself.

Similar in popularity to stories of razor blades in apples and poisoned candy, are the rumors of Satanic cults still looking for an innocent victim for Halloween. The rumors begin in the 1970s with a series of unsolved cattle murders. When then also still in the spring 1974 in Montana the wife of a clergyman with their five year old child is murdered, the rumor spreads, the responsible Satanssekte looks now for a third victim, in order to kill it on Halloween in a satanic mass. The police then warn the children not to leave the house.
The devil is on the loose

A series of similar hysterias follows. In 1978, after another series of cattle deaths, a deputy warns that the next victim of the Satanic cult would be a 13 year old unbaptized girl. When schools pass along the warning, mass panic ensues. Over the years, the rumors spread and multiplied. By 1990, there were said to be more than 100 victims in Bloomington, Indiana, who had fallen victim to the Satanic cult. However, not a single case is proven.

Nevertheless, the stories unfold their effect. Before Halloween, there are numerous guides on how to behave. Parents must accompany their children at all costs. Homemade candy is not to be accepted under any circumstances, but only originally packaged industrial goods. Large candy corporations bring out extra safe Halloween editions of their candy bars. A code word is to be agreed with the masked children that the neighbors know which child is behind the mask. From this measure, you can see that the distrust seems to be mutual.

Halloween too dangerous for kids?

Despite these safety measures, trick-or-treating is on the decline in the U.S., as many concerned parents no longer let their children go out at all and prefer to have safe house parties. Veronika Neumann even writes in "Halloween - The When, Where and How" that an American mother visiting Au

Since the release of marijuana in the us state of Colorado, a new fear has been circulating. The fear of candy coated with hash.