Stupid People Tricks

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I want Candy

The classical parental dictum "Don't take candy from strangers" is combined with the annual spooky holiday - what's not to love. This one seems to pop up every year but the large amount of debunking available on the WWW seems to have lessened the severity of each outbreak.

Debunked: Halloween sadists randomly give poisoned candy to children.

In the classical version of this UL one of the essential ingredients is someone who randomly gives poisoned or otherwise tampered with treats to children - not the targeting of certain children - the randomness adds to the horror. The pin in the candy or the razor blade in the apple are also among the canonical versions of this one. Professor Joel Best currently (2001) at University of Delaware is among those who have studied/debunked this story.

Documented: A Texas child was poisoned in this manner by his father on Halloween in 1974. Another child died on Halloween after stumbling onto a family member's heroin stash and consuming it.

Documented: Well how about razor blades in apples? Or pins in apples?

Joel Best found 80 documented cases of this type of tampering in a search of newspaper stories between 1958 and 1998. According to him more than ninety percent of them were either hoaxes or exaggerations. The most serious injury reportedly required a few stiches to fix.

References:

• Poisoned candy may only be legend - UPI Story
• Halloween hand-wringing - Salon Story
• Sick or Treat - New York Daily News Story
• U of Delaware story on Professor Best
• AP Story on the Texas Poisoning
• Apples, Pins and Razorbaldes on Snopes