I try to keep my articles light because we celebrate the escapism of Halloween and horror here.  But recent events have everyone thinking about the real evils in our world that seemingly happen more and more often, and I cannot help but think as the media searches for broader insidious reason, and the politicos jump to label, back to a part of my childhood that was a legitimate “gateway scare.”

Halloween Candy itself.

Yeah, again I grew up in the 70’s and unfortunately that is the time when a few horrific real events, mixed with  our human lack of trust in others, and that very real understanding that “sick” and “evil” people really exist in the world (although today I think we are supposed to call them good-impaired or some other such nonsense) to create something beyond simple urban legend.

No everything aligned in the 70’s to push that parental instinct and need to protect their children to the point of creating millions of potential “boogymen” (sorry again or “boogywomen”, or even “boogynutral”) diabolically finding ways to slip foreign objects or poison into candy that ended up in our plastic trick-or-treat pumpkins (which in reality probably did more damage to the environment but I’m not heading down that road today.)

Soon hospitals were offering use of their x-ray machines to try and detect foreign objects, and at minimum through inspection was required by a parent before any of the treasured Halloween candy booty could be consumed at the end of the night.  (Though I always suspected this was just a great way for parents to scope out what they wanted to “loot” their favorite goodies as well)

So what happened…there are actually multiple theories, but most point to a 1974 murder of 8 year old Timothy O’Bryan who died after eating cyanide that had been mixed into a Pixy Stix while trick-or-treating.  This was quickly thought to be a simple case of a would be neighborhood psycho, but in reality it turns out the youngsters own father Ronald O’Bryan who had taken out large insurance policies on his two children had given both of them tainted candy, and then in an attempt to cover his murderous crime also tried to give two additional cyanide treats to other children.

So in this case horror began at home, and it turns out there is very little in the way of actual poisoning from Halloween candy, but there have been rare instances of razor blades, or needles placed in candy, and again most of these have actually been placed in the candy by a relative or friend as some sort of sick and twisted joke.  Not the Michael Myers candy makers we envision meticulously recreating Milky Way bar wrappers to repackage terror candy.

Maybe it’s because as parents we spend 364 days of the year telling our children not to take candy from strangers, or maybe it is just that knowledge that the real evil in the world manifests itself in the form of others cruelty towards the young and innocent.  But I know that this mania even if founded on very sparse reality, was a huge part of my childhood.  A very young introduction to the fact that others cannot be trusted to have our best interests at heart, and that sometimes evil is just evil, sick is just sick.  Maybe it’s good to remember that again.