Where Did the Fear of Poisoned Halloween Candy Come From? (2013)

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonianmag/where-did-the-fear-of-poisoned-halloween-candy-come-from-822302/?no-ist

by ctoth • 9 years ago

87 63 9 years ago

JasonFruit• 9 years ago

So the answer here is, apparently, "Dunno." I could imagine an article on this topic that would be valuable, but I don't think this is it.

twobyfour• 9 years ago

Pretty sure it came from movie and TV scriptwriters deciding that poisoned candy was a wonderfully scary trope for Halloween time.

moxious• 9 years ago

If you live in a society where credulous people will accept stories like this, it's no wonder people wouldn't know or spend time with their neighbors. I can't help but see it as one grain of sand on a bigger beach.

Theodores• 9 years ago

Seems that Wikipedia is a better starting point:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoned_candy_myths

I would date my understanding of the myth to be from 1980, informed by a friend's mum, so the myth was oral tradition by then, across the pond in the UK. So a handful of years after 1974 the meme had spread.

This had morphed into an 'only in America' story for those of us outside the U.S. - we believed this happened on a regular Halloween basis in America and was part of 'trick or treating' (itself more American than British). Imagine the image of 'gun mad' America harbouring such 'psychos' in the community, this was easy to do if you had never been to the U.S.

The idea of a razor blade in some type of sweet did do the rounds, again in the 'made in America' context, with the myth spreading verbally. As children adults would tell you but you took reassurance that there were no crazies like that where you lived, again, only in America.

Sweets given to you as a child could be of variable quality. Sweets with a clove in the middle do exist, I think at the time I would have preferred the razor blade option, cyanide would have tasted better. Sweets kept past their sell by date might not be too good either, old folks could hand you these and expect you to enjoy them. So 'trick or treat' was actually part of the deal with all sweets offered by neighbours and other people you were to meet. It was therefore imaginable for the American myth to be true.

_Wintermute• 9 years ago

This had morphed into an 'only in America' story for those of us outside the U.S. - we believed this happened on a regular Halloween basis in America

As an outsider I never got the impression that this actually happened/happens in America, more that this is some strange fear American's have.

aptwebapps• 9 years ago

Nitpick: 'trick or treat' doesn't refer to the ambiguity of the offering. It's actually a threat to play a trick on households that don't supply treats. I.e. give me a treat or I'll play a prank on you. It's not really serious, though.

8ig8• 9 years ago

And then there’s this headline today on my local news website...

Candy laced with bath salts poses risk this Halloween

http://www.wral.com/candy-laced-with-bath-salts-poses-risk-t...

jdavis7032• 9 years ago

No one is spending their money to give your kids free drugs on Halloween. I saw a similar story from the local news channel about marijuana edibles being passed out. As the original article says, poisoned candy is not really a thing. I'd be more concerned about your kids being hit by a drunk (or distracted) driver on Halloween than eating something poisoned.

13of40• 9 years ago

Someone gave my brother a marijuana cookie one time when he was about nine, but it wasn't on Halloween. Seems like giving out edibles from your own house would be an easy way to get a mob of pitchfork-weilding parents on your lawn.

adventurer• 9 years ago

This is why people don't trust the media. They make up a story out of nothing or stretch it to to a point where it has no relation to what actually happened. This article for instance is given a title and claim that bath salts are being mixed with candies but provide nothing to back it up. The video points out the drugs are being made to look like candy, not being mixed with it. They pull in two unrelated sources to drive buzz. Police found drugs in Franklin County then the reporter went to their own Sheriff for a generic candy statement. It is about 650 miles between the two counties.

afarrell• 9 years ago

If anyone knows of a good general technique to persuade a person that their fear of something is overblown, I'd be interested in seeing a link.

In my experience, trying to do this results in anger.

danharaj• 9 years ago

It helps in such a discussion to move beyond the surface fear to get to the root fear and then make an affirmative argument instead of a negative one.

In this particular case, the truth of the matter is that you really do have to trust strangers to be kind instead of randomly malicious. Instead of making an argument that the fear is unfounded, it would be more effective to make a case affirming the fearful person's trust in their community.

zaroth• 9 years ago

I find the same attitude has now permiated American politics. You can say something as neutral as, "I'm very cautious of getting riled up by overblown narratives that lack factual evidence or are presented in an obviously inflammatory manner" and suddenly you're the anti-Christ.

throwaway4133• 9 years ago

Right, the second you are skeptical of their “source” you are the enemy. No room for doubt.

jaredhansen2• 9 years ago

I find that generally it helps, counterintuitively, to start with what the DBT[1] literature calls "validation" - reassuring the person that their fear makes perfect sense in light of their priors.

You can call this "affirming the emotional truth of what they're saying" if you want, and -- here's a part that took me years to learn -- you can do it without being dishonest.

For example, dialog between Them (T) / You (Y):

T: I don't think I'll let my kids trick or treat this year, what with all these sickos putting razor blades in chocolate bars, and weed in gummy bears, and did you hear about those AIDS-infected needles being left in coin return slots? There's all this danger around, it's just so awful, what a horrible place this world is, I mean what kind of person poisons children? [etc for 5 more minutes]

Y: Yeah definitely, I see what you mean - there are so many really crazy and evil people in the world. I mean with these shootings, and bombings, it's like we never get a minute to just rest and not be scared of something!

T: Right, exactly!

Y: I'm trying to remember though, what was the halloween candy thing? I mean I thought I heard something in the 80s about that but it went away, or was a hoax or something. Did something happen last year?

T: Well I can't remember but I mean the news was just saying a minute ago to look out for marijuana-laced gummy bears

Y: Yeah, weed candy would be pretty bad. I tried edibles once and got pretty fucked up, I mean, it wasn't really a pleasant experience. But then, some people really seem to like it. .... wait a minute, drugs are expensive. who wastes them on random kids? ... Did the newssay they found some somewhere, or just that it was a thing that could theoretically happen?

Y: And the other "scary candy" stuff - do you know ifthere are any stats on how often this happens? I mean I 'm sure somebody did it at some point, because people are insane, right, but considering the way idiots drive, I wouldn't be surprised if kids have a higher chance of getting picked off by a bad driver, than killer candy. Which is scary too of course, but I mean, we're already living with that, and don't keep them inside.

Actually come to think of it ... I can't think of a single case I've ever heard of where an actual specific kid got hurt from poisoned candy. Maybe there are a bunch of em but it's kind of weird that we wouldn't have at least some detail - was it a boy or a girl, where in the country, how old etc? I mean it would have to be all over the news if it happened, so I wonder if this is just one of those cases where the media likes to scare the shit out of everyone all the time to get attention?

T: I don't know, it still seems dangers

Y: Yeah, I mean, we should all take reasonable precautions in the world and stuff, but ... tell you what, let's google for reports of poisoned candy from last year and if it's really low, then figure we probably have better odds than from bad drivers, and let the kids have their fun?

T: ok

[off to google you go, snopes is first-ish hit followed by other less entry-level but more-authoritative sources, and pretty soon they're coming around]

===

It certainly doesn't work that way every time, or even most times, but it can. And this has applications far beyond halloween candy. (Dungeons and Dragons. Immigration. Drug legalization. Rock music. Video games.) The person probably isn't insane; they probably heard a bunch of scary stuff, and got scared. Telling them "don't be scared" isn't going to help, but joining them on their side of the fence, then guiding toward a different outcome (which may not change their initial thought much but may help them change their behavior, which gives them more data on safety/etc with which to update their mental model for future use) can be pretty effective.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical_behavior_therapy -- Though DBT was developed to treat BPD (see link for more), the recommendations for learning/teaching emotional coping skills seem to generalize well to many other kinds of emotional reactions that seem disproportionate to a given stimulus.

baddox4• 9 years ago

I’m not saying that line of argument won’t work, but it’s certainly not one I would take with a friend or acquaintance since you’re effectively lying. I guess you could call it “tact” or “rhetoric,” but I find your suggested opening lines very slimy and dishonest.

ronilan• 9 years ago

My kids are very aware that Halloween candy may be poisoned. Every year, after they finish trick-or-treating they will lay the buckets of candy on the table for inspection[1]. I will then taste several packs to make sure they are safe. If I do not show any side effects we conclude that the candy eaten was good. The kids wait patiently for a couple of weeks as I repeat the process and certify that all the candy they brought was indeed safe. Then I serve the kids salad.

[1] https://instagram.com/p/BMQMFqAjuKr/

jdavis7032• 9 years ago

This actually just sounds like a really elaborate "tax" on your children's stash. If you fear the candy is actually dangerous, then perhaps you'd be better off just buying some from the store and distributing it to your kids, that ways they don't run the risk of loosing their parent.

agoodthrowaway• 9 years ago

Clearly his post was humorous and intended to poke fun at people's paranoia of poisoned candy.

Divver• 9 years ago

When I become a parent, I shall do the same thing with my kids. Thanks for sharing your wisdom.

WalterBright• 9 years ago

It's been going on longer than the article suggests. When I went trick-or-treating in the 1960s, my parents did not allow us to eat anything that was home-made or not in a sealed package, because they were worried about deliberate poisoning.

Around 1972 or 73 on Halloween, some neighborhood kid found a razor blade in an apple. Turned out he'd inserted it himself as a prank.

A lot of things have much earlier roots than can be found with searches of documents.

jeffwass• 9 years ago

Back in 2nd grade my friend got a small snickers bar at school that he discovered had a hole in the wrapper and a same size/shape hole also extending further into the candy bar. I recall it being a small squarish kind of hole, you could sort of see it going into the candy bar.

No idea if he did it himself or not, but he never admitted it. It could easily have been some part of a toy that poked into it.

After school we went to his house and cut it to pieces with a knife in his kitchen. It was an exciting adventure, we were eager to see what might be inside. Never found anything, though I'm not sure what we were expecting to find.

We didn't eat it either. But it did freak me out enough as a kid that for awhile after I would check for candy wrapper breaches.

amigoingtodie• 9 years ago

Sounds like a pencil stabbed it.

groovy2shoes• 9 years ago

The real travesty here is that anyone would consider it acceptable to give trick-or-treaters an apple. :)

II2II• 9 years ago

Fears aside, I suspect that the larger tragedy is that Halloween treats are now mostly sugary candy and chocolate. I remember a time when there was much more variety. I also remember how quickly things changed after the first (likely unsubstantiated) scare in my community.

analog31• 9 years ago

The only variety that I can remember as a kid, was the house on the next street where they gave out Chick Tracts instead of candy.

hexane3602• 9 years ago

It seems a little counterintuitive to hand out anti-halloween material to trick-or-treaters. I mean, it's still observing Halloween even if it's not candy you're giving out.

InclinedPlane• 9 years ago

Today they are almost exclusively pre-packaged candy of well known brands. They used to include a lot more home made products, like cookies, cupcakes, caramel apples, popcorn balls, rice krispy treats, etc.

smokey_the_bear• 9 years ago

There were a few houses near me that gave out something special in the late 80s. One house gave out baggies of home made popcorn, brownies at another, candy apples at one house, and one house took a polaroid of you in your costume. These were all beloved houses.

I'd love to do that for the younger kids in my neighborhood. But a lot of the slightly older kids that come to my door are awfully surly. They are trying to grab handfuls of candy from the bowl as you are trying to give them one, and they also steal anything else that happens to be on your front porch that night. I don't really want to deal with trying to give them something special.

joshfraser• 9 years ago

Despite the constant fear mongering of "stranger danger", turns out most people don't actually want to kill you.

One of the things I like about the sharing economy (Uber, Airbnb, etc) is that we're slowly being reminded that it's okay to trust our neighbors, despite the constant attempts by the media to spread fear.

NegativeLatency• 9 years ago

Except when you neighbors are the ones renting out the apartment next to you on air bnb, and you have drunk noisy people bumping around next door all the time.

catshirt• 9 years ago

and no one in the equation killed you yet. :)

filoleg• 9 years ago

I don't see how it is different from having noisy drunk people as your permanent neighbors. Ultimately, your non-airbnb permanent neighbors are just as much of a stranger to you, with certain specific exceptions.

brazzy• 9 years ago

turns out most people don't actually want to kill you.

All it takes is one person who does.

One of the things I like about the sharing economy (Uber, Airbnb, etc) is that we're slowly being reminded that it's okay to trust our neighbors

Except it's not neighbors but complete strangers you're asked to trust, and that trust is sometime misplaced. There's absolutely no difference in that between the "sharing economy" (which has little to do with sharing) and just plain economy.

And keep in mind that it's not in fact random strangers you interact with, there and in many other situations - an activity can be more dangerous than the random chance of meeting a dangerous criminal would indicate, when it attracts such criminals more than it attracts other people, possibly because it makes it easier for them to find victims or evade detection.

None of which matters for Halloween candy, since it's provided by actual neighbors and so common that it really is basically random.

throwaway6138342• 9 years ago

> One of the things I like about the sharing economy (Uber, Airbnb, etc) is that we're slowly being reminded that it's okay to trust our neighbors
Except it's not neighbors but complete strangers you're asked to trust, and that trust is sometime misplaced.

I'm guessing you've never lived in a place where the common means of transportation is to just stand by the street, look for the next car coming by with empty seats, and signal/ask how much it is to your destination?

branchless• 9 years ago

airbnb/uber are not "sharing", they are people renting/driving on a permanent basis, in the main.

ebcode• 9 years ago

I remember being a kid (8 or 9) and sitting down with my friend at his house with his parents and going through all our candy together to check for danger signs. Sure enough, there was a single-wrapped Reese's peanut-butter cup with a hole in the wrapper, and we opened it up and found a sewing needle stuck inside the peanut-butter cup. (I don't think I'm making this up, but memories being what they are, this might have been a story that was told to me. I do remember vividly the breaking of the peanut-butter cup into two pieces and the needle falling on the table, though, so I'm inclined to believe the memory.)

This would have been in the late 1980s. So, in my case, the fear did not come from the media, but from a personal experience.

So rather than saying, "this never happens, it's just a myth", we should be saying, "this can happen, and let's take steps to protect ourselves".

Anyone remember the Tylenol Poisonings[0]? That was real, inspired copycats, and led to tamper-resistant and tamper-evident packaging. Tragic, but at least we learned from the tragedy.

While it's true that not everyone is out to get you, at the same time it's foolish to think that no-one is out to get you.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tylenol_murders

cutcss• 9 years ago

Believe it or chewing a sewing needle don't actually kills you; but sure you can be afraid of anything and still get validation of that fear; you know a lot of people die from heavy objects falling from buildings? You should protect from that too, it has happened before so clearly you should take steps to protect yourself (and it has happened a lot more than candy poisoning), perhaps always using a construction helmet would be a nice first step. And traffic accidents, so many pedestrians die from car accidents that its weird we all don't have personal airbags around our torsos and heads; at the end of the day being alive its the biggest risk factor of dying and the only sure way to not die is to be already death.

georgeecollins• 9 years ago

Your story is amazing, but it is an anecdote. The data found by researchers about the dangers of Halloween candy suggest that the risk is more or less non-existent. The point is not that people should think no one is out to get them, it is that they ignore real dangers because the media likes to talk about imaginary ones, and ignore real ones like pollution, which are not as exciting.

asynchronous13• 9 years ago

The fear of needles and razor blades goes back at least to the 1960's. The actual number of documented cases is very small, and the vast majority of those don't even involve injury. Follow up studies discovered that most of the reports turned out to be hoaxes perpetrated by the kids or parents (an older sibling playing a prank on a younger sibling, then getting scared when the parents found out and letting the parents report it as legit).

"The Razer Blade in the Apple" by Joel Best and Gerald T. Horiuchi concluded in 1985 that the threat of a halloween sadist had been greatly exaggerated from 1958 to 1983. https://www.jstor.org/stable/800777?seq=1#page_scan_tab_cont...

We can't say it never happens. However, it happens so rarely that it's not worth worrying about.

simonblack• 9 years ago

If you're going asking for a 'trick or treat', you have to expect as many 'tricks' as 'treats'. That's part of the 'fun' of it.

The donors are not forced to give you 'treats' every time. If you can't accept that, don't go out asking.

Where Did the Fear of Poisoned Halloween Candy Come From? (2013)

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