We are nearing the big day: The moment when Mariah Carrey’s ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS YOU begins blaring…..We kid, we kid– but it is true. She’s a’comin!
As Coal Speaker finishes up its second season of Skooky Things featuring true crime, we feel it is necessary and meaningful to close the series with a crime that was never true to begin with! Well, at least not as we may have come to believe it to be..
Each and every year when children arrive safely back home from trick and/or trunk or treating, the entire sack of riches is dumped on the table. Mom and dad rummage through the hoard of chocolate and sugar.
Maybe the ultimate goal is to steal a few candy bars off of the kids, but the other part of this traditional escapade is to search for knives..needles.. roofies.. razor blades. Or anything else that could be of specific danger to the child..
And funny enough.. all of this annual intrigue and fear is based off of virtually nothing..
RAZOR BLADES AND POP CULTURE
There was a specific scene in Halloween 2 in 1981 captured one of the most frightening pop culture events of its time: In our brief encounter with the mother and son, we see that the young boy (dressed as a pirate) has bitten into either an apple or piece of candy that had a razor blade stuck into it. There is a close-up shot of the blade wedged in the child’s mouth with blood dripping out.
The one interesting piece of Halloween movie history includes the fact that the full blade in mouth scene was removed from the edited television version. It appears that entire concept of someone in Haddonfield poisoning candy was even more frightening that Michael Myers himself! One of the films’ producers, Dino De Laurentis, wanted to cut this scene but John Carpenter and Debra Hill wanted to keep it.
The movie was released on Halloween eve in 81, and this scene was (and still is) troubling to view.. This specific scene could have done some more to the overall psyche of America than anyone figured..
Those who went to see Halloween 2 when it was released October 30, 1981, most likely checked their kids’ candy bags much more ferociously the night after that year…
HOW IT ALL BEGAN
There is an origin story for most every urban legend. Before the internet, disproving them was much harder than it is today.. Snopes and quick Google searches were not at the fingertips of the Reagan kids.
There is some history on the origin for this candy fear..
The first report of Halloween treats being tampered with in North America was in 1959. That year, a California dentist named William Shyne distributed 450 laxative-laced candies to children — 30 of whom fell ill. He was later charged with “outrage of public decency” and “unlawful dispensing of drugs.”
Another high profile case made headlines in 1964, when a 47-year-old mother from Greenlawn, N.Y., named Helen Pfeil handed out bags of treats containing arsenic-laced ant traps, metal mesh scrubbing pads and dog biscuits.
As the 1960s came to an end, Halloween got scary. News reports reported urban legends without much factual evidence of razor blades, diet pills, and other crimes of “deranged crackpots” as this 1968 news clipping reported:
THE CANDYMAN CAN
Take, for example, that plump red apple that Junior gets from a kindly old wo man down the block. It may have a razor blade hidden inside. The chocolate “candy” bar may be a laxa tive, the bubble gum may be sprinkled with lye, the pop corn balls may be coated with camphor, the candy may turn out to be packets contain ing sleeping, pills.
The story was based off of rumors that were incorrectly connected to Halloween candy.
However, a few years later, a true crime was set to make the unfounded fears a reality..
An noptician in Deer Park, Texas, named Ronald Clark O’Bryan who handed out Pixy Stix candy to several children while trick-or-treating with his two kids in 1974. His eight-year-old son, Timothy, died suddenly that night after consuming the candy, and an autopsy later showed the boy had ingested cyanide.
It was every parents’ nightmare come true..
The dangers of the dangerous Halloween holiday!
However tables turned quickly in this case.. Police were able to recover poisoned candy from other children before anyone else ate it but grew suspicious when O’Bryan couldn’t remember the house at which his son had received the candy.
It was later determined he had poisoned his own son. He was convicted and executed for the crime in 1984.
Vice offers up a great detailed report on the tragic death and subsequent guilt in this case..
It went on to scar the nation.. it also led to a new generation of frantic parents looking at neighbors as people not to be trusted.. every house with a light on was a potential enemy. Every piece of candy potential poison..
It is interesting to note that in the year 2000, a man in Minneapolis was charged with putting needles in the Snickers bars he’d handed out to trick-or-treaters—but the only victim he claimed was a teenager who got a slight prick from the hidden sharp object.
Since Timothy O’Bryan, there hasn’t been a single case where a child has actually died after consuming contaminated Halloween treats.
LOCALS CHECK THE YOCALS
IN the early 80s, after the onset of Halloween 2 reminders of the 1970s poison case, America was apparently quite jittery!
A UPI ran nationwide, including in Scranton, about how America was frightened of the Halloween holiday.. And as urban legends go, the fear was based on mostly nothing!
The UPI story began, “Will our kids be poisoned on Halloween? The agonizing question echoed in community after community Thursday amid scattered reports of sabotaged trick or treat candy cropping up days before the annual Autumn ritual.”
Well boy that seems scary!
Profiled in that article was Paul Turpin, a radiological technologist in Virginia who was busy X-raying candy, cookies, and fruit…
During the 1980s, there were countless reports of towns actually banning trick or treating based on the notion that candy would be poisoned. Parent-teacher associations encouraged fall festivals instead of door to door candy hunting..
In 1982, the Pottsville REPUBLICAN ran a column from Dean Conrad, who wrote that things really changed! There is razor blades in candy…nails.. even dope. The conclusion was that it “used to be fun to be scared on Halloween. It’s not that way now.”
As the Reagan era came to a close in 1987, we were still worried about the annual poisoning. That year a letter to the editor in the Pottsville Republican around Halloween talked about “reports of poison candy” the year before.. the mom of three, the writer felt that trick or treating should be abolished! Even though hospitals were giving courtesy X-rays of candy, she was not allowing her kids to trick or treat that year…
Dear Abby did her part to add fear into the hearts and minds of parents, warning them of sexual assault, poison dandy, hit-and-runs, razor blades in apples, and fatal burnings….
Whoa.
One last foray into history… Back in 1970, the same year that the New York TIMES ran that story about poison candy, a section in the Evening Herald in Shenandoah called “Helen Help us” written by Helen Bottel ran an article about this idea of poison everything and razor blades. Helen was ahead of her time, writing
I wonder how much of this is true and how much hearsay? Would people really risk being prosecuted or expose as ‘inhuman child torturers’ just because they’re basically mean? After all, those apples can be traced. If children become sick on adulterated candy, you’d better believe everyone on that block will be investigated.
Helen went on to say that we tend to believe everything we hear and it gets into print because reporters don’t check facts. She joked that she “would like to read a follow up story on the atrocity items which came out the day after Halloween,” and said it’s not as bad it as it seems.
And it it’s any consolation, Helen said she received a letter 8 years previous about “burning hot pennies” being given out on Halloween… But it was just “warm pennies for luck.”
This was in 1970! …Helen, where are you now!? We need your logic more than ever…
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As we close out this series, we are reminded of a few things.. crime, true crime, it happens. So much so that perhaps all of these awful annual warnings of tampering with Halloween candy may actually led to another incident that proves urban legends correct.. We hope not.
This year I’ll be keeping an extra close eye on my son’s Halloween stash. Not for razor blades of needles.. but instead of Twix bars and Snickers. They are my favorite to steal.
Happy Halloween…
