Halloween just doesn’t seem like Halloween anymore.
One of the most fun holidays of the year has now been all but eliminated because of ridiculous safety precautions and over-protective parents.
I grew up in a rural area, so when I moved to Johnson City I looked forward to having lots of trick-or-treaters on my favorite holiday.
I lived in a nice little neighborhood with lots of children and I was sure they would be beating my door down on Halloween.
I bought tons of candy, got all dressed up, lit my jack-o’-lantern and waited. No one came. There were no cute little firemen or princesses or ghosts.
“How could this be?” I wondered. I was sad that no one came to my house, but at least I had 28 bags of Snickers bars to console me.
Halloween used to be so exciting. Everyone looked forward to going out and getting candy while a few of us had childish pranks, like egging or toilet-papering, in mind. We would walk in groups with a chaperone until our little legs were exhausted, then it was back home to eat ourselves sick. I remember how my mother would carefully inspect each piece of candy in my bag after I got home. The hospital would even X-ray candy to make sure there were no dangerous objects inserted into it.
With all the precautionary measures, you would think there is some psycho on every block inserting needles into shiny, red apples.
The fact is, there have been very few incidents of injury from needles or razor blades in Halloween candy and there has been only one documented case of poisoned Halloween candy killing a child. In that particular case, the child was murdered by his own father, not some random stranger.
There has never been a rash rash of Halloween candy poisonings, and of the few occasions in which foreign objects have been found in candy, the most serious injury only required a few stitches.
Where does this phobia come from? “Candy from strangers” has always been a source of fear in children. The proverbial dirty old man trying to lure you over with a candy bar was, obviously, to be avoided. But what if the person offering you the candy was a sweet elderly lady? Could you accept it then?
These tales of horror on Halloween simply will not go away. No matter how much candy is distributed safely, people will always remember the one Pixie-Stick that was tainted.
One event in recent history that greatly enhanced this urban legend was the 1982 Tylenol scare. In late September and early October of 1982, seven people died from taking the cyanide-laced capsules. Johnson & Johnson acted quickly, and by November tamper-proof packaging was introduced.
Deaths from poisoning were nothing new. The difference was that this was totally random. This was not a case of a group of people being killed so that the murderer could target one individual; that had been done before. This act seemed much more diabolical.
If the perpetrator was trying to sabotage Halloween, their timing couldn’t have been better. Stories like this had been around for decades, but there had been very little truth to them. Here was a real case of random poisoning, just weeks before children planned on eating lots of candy taken from the hands of strangers.
It is a miracle Halloween survived at all.
The saddest thing is that many children now visit the mall to do their trick-or-treating. While anxious adults sit by their pumpkins, with every light in the house on, waiting to give treats to all the children, parents choose to take their kids to the mall. Since when are retailers safe from the scare of tainted candy? What makes them so trustworthy?
I am not the only person that really wants to have trick-or-treaters. My neighbors were telling me how disappointed they were to have none last year. This year, try something different. Don’t scramble to the mall, fight for a parking place and attack the mall merchants. Try walking the streets of your own neighborhood with your children. These are people you live and work beside every day, yet on Halloween, they suddenly become mysterious and potential maniacs. This makes no sense.
The fresh air won’t hurt you or your children, and you will light up the faces of those people who, like me, yearn for lots of costume-clad children to grace their threshold.Together we can bring back the Halloween we all remember with nostalgia.

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