BAD HALLOWEEN MEMORY

When I was a child, there was one year that I voluntarily decided to not go trick or treating. Here's why.

From the Houston Chronicle:

'Candy Man' still haunting Halloween

The O'Bryan family had spent Halloween 1974 at a friend's home in Pasadena, where Ronald O'Bryan volunteered to escort the children on their candy-collecting rounds.

He later told police that someone at a darkened home, who only opened the door a crack, had handed him five Pixy Stix — oversized plastic tubes filled with candy powder — for the children in his group.

It was crucial to O'Bryan's plan, detectives said, that only his son eat the tainted treats. Back at the friend's house, investigators said, O'Bryan leaped over a coffee table to prevent his friend's 8-year-old son from eating one of the candies.

After returning to their home in Deer Park, O'Bryan told Timothy he could choose a single piece of candy before bedtime. Prosecutors said he urged his son to try the Pixy Stix.

The boy gulped down a mouthful of the powder, then went to bed after complaining that it tasted bitter. Minutes later, Timothy ran to the bathroom and began vomiting, police said. By the time he got to the hospital, he was dead.

Initially, O'Bryan was of little help to investigators. Accompanying police as they searched the Pasadena neighborhood, the 30-year-old father was unable to remember any details of the house where he got the poisoned candy or the person who gave it to him.

O'Bryan's story abruptly changed on his third trip with officers through the neighborhood. Detectives said he suddenly remembered the suspect was a white man and pointed out the home.

Investigators quickly cleared the homeowner, and O'Bryan's plot to reap a windfall from his son's death began to unravel.

This story was still in the news the next year:

The case horrified parents and helped usher in an era in which carefree costumed trick-or-treating has given way to X-rayed candy bags and tightly controlled Halloween parties and festivals.

I was six when this happened, seven a year later. I still don't really have an opinion as to whether it was a good parenting call, but my mom and dad told me about the murder and left it up to me to decide if trick or treating was a good idea. Of course, the story totally freaked me out, and, very sadly, I opted out of the annual door-to-door candy-gathering ritual for 1975. My older brother, braver than me, wanted his candy, and, if I recall correctly, scored big that year.

By Halloween of 1976, my fears had subsided, and I went trick or treating again, and did so every year until I was in fifth or sixth grade. But I'll never forget how the "candy man" murder scared the living shit out of me when I was seven. That bastard really messed with my head (which is not that big of a deal compared to what he did to his own son, but still, it pisses me off).

It's nice to know, however, that there's finally some good news about the whole poison candy meme:

The decades-old idea that depraved strangers are targeting children with tainted Halloween candy, however, is more fiction than fact, says a sociologist who has studied the phenomenon for 20 years. University of Delaware Professor Joel Best said he has yet to find a case in which a stranger deliberately poisoned trick-or-treaters.

"This is a contemporary legend that speaks to our anxiety about kids," Best said. "Most of us don't believe in ghosts and goblins anymore, but we believe in criminals."

Click here for the rest.

Actually, when you get right down to it, this isn't a comtemporary legend at all: this is Hansel and Gretel for the modern era. That's probably why I reacted so strongly to it when I was a little boy--murder for insurance money is a pretty abstract concept; monsters kidnapping and eating children, however, is an idea with which I was already very familiar.

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