Coyote Blog

I must admit that I always accepted the conventional wisdom that trick-or-treating was becoming more dangerous, with incidents of kids getting poisoned candy and the like.  According to Snopes, this is an urban legend.  In fact:

Tales of black-hearted madmen doling out poisoned Halloween candy to
unsuspecting little tykes have been around forever "” they were part
of my Halloween experience nearly forty years ago. And every year sees the same
flurry of activity in response to such rumors: radio, TV and newspapers issue
dark warnings about tampered candy and suggest taking the little ones to parties
instead of collecting goodies door-to-door. Even Ann Landers published a column
in 1995 warning us against the mad poisoner, saying, "In recent years, there
have been reports of people with twisted minds putting razor blades and poison
in taffy apples and Halloween candy."

It's a sadness that a holiday so thoroughly and greedily enjoyed by kids
is being sanitized out of existence in the name of safety. Sadder still is there
appears to be little reason for it.

Though I've yet to find evidence of
a genuine Halloween poisoning, I have uncovered a few isolated incidents
initially reported as random poisonings that, upon further investigation, turned
out to be something else.

So relax and have a happy Halloween  (and yes, I will still probably visually check my kids candy tonight just to make sure -- its too easy and its an ingrained habit now).