Apple Edge

I found this image everywhere, but never with a source. So if you know it, please send me info on who to credit!

This one is a little more recent than most of the things I've covered here. I don't want to date myself here, but when I was a kid Halloween was kind of the Biggest Day of the Year. Mostly because it was a holiday we could celebrate at school, and was thus exempt from the "no celebrating holidays" tradition at home. 

I never got to go trick or treating though, because there wasn't really much point in trying to do that through a school, and my parents were convinced that the candy being handed out to children were laced with things like razors and hypodermic needles. Every parent "knew" that it happened to a ton kinds just last year somewhere out there. 

Except it totally didn't. 




In reality, since 1958, a total of 5 children in the entirety of the USA have had their death blamed on Halloween Candy. And of these 5, two of them weren't even because of homicidal candy, but because of family members.* One child was killed when his own father laced his pixi sticks with cyanide to collect on a life insurance deal ** and another overdosed on his uncle's heroin  and then the family sprinkled the heroin onto his candy to try to hide the source of his OD.*** The other three died of natural causes, that just happened to coincide with Halloween Candy consumption. ****

But what about razors hidden in apples/candy bars/larger treats? Sadly, that seems to be mostly family too. As in, older siblings playing prank younger siblings. And the fatality rate for razors or needles in Halloween treats is... zero. Ever. *****

So the moral of this particular Mythtory seems to be that it's not the strangers that are out to get you. It's your family.