Halloween Candy Poisonings

I guess Joanna at Paranormal Experience has been quite busy lately. I haven't seen the guest post I sent her up on her blog. Since Halloween is tomorrow, I feel this should be posted.

If you are a parent, I'm sure you always check your kids Halloween candy after a night of trick-or-treating, right? A popular urban legend states that there are documented cases of children being poisoned after eating candy collected from a random house on Halloween. This one is actually false.

It's not certain of the origins of this legend, but according to Snopes.com (http://snopes.com/horrors/poison/halloween.asp), there have been only two cases where a child was poisoned with Halloween candy. The most famous was that of an eight-year-old boy in Houston named Timothy Mark O'Bryan who died on October 31, 1974. His father Ronald Clark O'Bryan poisoned him with a cyanide-laced Pixie Stix, claiming his son acquired it while trick-or-treating. To make it seem more random, he gave poisoned Pixie Stix to his other four children, but thankfully, none of them ate it. So, why would a father do such a thing to his son? For money, of course. Timothy was insured for a large sum of money. Ronald Clark O'Bryan was convicted and executed on March 31, 1984.

The second case was that of Kevin Toston from Detroit. On November 2, 1970, he lapsed into a coma and died four days later from a heroin overdose. During the investigation, heroine was found on the child's Halloween candy. It was concluded that Kevin accidentally discovered his uncle's heroine stash and poisoned himself. The family sprinkled heroine on the Halloween candy afterwards to protect the uncle. Personally, if it were my son, I wouldn't have done that. I wouldn't like frame him for murder but I definitely wouldn't cover for him.

Even though there isn't any known proof that this legend is true, don't think you shouldn't continue checking your kids Halloween candy. Many have used this as inspiration for Halloween pranks and maybe one day, someone will turn this legend into reality.

Source: Snopes

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