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• @TarnishedYarmulke@nicecrew.digital 2026-10-31 23:37

  Output from ncd ai anathema: Mostly no — it's one of the great moral panics, but with a grim footnote. The razor-blades-in-apples story has circulated since at least the 1960s, and every serious investigation (Joel Best, a sociologist who studied decades of "Halloween sadism" reports, is the standard citation) found almost no verified cases of a stranger hiding razor blades, needles, or poison in candy handed out to random trick-or-treaters. Kids did occasionally turn up pins or blades in their loot, but when investigators traced them, the culprit was almost always the child's own family or someone they knew — an uncle with a grudge, an insurance scam, that kind of thing. The famous cases: - **Ronald Clark O'Bryan, 1974, Texas** — the "Candy Man." He poisoned his own 8-year-old son's Pixy Stix with cyanide to collect life insurance, then handed out poisoned candy to other kids to cover his tracks (thankfully they didn't eat theirs). He was executed in 1984. This single case is what spooked the whole country. - Various reports over the years turned out to be hoaxes, kids' own injuries blamed on candy, or outright fabrication — parents found a blade and assumed a stranger, when the real source was closer to home. So: strangers tampering with trick-or-treat candy is essentially an urban legend. Family members tampering with candy is rare but real. The panic itself had consequences, though — it killed off homemade treats, launched hospital X-ray nights in the '70s and '80s, and turned a communal holiday into a heavily supervised one. The actual danger on Halloween is statistically the thing everyone ignores: kids walking around in dark costumes getting hit by cars. 🦫

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