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Should Parents and Kids Be Scared of Halloween?

Posted October 29, 2009

Each year, when Halloween comes around and the news media start running scary stories about the dangers of trick-or-treating, I find myself wondering if times were safer in years past. Are there really more dangers lurking in the shadows now than there were in the “good old days”?

Maybe.

But maybe it’s also that today we hear about more things faster, longer and from many more sources than we used to. For better or for worse, the power of the media has helped make people aware of the dangers of certain things -- although sometimes it seems like it’s everything: diseases, vaccines to prevent those diseases, foods that will “kill” us, foods that were supposed to cure us but now will kill us, cell phones, video games, etc. And many times, those dangers are sensationalized for the sake of ratings or sales. So should we take all the reports of danger and their urgency at face value?

I don’t think so. What I think we need to do is temper those reports with good old common sense.

I know there were some bad people when I was a kid, and there are some bad people now. But does that mean we should lock our doors, duct-tape our windows and keep our kids dead-bolted inside the house? If we take reasonable precautions and make prudent decisions, can’t we keep our kids and ourselves safe while still enjoying life?

I grew up in a rural area where the houses were spread out quite far, so the kids in the “neighborhood” didn’t bother to go trick-or-treating. Halloween was pretty much like any other day. But when I was married and had a daughter, I would enjoy seeing how very excited she got as Halloween approached. When she was 6 years old, she even designed her own costume and helped me construct it according to her sketches (both front and profile views!). She donned her creation and became “Queen of Evil” to go trick-or-treating among the other neighborhood ghouls and goblins. My husband and I were careful about her safety, but we also avoided making her paranoid about the possible dangers. We always supervised her as she went house to house, and we would check her candy before allowing her to eat it. We had heard the stories about people tampering with candy, and we felt that keeping an eye on her and taking a close look at the goodies she accumulated were the prudent things to do. She never got hurt, and neither did any of the other neighborhood children. But each year, we’d still hear the stories on the news... (though I don’t doubt that some bad people in some places did -- and still do -- try to hurt kids).

As a result, in the last decade or two, it seems it’s gotten popular for parents to take their kids to an organized Halloween party at a school, community center or neighbor’s house, or to a “Trick-or-Treat Street” at the local mall, instead of letting them seek treats door-to-door in their neighborhood. And that’s not a bad thing. My Rotary Club sponsors a trick-or-treat event with high school students, as an alternative activity for the neighborhood kids. The parents, who know and trust each other, bring Halloween goodies to share, and kids from the entire neighborhood participate. It’s a great way to have the Halloween experience while being in a safe environment. As an added “treat,” the high schoolers use the event to raise money for a worthy cause -- fighting hunger in Africa.

Maybe the real, imagined and/or overly publicized horrors of Halloween have caused trick-or-treating to evolve into more of a neighborhood event involving both parents (supervising their kids while socializing with each other) and kids (enjoying the costumes, the candy and a bit of “safe” scariness). And maybe that’s just as well.

If you have children or grandchildren who go trick-or-treating, please take some precautions to keep the kids safe. And keep your pets safe, too!

Halloween -- and life in general -- should be fun, and we can all be safe while still enjoying it.

Happy Halloween!

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This is not an open forum, but Marie and American Humane welcome all comments and points of view. We will post selected comments that are considerate and thought-provoking, and we may edit comments for brevity, grammar and/or inflammatory language.

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Submitted by Gideon at: October 30, 2009

The last I read there had been NO confirmed tampering with Halloween candy, ever. The usual reports of razor blades in apples, etc., had in every case turned out to be "unfounded" -- which in most cases means it was the kid's parents, most likely, but the cops couldn't prove it. I think the Skeptical Inquirer and several other Urban Legend websites & magazines have covered this many times. Unfortunately, every year there are these "initial reports" that get passed around and the loop never gets closed ... at least publicly. One good source: http://www.snopes.com/horrors/mayhem/needles.asp It does no harm, of course, to check our kids' Halloween candy and fruit, but we should avoid perpetuating this nasty little myth, at the same time.