This is, as Marilyn Manson says, a campaign of fear and consumption.

Check out the transcript!

NPR Host: There's another story I've heard which was of the child who ingested heroin supposedly inserted into the Halloween candy.

Professor Best: Right. That was a case in the 1970s. There was a little boy in Detroit--a widely publicized case, front-page news across the country, that he had been given heroin in his Halloween candy, and it was later discovered that he'd actually gotten into a relative's stash, and people had tried to cover this up by blaming it on Halloween.

NPR: So it sounds like if there's anything for kids to be concerned about at all on Halloween, it's not so much strangers, it's their family, if anyone.

Joel Best discusses contemporary myths about poisoned Halloween candy

ROBERT SIEGEL, host:

Here's a question of parental prudence at Halloween: Should this be a night when it's OK to make an exception to the rule against taking candy from strangers? Well, surely some of us are shaking our heads right now, saying no, mindful of the demon neighbor who inserted razor blades in the apples. This, of course, was back in the days of flat razor blades, or perhaps it wasn't. Professor Joel Best, a sociologist at the University of Delaware, has made a study of just such widely rumored, well-known, oft-told cautionary tales of Halloween horrors.

And, Professor Best, the verdict is?

Professor JOEL BEST (University of Delaware): You can have your kids go trick-or-treating. I have studied press coverage going back to 1958, and I can't find any evidence that any child has ever been killed or seriously injured by a contaminated treat picked up in the course of trick-or-treating.

SIEGEL: But, as I'm sure many of our listeners are saying, wasn't there a story about cyanide-laced candy?

Prof. BEST: Yes, indeed. There have been five deaths attributed to poison treats over the years. The most famous of these was a case in Texas where a father did deliberately poison his son's Halloween candy, and he was arrested, convicted and executed for that crime. The other four cases which have been reported in the news have all had follow-up stories which have retracted the claim that the death was the result of a contaminated treat received during trick-or-treating.

SIEGEL: In which case, the question arises: How is it that there is so much lore attached to the poison candy, the booby-trapped fruit--whatever it is--that people are supposed to be aware of on Halloween?

Prof. BEST: Well, I think the best way to think about this is that it's a contemporary legend, and a lot of contemporary legends involve food contaminations, and a lot of them involve stories about threats to children. And this is simply a very popular story which combines those two winning themes.

SIEGEL: So successfully that hospitals in some places have offered to X-ray all Halloween candy so that parents can feel safe about letting their kids eat it.

Prof. BEST: Absolutely. And you also have many, many shopping malls that encourage parents to bring their children to the mall to go trick-or-treating. You know, the fact that institutions buy into this legend doesn't make it any more true.

SIEGEL: There's another story I've heard which was of the child who ingested heroin supposedly inserted into the Halloween candy.

Prof. BEST: Right. That was a case in the 1970s. There was a little boy in Detroit--a widely publicized case, front-page news across the country, that he had been given heroin in his Halloween candy, and it was later discovered that he'd actually gotten into a relative's stash, and people had tried to cover this up by blaming it on Halloween.

SIEGEL: So it sounds like if there's anything for kids to be concerned about at all on Halloween, it's not so much strangers, it's their family, if anyone.

Prof. BEST: Well, it's that, and the other thing I would say is when you read press coverage around Halloween, you realize that it's a genuinely dangerous holiday--that is, there are children who are getting struck by cars, they get tangled up in their costumes and fall down and hurt themselves and so on. It is a night when we send millions of children out into the dark. But I don't think that worrying about poison candy is necessarily a thing that ought to be at the top of the list.

SIEGEL: Well, Joel Best, thank you very much for talking with us once again.

Prof. BEST: Oh, my pleasure.

SIEGEL: Professor Best is chair of sociology and criminal justice at the University of Delaware. He was talking with us about the contemporary legend of tampered Halloween treats.