TODAY’S GIVEAWAY:
Sumiko Saulson is giving away a signed copy of hir 2012 novel “Warmth” (edited by Valjeanne Jeffers). Comment below or email @horror.org membership with the subject title “HH Contest Entry” for a chance to win.”
If you have read Clive Barker’s “Forbidden” or seen either of the Candyman movies, you know that one of gut-wrenching images in the story is that of razorblades buried in candy. Director Nia DaCosta uses that imagery to particularly disturbing effect in Candyman (2021), the body horror special effects masterpiece that earned her a place in history as the first Black woman director of a #1 Box Office smash.
The movie has impressive horror writing chops. DaCosta co-wrote it with Win Rosenfeld and two-time Bram Stoker Award winner Jordan Peele, who picked up the award for Best Screenplay in 2017 for Get Out and in 2019 for Us. It is based on the Forbidden, a short story in Volume 5 of Clive Barker’s Books of Blood. Barker is also a two-time Stoker Award Winner, having picked up a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012 and the Works for Young Readers for Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War in 2004.
Bloody Disgusting writer Jason Jenkins dredged up a bit of Candyman History. Barker’s short story was first published in 1985 in “Fantasy Tales,” a year before “Books of Blood Volume 5” came out in 1986. That was just a year after Ronald Clark O’Bryan, also known as “The Candyman,” or “The Man Who Killed Halloween,” was executed on death row in Texas by lethal injection. The Fantasy Tales publication showed an illustration of the nightmare character, a pale Englishman in tattered attire that looked nothing like Tony Todd – but was covered in bees, and had a hook for a hand. A second image accompanying the story was of candy containing razor blades.
Although Ronald Clark O’Bryan bore the moniker “The Candyman,” his was not the only known case of Halloween candy tampering. However, his is the only one that resulted in a death or serious injury. On Halloween 1974, he attempted to poison five children, including his own daughter, Elizabeth and son Timothy. The unfortunate eight year old son, Timothy O’Bryan died after eating a Pixy Stix with laced potassium cyanide. None of the other children ate poisoned candy they were given. The ungodly act was committed by a church deacon, and one of the children he attempted to poison a congregant he recognized from church. Unwitting community members joined him in mourning initially, but it soon became apparently that the unassuming man had himself had committed this dastardly deed. The motive? O’Bryan, who was more than one hundred thousand US dollars in debt, had taken out insurance policies on both of his children.
The first high profile Halloween candy tampering in North America was on Halloween 1959, when a Fremont, California dentist named William Shyne handed out little heart-shaped, sugar-coated, white aloe pills which were used as a laxative at the time. He handed out over 400 pills, and at least four kids got sick with stomach cramps and vomiting.
Another high profile case was Helen Pfeil, who handed out woolen scrub pads, bottle cap shaped ant poison traps, and dog biscuits to teenagers who she thought were too old to be trick or treating. Her name sounds similar to Helen Lyle, the central protagonist in the 1992 character. Pfeil and Shyne both got modest sentences for their crimes. Dr. Shyne was fined, given a four month suspended jail sentence and 2-years probation. He did not lose his license to practice dentistry. Pfeil was given a suspended sentence and mental health treatment.
The vast majority of Halloween candy poisoning accusations and rumors are false, and fueled by media hysteria. Stories are printed before the facts are known, and the retractions are rarely read. Like the Candyman of the movies, these are predominantly urban legends and the strength of the belief of the public gives them life. Ronald Clark O’Bryan’s murder for insurance scheme was inspired by the sadistic madman Halloween candy killer myths, but his son’s death also feed public belief in Halloween candy killers.
Back in June 1985 – the same year The Forbidden first came out in print – Joel Best and Gerald T. Horiuchi over at California State authored a paper entitled “The Razor Blade in the Apple: The Social Construction of Urban Legends” about the phenomenon. The 1970s were plagued with terrifying tales of kindly old grandmothers who put razors in apples and poisoned candies which seemed to owe more to fairytales like Snow White than they did to any reality. They started before the O’Bryan murder, but after the killing they took on even more force. Soon, false statistics about hundreds of children dying or being maimed appeared in credible news outlets like Newsweek.
In the 80s non-Halloween related incidents like the Tylenol plant cyanide poisonings helped fuel the furor anew. It peaked in the mid-80s, but went on strong for two decades. By the 90s, carefully individually sealed candies helped to allay fears, and the craze began to die down. Still, many of us remember spending hours on Halloween night waiting for our parents to safety-check our candy before we could eat any. Healthy, fresh snacks like apples have largely gone by the wayside because of this. Hermetically sealed packages of apple slices, raisins and cheese lack the hometown appeal but ease parental minds.
But the poisoned Halloween candy stories never really goes away. The latest iteration of the folk legend involves medicinal marijuana gummy bears. Marijuana edibles are quite pricey and there are no known cases of them being distributed as Halloween candy, but that hasn’t stopped the dire warnings from being passed along to parents and distributed as memes across social media. Most of these stories are myths, but not all of them are.
As the latest Candyman film demonstrates, the visceral, mind-scaring image of razors in candy just as terrifying today as it was when it John Stewart’s illustration for Clive Barker’s “The Forbidden” graced the pages of Fantasy Tales thirty five years ago. As recently as Halloween 2019, there was an incident in Waterbury, Connecticut where loose razor blades found in candy baskets – but not in the actual candy. The suspect, Jason Racz claimed it was an accident. He was charged with reckless endangerment>.
No one was injured in that incident, but the same Halloween, two people in a Cincinnati, Ohio suburb found razorblades in their candy in their candy. One of them cut their finger on a razor. The person who tampered with the candy was never identified.
Sumiko Saulson Biography
Pronouns: ze/hir/hirsSumiko Saulson is an award-winning author of Afrosurrealist and multicultural sci-fi and horror. Ze is the editor of the anthologies and collections Black Magic Women, Scry of Lust 1 and 2, Black Celebration, and Wickedly Abled. Ze is the winner of the 2016 HWA StokerCon “Scholarship from Hell”, 2017 BCC Voice “Reframing the Other” contest, and 2018 AWW “Afrosurrealist Writer Award.”
Ze has an AA in English from Berkeley City College, and writes a column called “Writing While Black” for a national Black Newspaper, the San Francisco BayView. Ze is the host of the SOMA Leather and LGBT Cultural District’s “Erotic Storytelling Hour” and the HWA’s Social Media Manager.
Find hir online at www.SumikoSaulson.com