alt=A tray of homemade candied apples|thumb|Apples and homemade treats were common gifts to trick-or-treating children in the earlier parts of 20th century. Over time, parents preferred individually wrapped, store-bought candy.
Poisoned candy myths are mostly urban legends about malevolent strangers intentionally hiding poisons, drugs, inedible items or sharp objects such as razor blades in candy, which they then distribute with the intent of harming random children, especially during Halloween trick-or-treating. These myths, originating in the United States, serve as modern cautionary tales to children and parents and repeat two themes that are common in urban legends: danger to children and contamination of food.
Worries that candy from strangers might be poisoned have led to the rise of alternative events to trick-or-treating, such as events held at Christian churches, police and fire stations, community centers, and retail stores. Some doctors publicly claimed that they were treating children poisoned by candy every day. If a child became ill and had eaten candy, the candy was widely assumed to be the cause. However, no cases of illness or death were ever substantiated.
In the 1890s and 1900s, the US Bureau of Chemistry, in conjunction with state agencies, tested hundreds of kinds of candy and found no evidence of poisons or adulteration. These tests revealed that inexpensive glucose (from corn syrup) was in common use for cheap candies, that some candies contained trace amounts of copper from uncoated copper cooking pans, and that coal tar dyes<!-- This redirects to Aniline, which is *very* probably accurate, but not the name used in the cited source. --> were being used for coloring, but there was no evidence of the many types of poison, industrial waste, garbage, or other adulterants alleged to be present. Eventually, the claims that children were being sickened by candy were put down to indigestion due to overeating, or to other causes, including food poisoning due to improper cooking, hygiene, or storage of meat and other foods.
Effects
thumb|An [[trunk (automobile)|automobile trunk at a trunk-or-treat event at a church in Illinois]]
Due to their fears, parents and communities restricted trick-or-treating and developed alternative "safe" events, such as trunk-or-treat events held at Christian churches. This collective fear also served as the impetus for the "safe" trick-or-treating offered by many local malls.
This story also promoted the sale of individually wrapped, brand-name candies and discouraged people from giving homemade treats to children. Children of all ages (age 0 to 17) are three times as likely to be killed by a vehicle on Halloween than during the rest of the year.
Candy-tampering myth
Development of the modern candy-tampering myth
Several events in the late 20th century fostered the modern-day candy tampering myth.
In 1959, a California dentist, William Shyne, gave candy-coated laxative pills to trick-or-treaters. He was charged with outrage of public decency and unlawful dispensing of drugs.
In 1964, a disgruntled Long Island, New York woman gave out packages of inedible objects to children who she believed were too old to be trick-or-treating. The packages contained items such as steel wool, dog biscuits, and ant buttons (which were clearly labeled with the word "poison"). Though nobody was injured, she was prosecuted and pleaded guilty to endangering children. The same year saw media reports of lye-filled bubble gum being handed out in Detroit and rat poison being given in Philadelphia, although these reports were never substantiated to be actual events.
Another notable milestone in the spread of the candy tampering myths was an article published in The New York Times in 1970. This article claimed that "Those Halloween goodies that children collect this weekend on their rounds of 'trick or treating' may bring them more horror than happiness" and provided specific examples of potential tampering.
Reports of poisoned candy and allegations of copycat incidents peaked shortly after the Chicago Tylenol murders, in late September and early October 1982. The case involved an unidentified person poisoning a few bottles of over-the-counter medication in stores, resulting in several deaths. Fewer than 90 instances might have qualified as actual candy tampering. In none of the cases does he attribute the events to "random attempts to harm children" during the Halloween holiday. Instead, most cases were attempts by adults to gain financial compensation or, far more commonly, by children to get attention. Best found five child deaths that were initially thought by local authorities to be caused by homicidal strangers, but none of those were sustained by investigation.
Fabrications by children are particularly common. Children sometimes copy or act out the stories about tampered candy that they overhear, by adding pins to or pouring household cleaners on their candy and then reporting the now-unsafe candy to their parents.
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| Murdered by father || 1974 || age 8 || Deer Park, Texas ||The boy died after eating a cyanide-laced package of Pixy Stix that his father had planted in his trick-or-treat pile. The father, Ronald Clark O'Bryan, also gave out poisoned candy to other children in an attempt to cover up the murder, though no other children consumed the poisoned treats. The murderer, who had wanted to claim life insurance money, was executed in 1984.
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| Natural death due to pre-existing medical condition || 1990 || age 7 || Santa Monica, California || The girl died while trick-or-treating. Early press reports blamed poisoned candy, despite her parents telling the police that she had previously been diagnosed with a serious medical condition, an enlarged heart, which was the actual cause of death.
Advice columnists entered the fray during the 1980s and 1990s with both Ask Ann Landers and Dear Abby warning parents of the horrors of candy tampering:
Candy tampering by friends and family
Almost all tampering cases—at a rate of one or two per year—involve a friend or family member, usually as a prank. Almost all of those involved sharp objects, rather than poisoning. One teenager received a minor injury. In 2025 during a Halloween parade, the Santa Fe, Texas police were notified by at least three different homes that sewing pins were discovered in chocolate bars that were thrown to the crowd. No one in this case was injured.
See also
- 1858 Bradford sweets poisoning – accidental confusion of ingredients, causing arsenic poisoning
- 2016 Punjab sweet poisoning – intentional poisoning by an angry candymaker
- 2018 Australian strawberry contamination – sewing needles put in fresh fruit
- Caraga candy poisonings – accidental contamination with bacteria, causing diarrhea