Latest / Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities / Trick of the Treat

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Trick of the Treat · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grim & Mild.
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  Speaker 2: Our world is full of the unexplainable. And if history
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  Speaker 2: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
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  Speaker 2: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
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  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. As you may have noticed,
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  Speaker 2: summer is over and fall is fast approaching. And with
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  Speaker 2: fall comes what is known around these parts as spooky season.
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  Speaker 2: A time when everyone loves a good fright. Horror movie
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  Speaker 2: marathons and haunted houses as far as the eye can see.
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  Speaker 1: In these weeks leading up to All Hallows' Eve, I
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  Speaker 1: would like to consider this atmosphere of scares. We all
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  Speaker 1: know that this is a time of the year when
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  Speaker 1: the barrier between the spirit world and the world of
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  Speaker 1: the living seems to be at its thinnest. But why
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  Speaker 1: do we associate the season so closely with terror? After all,
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  Speaker 1: the root of Halloween is the term hallowed, which means holy.
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  Speaker 1: One of the many holy days that makes up the
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  Speaker 1: tapestry of Halloween is the Catholics' All Saints Day, which
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  Speaker 1: isn't terrifying at all. We're supposed to be in awe
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  Speaker 1: of saints, not frightened by them. And yet the fear
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  Speaker 1: of ghosts and goblins remains the dominant quality in pop
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  Speaker 1: culture Halloween.
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  Speaker 3: So why is that?
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  Speaker 1: The answer may lie in 18th century Ireland. Sometime in
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  Speaker 1: the year 1762, a British engineer named Charles Valancy traveled
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  Speaker 1: to County Cork to help the British military survey the county.
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  Speaker 1: It was a period of great distrust between Ireland and
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  Speaker 1: the British Empire... Oliver Cromwell had been dead for over
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  Speaker 1: a century, but the deep rifts between the native Irish
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  Speaker 1: and Imperial British still remain. In spite of this enmity,
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  Speaker 1: Valancy was enamored with Irish culture. And while he was
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  Speaker 1: working to rebuild bridges and other infrastructure in Cork and Limerick,
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  Speaker 1: Valancy took it upon himself to write about the native
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  Speaker 1: customs of Ireland. He called his published work Colectania de
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  Speaker 1: Ribas Hibernicus. It's an enormous project spanning six whole volumes.
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  Speaker 1: It's the work of a true enthusiast. And in the
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  Speaker 1: third volume of the series, he wrote about Samhain, the
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  Speaker 1: Irish festival of the dead, typically held at the end
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  Speaker 1: of October. Although many of his peers had written about
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  Speaker 1: the festival by this point, Valanci had his own theories
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  Speaker 1: about where the name actually came from. He supposed that Samhain,
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  Speaker 1: spelled S-A-M-H-A-I-N in English, was derived from a Celtic deity
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  Speaker 1: known as Balsab. Balsab, according to Valanci, was the lord
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  Speaker 1: of the dead, the patron of this particular holiday. The
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  Speaker 1: name is a compound of bal, meaning lord, and sab,
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  Speaker 1: meaning death. And the idea that Samhain is about worshipping
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  Speaker 1: a sort of devil or grim reaper took over much
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  Speaker 1: of the casual understanding of the holiday, even as Halloween
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  Speaker 1: replaced Samhain in broader culture. And even into the 20th century,
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  Speaker 1: people said that the roots of Halloween are in an
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  Speaker 1: unholy festival where people worshipped death. There is one slight problem, however.
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  Speaker 1: Valanci's assessment of Samhain was completely incorrect. Even his own
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  Speaker 1: peers denounced his work as shoddy. The name Balsab appears
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  Speaker 1: in no Celtic literature and is thought to be either
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  Speaker 1: a bad mistranslation or just a complete fabrication. The actual
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  Speaker 1: etymology of Samhain is thought to come from the Gaelic
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  Speaker 1: words for summer's end. The original celebration on October 31st
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  Speaker 1: is more akin to a cross between a pagan new
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  Speaker 1: year and a harvest festival. Boisterous, yes, but sinister? No.
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  Speaker 1: Much of our understanding of Celtic culture comes secondhand or
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  Speaker 1: even thirdhand. The original pagan Celts did not leave written records,
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  Speaker 1: so we have to rely on men from other cultures
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  Speaker 1: who encountered the Celts and then wrote about them. But
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  Speaker 1: outsiders always bring their own opinions and prejudices. The iconic
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  Speaker 1: Wicker Man, which has become such a crucial image of
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  Speaker 1: pagan worship and human sacrifice, comes from Julius Caesar's Commentary
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  Speaker 1: on the Gallic War, itself a piece of Roman propaganda.
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  Speaker 1: What we know as Halloween today is built on echoes
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  Speaker 1: of a pagan culture that we don't fully understand, mixed
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  Speaker 1: with the Christian All Saints Day and various other celebrations
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  Speaker 1: of the coming winter months. Men like Charles Valancy and
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  Speaker 1: his fake Celtic Lord of the Dead, are a crucial
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  Speaker 1: piece of that story. Because, as it turns out, even
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  Speaker 1: the little mistakes in history can be just as impactful
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  Speaker 1: as fresh archaeological finds. It's said that the greatest fear
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  Speaker 1: is fear of the unknown. But I think that we
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  Speaker 1: should all be careful to make sure that we aren't
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  Speaker 1: spending so much time fearing the unknown that we never
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  Speaker 1: seek to understand it. Music Halloween is a celebration of
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  Speaker 1: the creepy, the macabre, all things that go bump in
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  Speaker 1: the night. But for more than half a century now,
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  Speaker 1: one of the most terrifying ghouls of this holiday is
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  Speaker 1: feared less by trick-or-treaters than by their parents. That is,
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  Speaker 1: the evil stranger, sometimes a neighbor, handing out chocolate bars
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  Speaker 1: stuffed with razor blades or candy corn dipped in arsenic.
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  Speaker 1: It's caused millions across the country to inspect all of
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  Speaker 1: the holiday's treats at the kitchen table and has kept
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  Speaker 1: some kids off the streets altogether.
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  Speaker 3: But here's the thing.
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  Speaker 1: Despite the police warnings and breathless news reports, there seems
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  Speaker 1: to be very little in the way of proof of
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  Speaker 1: this seemingly ever-present threat. In a massive study by sociologist
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  Speaker 1: Joel Best, which covered 30 years of alleged poisonings, they
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  Speaker 1: found that there was not a single proven case of
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  Speaker 1: a child dying, or even suffering major injury, from a
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  Speaker 1: stranger giving out poisoned candy.
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  Speaker 3: This widely held fear seems to have.
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  Speaker 1: Exploded onto the scene in 1967, when the New York
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  Speaker 1: Times did a report on needles in candy apples. The
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  Speaker 1: story included 13 cases from separate towns in New Jersey alone,
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  Speaker 1: as well as whispers from Canada of the same horrors.
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  Speaker 1: It was so convincing that the New Jersey state legislature
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  Speaker 1: even wrote a law about it, banning the insertion of
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  Speaker 1: foreign objects into treats that were meant for children. But
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  Speaker 1: when researchers followed up on these reports in the following years,
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  Speaker 1: they found that nearly every single reported instance was a hoax,
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  Speaker 1: conjured by trick-or-treaters or their parents. And 75% of those
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  Speaker 1: reports did not involve injuries at all. And then, a
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  Speaker 1: few years later, in 1974, tragedy struck in Houston, Texas,
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  Speaker 1: when 8-year-old Timothy O'Brien died suddenly after trick-or-treating with his family.
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  Speaker 3: The culprit? a pixie stick laced with cyanide.
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  Speaker 1: The immediate assumption was that some deranged stranger was passing
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  Speaker 1: out poison candy to all the neighborhood kids. But further
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  Speaker 1: investigation revealed a more horrible truth. Timothy had been murdered
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  Speaker 1: by his very own father in an alleged attempt to
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  Speaker 1: collect insurance money. But although the killer had been a
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  Speaker 1: member of Timothy's family, the truth just could not keep
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  Speaker 1: up with the more lurid narrative that had been firmly
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  Speaker 1: established in the first few days after the murder. Even
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  Speaker 1: serious magazines were not immune to falling for the tale.
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  Speaker 1: In 1975, Newsweek published a piece on the alleged epidemic
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  Speaker 1: of would-be neighborhood killers, telling its readers that several children
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  Speaker 1: had died and hundreds had narrowly escaped death by trick-or-treating.
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  Speaker 1: Despite little in the way of concrete proof, the shadow
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  Speaker 1: of these candy killers grew. And then, in 1982, seven
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  Speaker 1: Chicagoans died from Tylenol which had been laced with cyanide
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  Speaker 1: bought in stores. and Americans' concerns about food safety exploded.
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  Speaker 1: The event led to the advent of childproof containers and
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  Speaker 1: stricter federal laws criminalizing tampering. These concerns naturally made their
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  Speaker 1: way back into trick-or-treating. In the public imagination, malicious killers
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  Speaker 1: lurked in every candy aisle and cul-de-sac. In 2011, nearly
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  Speaker 1: a quarter of parents who were polled expressed worry about
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  Speaker 1: Halloween candy. That's a higher percentage than are worried about kidnapping,
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  Speaker 1: and all over something that had no supporting evidence. So
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  Speaker 1: how does the urban legend persist? Well, much of it
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  Speaker 1: seems to do with the sort of feedback loop that's
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  Speaker 1: created between law enforcement and the media. Each year, the
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  Speaker 1: story recirculates, and each year, authorities warn their communities to
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  Speaker 1: be wary. After a while, the rumor is reinforced, not
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  Speaker 1: through any sort of proof, mind you, but through repetition.
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  Speaker 1: For instance, Canadian authorities repeatedly issued warnings while simultaneously acknowledging
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  Speaker 1: how few incidents were ever verified. Between April of 2008
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  Speaker 1: and October of 2019, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency received
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  Speaker 1: only four cases of suspected tampering related to Halloween candy
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  Speaker 1: and found that not a single case had been substantiated.
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  Speaker 1: The message kept circulating even after the evidence had failed
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  Speaker 1: to appear. In an age of easy instant verification, the
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  Speaker 1: persistence of the Halloween candy scare reveals something unsettling. That
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  Speaker 1: our fears are deeply rooted and incredibly.
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  Speaker 3: Difficult to shed.
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  Speaker 1: With all the evidence in the world available at our fingertips,
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  Speaker 1: many still go on believing the same false stories that
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  Speaker 1: they have heard time and time again.
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  Speaker 3: And maybe in the end, that's what we should really
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  Speaker 3: be afraid of. Thank you.
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  Speaker 1: By me, Aaron Manke, in partnership with iHeart Podcasts, researched
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  Speaker 1: and written by the Grim & Mild team and produced
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  Speaker 1: by Jesse Funk. Learn more about the show and the
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  Speaker 1: people who make it over at grimandmild.com slash curiosities. You'll
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  Speaker 1: also find a link to the official Cabinet of Curiosities
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  Speaker 1: hardcover book available in bookstores and online, as well as
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  Speaker 1: ebook and audiobook. And if you're looking for an ad-free option,
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  Speaker 1: consider joining our Patreon. It's all the same stories, but
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  Speaker 1: without the interruption for a small monthly fee. Learn more
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  Speaker 1: and sign up over at patreon.com slash grim and mild.
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  Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious.