Special Halloween Edition 2005

Around Halloween, in order to get into the spirit of “trick or treating” or ghosts and ghoulies, we tend to indulge our inner child. We like to scare ourselves a little, to take advantage of the one day of the year it is ok, and definitely even a little fun, to be a little afraid of the things that go bump in the night.

Ever since Halloween became a night of horror movies, costume parties, and pushing the limits to see what it would take to scare us, urban legends have been around to add that little extra scare to our evening. These urban legends always pop up around this time of year and seem to disappear just as quickly as they came, some have become so popular that many believe there is some truth to them, and others are still around just to raise the hair on the back of our necks.. This week we are going to take a look at a few of the more famous urban legends, if there is any truth to them and where they may have come from. Thanks to www.Snopes.com for all the helpful research material.

Razor Blades in trick or treating candy: (True, sort of). Anyone that grew up around the same time I did (early to mid eighties) remembers the mass hysteria around Halloween regarding the prospect of some crazy person putting razor blades in candy. Most news stations actually took the time to remind parents of the threat. It doesn’t matter where you grew up, you either trick or treated at a mall where the candy was deemed “safe” , only went to friends houses for candy, or the local hospital in my town even x-rayed your candy looking for any metal objects. Very few people actually randomly accepted candy from strangers.
Origin: In the fifties and sixties an urban legend popped up about razor blades in apples and a few cases actually were reported. Most of the cases were suspect at best and usually involved a child biting into an apple, not deep enough to cut himself, and usually considered pranks from friends. The reason the razor blade story become such a hot-button issue in our childhood was largely due to the Tylenol poison scare of 1982. For those that don’t remember, random bottles of Tylenol were thought to be poisoned and actually created a massive recall of Tylenol products that led to the advent of a lot of the tamper proof seals we have today. When Halloween arrived the year of the great Tylenol scare and the urban legend began to make it’s rounds again, it only seemed reasonable to most people that if someone would poison Tylenol bottles, the could certainly poison a child’s trick or treating candy. Other than a few isolated cases of revenge or people taking advantage of the hysteria to harm someone they knew with the prospect of not getting caught, there were no reported cases of random candy with razor blades in them.

Bloody Mary: (False) A game at Halloween parties that only the most adventurous of the kids would dare try. You turn out the lights, preferably in a bathroom where it is pitch black, look into a mirror and say her name “Bloody Mary”, louder and louder. The ghost of Mary would appear behind you in the mirror and scare you to death.
Origins: Mary Worth (the given name of Bloody Mary), was believed to be a witch that was burned at the stake, or more recently a woman that was killed in a car accident, she supposedly comes to life when you call her name to drag unsuspecting children’s souls into the mirror with her for eternity. There really is no moral or lesson attached to this urban legend and the origin of the game is actually pretty sketchy. Most historians believe that it stems from an old ritual where unmarried women could recite an incantation into a mirror in the dark and their husband to be’s face will appear. No one is quite sure how exactly that made its way into its present form.

Protective ghosts of little children killed at a railway crossing push stalled cars off of the tracks: (unverified). There are a set of railroad tracks in San Antonio, Texas where Villamain Rd meets Shane Rd where cars that have stalled out on the tracks are mysteriously pushed off the tracks. If there is dust on the rear bumper or in the early morning, children’s fingerprints will appear in the dust or the dew.
Origins: In December 1938, 26 children, between the ages of 12 and 18 died in San Antonio when their school bus stalled on those same tracks. The urban legend started making the rounds in the early 70s and seems to pick up sleep every few years. Unlike most urban legends, this one seems exclusively native to San Antonio.

Every few years, there seems to be more than a few variations added to these and many other urban legends.

This week at your local multiplex: (11/04/2005)

Jarhead: Drama
(Jake Gyllenhaal, Jamie Foxx, Peter Saarsgard, Lucas Black, Chris Cooper)
Plot: Set during Desert Shield and later Desert Storm, Jarhead follows a young Marine recruit throw Marine boot camp and into his first taste of war.
Buzz: Directed by Sam Mendes, and Jamie Foxx’s first film since the Oscar winning Ray, with its only competition this week an animated film, and the first war film in a while, this film should have a good opening weekend.

Chicken Little: Animation
(voices: Zach Braff, Joan Cusack, Katie Finneran, Don Knotts, Garry Marshall, Amy Sedaris, Steve Zahn
Plot: This Disney animated feature puts a twist on the classic Chicken Little tale.
Buzz: Disney’s first post Pixar computer animated film. In an industry dominated by Pixar, quite a few people are interested to see if Disney can bounce back after their loss of the animation juggernaut. Disney has a large portion of their reputation on the line with this movie.

This week on DVD: (11/01/2005)

As always if you have any questions, please drop me a line at DPlace76@yahoo.com. Or, you can check out my random musings at www.livejournal.com/users/bigdpimpimpin.