Myths and superstitions. These are half the fun of Halloween. Telling scary stories while eating candy high in sugar and low in nutritional value is probably the best part of Halloween. But most stories end with, "And then the monster came back to haunt you!" But why do most of these stories end this way? Where did the superstitions arrive, and are they true? I'm going to go full Myth-Busters and see if I can debunk some of these paranormal and spooky things.
I can't definitively say that all of the ghost stories you have heard are true. I can't say that ghosts are real. But what I can say is that ghost hunters have lied to you. The truth of the matter is that most ghost hunting shows are probably staged. I'm not alone in thinking this. Click, here, here, and here for different accounts of why portions (if not entire episodes) of these shows might be staged. I hope, for the sake of haunting people in the afterlife, that ghosts are real. I really do hope that. But, TV is about entertainment. Could you imagine having a ghost hunting show without ever seeing a ghost over the course of 20 episodes? That would not be very entertaining. People like to believe and want to believe in ghosts, it makes life a little more exciting. However, there are many skeptics of these TV shows. So my first Un-funfact is, your ghost hunting shows are probably staged.
Lets move on to the second one. Bloody Mary. The legend of Bloody Mary has been told throughout many middle school sleep overs. Say Bloody Mary into the mirror three times, and something happens I guess. I'd like to let you all know that I have survived this. So maybe Mary has a different taste in men, maybe she didn't want to kill me, maybe she's shy! But I never saw her. But maybe that's because I did it wrong. Maybe I called her "Bloody Merry", enunciation is key in situations like this. However, she probably didn't show up because the modern Bloody Mary is actually different than how the legend originated. The original Bloody Mary ritual was done solely by woman to find out who they were going to marry. The women would walk up the stairs, backwards, in a pitch black house while holding a mirror in their hand. While they were doing that they were supposed to be able to see who they were going to marry in the future. But there was chance that they would see a skull (or the face of the grim reaper), indicating that they were going to die before they married.
This seems like a very plausible legend that came to life and it took off due to the psychological effects of staring at yourself in a mirror for to long. Your face becomes distorted, so while looking staring into the mirror for that long is bound to cause you to perceive your face as someone else. Couple that with the low light and intense gazing into the mirror looking for something, and you have the birth of a Halloween superstition.
But the best thing that I can tell you is that your children will not be receiving drugs this Halloween. And more good news, no one is putting razor blades in their candy! The myths of children dying from their candy being tampered stems from true events, however, they are unrelated to Halloween. There hasn't been a substantiated claim of candy tampering since the '70s. But why have these myths spread? In most cases of candy tampering it happened either by the children themselves, or immediate family members. In 1970, a 5-year-old boy died from eating Halloween candy. But that wasn't true. In fact, the child had eaten heroin from his uncle's stash. The family tried covering it up by saying someone laced his candy with it. Many of the tampered candy cases come from shitty family members trying to avoid being charged with a crime, or make a financial gain off the child's death.
So I guess it's a good thing that not all of these Halloween myths are true. It'll help me sleep easier at night.
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