NH- Tricked: City falls for Halloween hoaxes

9-24-2009 New Hampshire:

Manchester Police Chief David Mara has decreed that the city's official trick-or-treating hours this year shall extend from 1 to 4 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 25. He is only following precedent. Scheduling this event on the Sunday before Halloween is a city tradition. It's also bunk.

Like his predecessors, Mara says it's all about keeping the kids safe. But Halloween is no threat.

In 1985, researchers Joel Best and Gerald Horiuchi examined reports of Halloween sadism from 1958 to 1984. They found no evidence of poisoned candy, razor blades, widespread abductions or ritual satanism. They found exactly one instance of a child in the United States dying from poisoned Halloween candy. The killer was the child's own father, who did it for insurance money.

Sex offenders? A study published in this month's issue of "Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment" examined rates of sexual assault on children concluded that "no increased rate on or just before Halloween was found."

What Best and Horiuchi did find was a huge increase in false reports of Halloween sadism from 1969 through 1971. Those three years accounted for 31 of the 76 reports of Halloween sadism they found from 1958 to 1984. When did Manchester begin setting daytime trick-or-treating hours? In 1972: just after the peak of the Halloween safety scare.

Manchester's children are the victims of urban legends. Generations of city children have been denied the thrill of nighttime trick-or-treating because of myths that began circulating 40 years ago and were debunked 25 years ago.

This foolishness must end. It's time the aldermen revoked the chief's authority to set trick-or-treating hours and returned Halloween to its rightful owners: the children. ..Source.. by Union Leader.com