Halloween or All Hallows Eve is a holiday that is Celtic in origin, takes place on the 31^st of October and is celebrated by many. Children, as well as, adults enjoy the festivities with spooky, realistic decorations, parties and trick or treating. Halloween is usually fun, a day in which children gorge themselves on the candy they collect from their neighbors. Everyone dresses up in costumes, parties and the occasional horror story.

Even though Halloween by nature is meant to be spooky and scary, no one expects their Halloween to turn into an actual horror story.

In this article we will be telling you about four Halloween incidents that have gone terribly wrong on this particular day, when the veil between the real and spirit world is thinnest.

The Candy-man Killer

This story of Halloween-gone-wrong took place in the year 1974. Every Halloween, people are warned to check the candy they receive from strangers because it could be tampered with. It wasn’t strangers, however, that Timothy O’Bryan had to fear, but his own father.

Ronald O’Bryan took his son; Timothy, his daughter; Elizabeth, and three of their friends trick or treating on Halloween night. After going to the first house, 4112 Donerail Drive, where no one answered the door, Ronald told the children to go ahead while he tried ringing the doorbell again.

After a short while Ronald caught up to the children with five giant Pixie Stix; one for each of them. They then went back to trick or treating for the rest of the night out. After they returned home, Timothy asked to have a candy from his huge stack. He was permitted by his parents to have only one candy bar, and of course Timothy chose the giant Pixie Stix; his favorite and most prized of his candy trove.

The sugar in the Pixie Stix had clumped together. But Ronald was helpful and rolled the candy between his hands to make it easier for his son to enjoy. Timothy ate some of the sugar but stopped immediately because he thought it tasted bad. Ronald went to get his son something to drink, but he was too late. Timothy started vomiting and convulsing mere minutes after tasting the candy.

Ronald rushed to his son’s side and held him until the ambulance arrived, but by then Timothy had died. An autopsy later revealed that the couple bites of candy bar that Timothy had eaten contained enough cyanide to kill two grown men.

Ronald hypothesized to the police that some monster gave his children poisoned candy, and although he couldn’t exactly remember the killer, he vaguely remembered that the kids had taken the candy from 4112 Donerail Drive.

With those reported details, the police questioned the owners of that house, the Melvins. After severe interrogations, the police were more confused than ever. Mr. Melvin came home very late that night and Mrs. Melvin had stopped giving out candy before the O’Bryans went trick-or-treating. Moreover Mrs. Melvin never gave out Pixie Stix during the time she was distributing candy. Police interrogated the whole neighborhood but found no apparent leads.

Ronald was completely grief-stricken. Not only had his son been murdered, he was facing many debts due to car payments with threats of repossession from the bank – not to mention, warnings of him losing his job.

He had also conveniently taken out a life insurance policy on his children for more than 20,000 dollars despite his wife’s many protests that they were already tight on money. Ronald collected the insurance money only hours after his son’s death.

Ronald hadn’t ever even gotten a ticket before this incident on Halloween, but after only 42 minutes in court, the jury found him guilty.

Realistic Decorations or Dead Bodies

In the year 2005 in Frederica, Delaware, a woman was found hanging from a tree with the death being ruled a suicide. Now you might be wondering why this story would be included in an article about Halloweens gone wrong. The second Halloween-gone-wrong is a case where dead bodies were actually mistaken for very well-made decorations and left there unreported for hours, sometimes days.

The 42-year-old woman climbed up a tree with a length of rope and hung herself from a branch 15 feet off the ground, sometime after 9:00 pm on a Tuesday. The body could clearly be seen by passing cars and passersby. No one reported finding the body for the simple reason that they didn’t know it was one. Everyone who passed by just assumed that it was a very realistic Halloween decoration.

According to state police spokesman CPL. Jeff Oldham and residents nearby, people noticed the body about 7:30 am Wednesday but dismissed it as a Halloween prank. Oldham also stated that the death of the woman, who had lived only a quarter-mile away from the place of death, was being investigated for suicide.

It is truly bizarre how people’s minds convince them that what they see isn’t something horrific. This however isn’t the only time something like that has occurred.

A similar incident happened in Marina Del Rey, California, where the body of a 75-year-old resident in an apartment complex lay in his balcony for three whole days before anyone in the neighboring apartments suspected that it was an actual body, not a very cool looking Halloween decoration. The man had died from one bullet through the head, and the case was ruled a suicide.

 

Case of Mistaken Identity

On Halloween of 2012, during a bonfire in Pennsylvania, a girl was shot by her cousin because he mistook her for a pest.

The girl who was nine years old at the time was attending a Halloween bonfire at a relative’s house. She had a black costume on, and a black hat that had white tassels. The girl was hit three times: in the shoulder, back and neck, with the shotgun her cousin used to shoot her.

It was said that the girl was playing on a hillside next to where the bonfire was taking place when Janet Grant, the homeowner, mistook the girl for a skunk. Grant then asked her son, Thomas, who was also the girl’s cousin, to shoot the supposed pest.

Grant proceeded to shoot the girl in the skunk looking costume three times while his mother helped by shining a flashlight so he wouldn’t miss. After realizing that the skunk was actually their relative and that she was dying, she was flown using a helicopter for surgery due to her very critical condition to Pittsburgh Children Hospital, thirty miles away.

The Chief of Police stated that it was being discussed whether charges would be pressed against Thomas Grant for illegal shooting of animals in the area, but there was no update on that story. The Chief of Police also stated that Thomas Grant was not under the influence of alcohol when he shot at his cousin that night. Thomas, of course, was devastated. Grant, like any other normal person, had never thought such an accident would ever take place.

 

Man Stabs Girlfriend for Stealing his Candy

This Halloween gone wrong story would be understandable to those who have a problem sharing food, but we would like to think that people wouldn’t go to that length to stop someone from sharing their candy. In Chicago, back in 2011, a 55- year-old man stabbed his girlfriend to death for allegedly stealing his candy bag.

Ledell Peoples started a fight with Maria Adams, 49, over a bag of missing candy. The fight kept escalating until Maria threw a plate at Ledell which gave him a gash above his eye.

That was the breaking point for Ledell, he took a knife and stabbed her multiple times in the stomach. Although Maria did not die immediately, she passed away the following Saturday at the hospital, which added to Peoples charges.

Ledell was charged with attempted murder and aggravated domestic battery according to the News Affairs. He was booked into Cook County Jail, where a judge ordered him held on a $2 million bond, according to the Cook County Sheriff’s office.

 

Never Underestimate Halloween

In these four Halloween-gone-wrong cases, the monster wasn’t an actual monster like we see in horror movies. Instead, these were true stories where the supposed assailant was a human just like us. If you think about it, that’s definitely a lot scarier than imagining a mythical monster attacking anyone.

So just remember, that even when you go out this Halloween, not everything you come across will be a figment of your imagination.

Sometimes, the horrors are true. And if you’re not careful, you might just end up being another story people tell about a Halloween incident gone terribly wrong!