Are you into Halloween?

into Halloween, like into it into it?

Do you dress up?

Do you decorate your house? Do you use Halloween as an excuse to scare the little

kitties passing by? Watching leafly as they scream in terror at the skeleton on your porch?

Or is the world scary enough already

that you pass on the whole thing?

If you think that Halloween is all fun and games,

you might feel differently after this episode.

Welcome to Strange and Un explained with me, Daisy Egan. I dressed up like a head on a platter for Halloween when I was 11, complete with

paper machee veggies. It was pretty epic. I grew up trick-or-treating in Brooklyn, New York

in the 80s, and I don't recall my parents ever once going through my hall to make sure nothing had been tampered with.

Similarly, I've never scoured my son's Halloween booty for signs of malintent. I know there are

parents out there on high alert every Halloween, insisting on inspecting every last

morsel in their kids plastic pumpkin full of candy.

But statistically speaking, we parents are our kids' greatest threat. On Halloween, 1974, 8-year-old Timothy O'Brien was pumped about the evening's plans.

He was planning on trick-or-treating with his little sister Elizabeth and his friend Mark Bates

from church.

The two families had dinner together at the O'Brians and then Timothy and his

Planet of the Apes costume. Elizabeth dressed as a princess and little Mark

Bates probably not dressed as Norman Bates even though that would have been a home run,

undeterred by the rain, set out with Ron and the Bates' dad Jimmy.

...