Halloween sadism is best seen as a contemporary legend (sometimes called an urban legend) (Best and Horiuchi 1985, Grider 1984, Ellis 1994). That is, it is a story that is told as true, even though there may be little or no evidence that the events in the story ever occurred. Contemporary legends are ways we express anxiety. Note that concerns about Halloween tend to be particularly acute in years when some sort of terrible recent crime has heightened public fears.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Worth a read. One root of the legend may be a related tale of nasty people heating pennies in skillets and then tossing them to begging children.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Myth in the popular sense, that is to say, an urban legend, says sociologist Joel Best, who has been studying the razor-blade-in-the-apple and similar stories for decades. Visit his website and click the tab for “Halloween Sadism.” Halloween sadism is best seen as a contemporary legend (sometimes called an urban legend) (Best and Horiuchi 1985, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[66,95,4],"class_list":["post-6787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-halloween","tag-journalism","tag-scholarship"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1Lt","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7089,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7089","url_meta":{"origin":6787,"position":0},"title":"Polyamory and the Secret History of Wonder Woman","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 1, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Snow is falling, and I am elbow deep in putting together the next Bulletin for the Study of Religion, which among other things carries an article called \"What is a Superhero? How Myth Can Be a Metacode,\" by Kenneth MacKendrick of the University of Manitoba. So, with comics on the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"culture\"","block_context":{"text":"culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=culture"},"img":{"alt_text":"wonder woman","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/wonder-woman.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1934,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1934","url_meta":{"origin":6787,"position":1},"title":"Halloween: “The Safest Day of the Year”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 26, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Blogger Lenore Skenazy reprints a valuable article looking at the \"urban myth\" of children being targeted by sexual predators at Halloween. Paul Stern, a deputy prosecutor in Snohomish County, Wash., agrees [that there is zero evidence for such a belief].\u00a0\u201dPeople want to protect kids; they want to do the right\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Halloween\"","block_context":{"text":"Halloween","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=halloween"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11292,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11292","url_meta":{"origin":6787,"position":2},"title":"“The Witches of Manitou”\u2014More than an Urban Legend","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 18, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"The old spa town of Manitou Springs, located in the foothills west of Colorado Springs. Photo by Mark Reis, ( a former newspaper co-worker of mine) from the Colorado Sun. Click to embiggen. The Colorado Sun, an online news site, dropped this into my inbox yesterday, giving M. and me\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"The old spa town of Manitou Springs, west of Colorado Springs","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/manitou-springs.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/manitou-springs.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/manitou-springs.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/manitou-springs.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/manitou-springs.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/manitou-springs.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":932,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=932","url_meta":{"origin":6787,"position":3},"title":"Gallimaufry (with horns)","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 25, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00b6 Oberon Zell seems to drive some Pagans around the bend for his fondness for costuming, but who else reinvented unicorns? The original work was done by a Maine wildlife biogist whom Zell acknowledges, W. Franklin Dove, in various articles and a book, Artificial Production of the Fabulous Unicorn:a Modern\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"blogging\"","block_context":{"text":"blogging","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4428,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4428","url_meta":{"origin":6787,"position":4},"title":"Call For Papers, Presentations, Workshops, Rituals and Performances Mapping the Occult City: Exploring Magick and Esotericism in the Urban Utopia","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 7, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"A pre-conference for the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religions in Chicago, on Friday November 16, 2012, presented by Phoenix Rising Academy and DePaul University. In his classic essay, \u201cWalking in the City,\u201d ethnologist and historian Michel de Certeau distinguished between the \u201cexaltation of a scopic and gnostic\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Chicago\"","block_context":{"text":"Chicago","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=chicago"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3331,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3331","url_meta":{"origin":6787,"position":5},"title":"A Parent’s Choice at Halloween","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 28, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"On one side, the \"Occupy Halloween\" movement, advocating for free-range trick-or-treaters, whose spokeswoman, Lenore Skenazy, reminds us that\u2014urban legends to the contrary\u2014no kid was ever deliberately poisoned by homemade candy. But that idea isn\u2019t just wrong, \u00a0it\u2019s corrosive. Start thinking of your nice neighbors as potential killers ONE day a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Halloween\"","block_context":{"text":"Halloween","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=halloween"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6787"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6791,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6787\/revisions\/6791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}