While there is evidence of such incidents, they are just extraordinary and have never resulted in serious injury. Nonetheless, multifarious parents assumed that such heinous practices were rampant; at the peak of the hysteria, some hospitals offered free x-rays of children's Halloween hauls in order to find evidence of tampering. Virtually all of the few known candy poisoning incidents involved parents who poisoned their own children's candy, while there have been occasional documents of children putting needles in their own (and other children's) candy in a unmitigated bid for attention.

Halloween is correct in demand in Ireland, where it originated, and is down pat in Irish as Oíche Shamhna (pron: ee-hah how-nah), literally "Samhain Night". Pre-Christian Celts had an autumn festival, Samhain (pronounced /ˈsˠaunʲ/from the Aged Irish samain), "End of Summer", a rustic and agricultural "fire festival" or feast, when the dead revisited the mortal world, Adult Halloween Costumes and large communal bonfires would hence be lit to ward off evil spirits.