The Carbondale City Council voted 4-2 on Tuesday to allow Hangar 9, Stix and Sidetracks to do business this coming Halloween, which falls on a Thursday, through the Sunday that follows. Normal hour restrictions will apply. Councilman Lance Jack, who owns a downtown restaurant, abstained. The council will revisit the issue after this Halloween.

"I wish all the businesses well and best of luck," said Mayor Joel Fritzler, who along with Council Member Lee Fronabarger cast no votes to the proposal.

Lifting the Halloween restriction is a discussion the council has addressed for several months after the city�s liquor advisory board voted last year to keep the restriction in place. Hangar 9 owner Sally Carter had pushed for a re-examination of the city�s policy.

Halloween restrictions were enacted about 15 years earlier to prevent a Halloween celebration along "The Strip" that was described by local law enforcement as "tumultuous rioting." Carbondale is the home of Southern Illinois University.

City Manager Kevin Baity reminded the council of that fact as he read from a list of options that included phasing in alcohol sales from each of the establishments over a three-year period, a complete repeal of the restrictions or maintaining the existing restrictions.

"This is a prudent approach to take. This will give us an opportunity to try it. If it doesn�t work, get rid of it. If it works, we�ll take careful assessment," said Councilman Don Monty. In connection with the upcoming event, police have projected costs of $30,000 in protective gear, $35,000 in overtime hours and up to $7,500 for cleanup costs.

Councilwoman Jane Adams said the event "is not a resumption of a street party. It�s being treated as a big weekend. That�s the word that needs to get out. It looks absurd for three bars to close for something that occurred one and a half decades ago."

Councilwoman Carolin Harvey said if the event goes well this year, it does not ensure an automatic green light in years to come.

"It may not go well next year because Halloween falls on a different night," Harvey said.
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The $39.99 costumes, made in China, have been sold nationwide at open air markets and from some seasonal shops.

A number of shoppers expressed disgust at the outfits � with the majority of high street stores refusing to stock them.

Following a flood of complaints, stores that had stocked the outfits have removed them from public display over the past fortnight.

However, the outfits have been sold at casual markets in Cork, Galway and Dublin over the past week.

The outfit, which includes a long robe, a red sash, a false beard and even a crown of thorns, is still readily available online.

One online store was even offering a 15pc discount on the original $46.99 price. A leading Catholic diocese has now publicly expressed disgust at such costumes which, they claimed, mock Jesus and his crucifixion.

He stressed such costumes were not only in bad taste but offensive to everybody of faith. "One can only imagine the uproar if other religious figures were depicted in this way," Fr Deenihan said.
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Twelve years later, advice columnist Ann Landers (who, by the way, was Dear Abby�s sister) also wrote a Halloween article��Twisted minds make Halloween a dangerous time��echoing that concern. �In recent years, there have been reports of people with twisted minds putting razor blades and poison in taffy apples and Halloween candy,� Landers wrote. �It is no longer safe to let your child eat treats that come from strangers.�

Although there have been reports of razor blades and other foreign objects embedded in Halloween candy (or apples�although anyone giving out an apple on Halloween is already suspect), these dangers are almost always obvious with the most cursory glance.

What about poison, which, being invisible and generally hard to detect, is the more nefarious way to taint candy? You have little reason to be concerned there either. Landers stated, �many reports� of such terrible acts have occurred, however, they are almost entirely the stuff of myth.

Almost entirely.

For nearly 30 years, University of Delaware sociologist Joel Best has been investigating allegations of strangers poisoning kids� Halloween candy. As of this writing, he hasn�t identified a single confirmed example of a stranger murdering a child in this fashion.

He found other examples of people accidentally passing out tainted candy or, in one case, passing out ant poison as a gag gift to teenagers (no one was hurt), but the bogeyman of terrible people making trick-or-treating unsafe is a canard. One example of a person trying, explicitly, to poison children via Halloween candy was confirmed. However, the child who died wasn�t a stranger�it was the man�s son.

On Halloween, 1974, an 8-year-old boy named Timothy O�Bryan died. His candy had, indeed, been poisoned. A few days prior, his father, Ronald Clark O�Bryan, took out a $40,000 life insurance policy on Timothy and Timothy�s sister, Elizabeth (then age 5), as an unimaginable way to get out of debt. The only way to collect required that at least one of his children die, so the elder O�Bryan laced some Pixy Stix with cyanide and cajoled his son into eating one before bed.

As murder would negate the insurance policy, the father had to cover his tracks. Already showing a wanton disregard for the lives of others�children, at that�he decided to potentially kill a few. He distributed some of the tainted candy to at least four other children (including his daughter), according to the Houston Chronicle, setting up the story that a neighborhood madman or demented factory worker had caused the tragic death of his son.

Fortunately, he was unsuccessful. None of the other children ended up eating the poison, in part due to a quick reaction from authorities and in part due to dumb luck�an 11-year-old tried to eat the sugar in the Pixy Stix he received, but could not undo the staples that O�Bryan had used to reseal the package.

As tragic as this story is, it is the only known example of a person intentionally poisoning Halloween candy and providing it to neighborhood trick-or-treaters. And Ronald Clark O�Bryan won�t be poisoning any more candy�the state of Texas executed him in 1984.
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