Halloween

At one point in my childhood I had this horrible teenage neighbor. Each Halloween he would find new way to torture all the small children in the neighborhood and delighted in watching us cry. His constant torture had my paranoid mother so worried that she stopped letting us take candy from their home on Halloween. She often worried that he would put something into our candy. While I doubt that this juvenile pain-in-the-butt would actually poison our candy, I see how the role of the Halloween Sadist played into my own experiences.
I also remember being exposed to various kinds of Halloween safety propaganda. Teachers would hold entire class periods devoted to safe Trick-or-Treating and pamphlets were sent home every year. It also became and extremely popular trend to attend alternative candy gathering festivities. Many times churches and grocery stores would open up their parking lots and asiles for guaranteed safe candy giving, in order to fight the Halloween Sadist and ensure that children received candy only from adults that could be trusted.
Were we all just a little too paranoid?