Always Check Your Kids' Halloween Candy

Everybody knows the horror stories. Razor blades baked into apples. Hallucinogens pressed into chocolate. Rat poison dusted over gummy bears, just waiting for some innocent kid to gobble it all up. It's nonsense, of course. Sure, once in a blue moon some genuine sicko does something like that, but the whole tainted-candy panic is a wild exaggeration at best.

No. The reason I tell you to check your kids' Halloween candy is very, very different.

It was the Halloween of '09, and I was fourteen. I was right on the edge of being too old for anyone to take my trick-or-treating seriously, so I'd decided to make that year my biggest haul ever. My costume was elaborate — a zombie with a full face mask, claw gloves, and a chest rig that would drip fake blood at the push of a button. I'd learned from experience that the more detailed the costume, the more candy people dropped in your bag. I was going to hit every house I could physically reach. I was expecting so much candy that I brought one of those big black garbage bags to carry it all in. I was going to make it a night to remember.

It was. Just not for the reasons I'd hoped.

I couldn't tell you which house it came from — that's always bugged me. My bag was so stuffed and I'd hit so many houses that the whole night was a blur. It wasn't until I got home and started sorting my haul into piles that I found it. There was a small mountain of chocolate bars, some plastic-wrapped gummies, dozens of lollipops, and more. And then, as I dug into the middle pile of unsorted candy, my fingers closed around something unusual. It looked like a chocolate bar of some kind, but not one I'd ever seen before.

The wrapper was a greenish-yellow color, with a cartoon worm on it — two arms, giving a thumbs up, winking. The label was printed in some other language, the characters not matching any Latin letters I recognized. At first I figured it was Russian, but the script wasn't quite right. I'd seen what Cyrillic looked like in video games and movies, and this was a little different.

Curious, I peeled the wrapper open to see what was inside. It looked like my first guess was right — some kind of chocolate bar, with little white orbs studded across its surface, kind of like the way some candies have chunks of nuts in them. I took a bite, and I was stunned to find it was utterly delicious. To this day, I think it was the best chocolate I've ever had in my entire life.

I was fourteen, and fourteen-year-olds don't have impulse control. I inhaled the whole thing in about thirty seconds, tossed the wrapper aside, and dug through the unsorted pile looking for more. There weren't any. I tried to make peace with the disappointment. I'd bring the wrapper to school, I decided, ask around, see if anyone else had gotten lucky. Maybe I could trade some of my less exciting candy for one.

After I finished sorting and ate a few more pieces, I finally went to sleep with a full stomach and a happy heart. It had been a great day.

The next morning I made sure to pack the empty wrapper in my bag, along with some extra candy for trading. At recess and lunch I asked nearly the whole school about the chocolate, but I only found three other people who'd gotten one — and like me, they'd all eaten the whole thing immediately. I still remember their names. Jeremy, a lanky kid with glasses from my chemistry class. Ashley, a girl with dyed blue hair I'd seen around but never really talked to. And Lee, a track and field guy I shared math class with.

They all agreed it was the best chocolate they'd ever tasted, and they'd all been hoping to find more. But the trail ended there. None of them remembered which house had given it to them either. I was a little sad, but it wasn't the end of the world. It was just candy, after all.

It took a few weeks before I noticed anything strange. I'd long since forgotten about the chocolate bar. Halloween had come and gone, and it was back to the daily grind of school and homework.

One morning I woke up feeling insanely thirsty. It felt like I'd been wandering a desert for days, so I got up immediately and got myself something to drink. Normally with breakfast I'd have milk or orange juice, but that day I just wanted a big glass of water. And then another. And another. After three glasses I was finally satisfied. My mom gave me a confused look.

"Feeling a little dehydrated, honey?" she asked.

I nodded, embarrassed. "I'm not sure why. I just felt really thirsty this morning."

She smiled, smug. "Well, at least it's not soda or energy drinks. Those things will rot your teeth, you know."

I rolled my eyes, finished my breakfast, got ready for school, and brought two bottles of water with me.

That day in chemistry class, our teacher announced that on Friday there would be a day-long field trip to the local lake, where a fish and wildlife representative would talk to us about the native ecosystem and the environmental impact of pollution. It wasn't mandatory, but anyone who went and wrote a paper about it would get extra credit. The teacher said anyone who wanted to go should raise their hand, and before I knew it, mine was in the air. Jeremy's went up too, and I caught the faintest flicker of confusion on his face. I felt a little bewildered myself. I'd never been into environmentalism or any of that, and it's not like I needed the extra credit. But something about that field trip seemed to be calling to me, like I was meant to go.

The rest of the week crawled by. I found myself thinking about the lake constantly — its cool green water rippling gently in the breeze. Every morning I woke up thirstier than the day before, until my mom started getting genuinely concerned about how much water I was drinking. I bought one of those giant water bottles athletes use, and I noticed Jeremy and Ashley had gotten them too. Lee already had one, but I noticed him drinking from it way more often than usual in math class.

Finally Friday arrived, and the small handful of students going to the lake climbed onto the school bus. I couldn't help noticing that Lee and Ashley were coming too, but I was quickly distracted by thoughts of the lake.

I'd never been a water person. Sure, the pool was fun once in a while, but I'd never been obsessed with it. But all I could think about on that bus ride was how good it would feel to dive into that shimmering water. To sink all the way to the bottom and just stay there, surrounded by fish.

When we finally got there, the fish and wildlife guy had us all sit down on the grass. He talked about pH levels, showed us a preserved frog with too many legs, passed around photos of garbage he'd found along the water's edge. I wasn't listening to any of it. I was just staring out at the lake, hypnotized by its slow, gentle waves. I kept thinking about how nice it would feel on my skin. In my mouth.

Before I knew what I was doing, I was on my feet, walking toward the lake. I could faintly hear the chaperone shouting at me to come back, and some of the other students muttering in confusion, but it was all just background noise. The sound of the lake filled my ears. And I was dimly aware that I wasn't walking alone. Jeremy, Ashley, and Lee were all walking with me, just as fixated.

I felt my tennis shoes sink into the cold water as we kept moving forward. The water rose to my knees, then my thighs, my waist, my chest, my neck. Then my head went under, and I looked out into the murky gloom, not even trying to hold my breath as I breathed the lake water in.

And then came the sudden, terrible realization of what was happening. Of where I was. It was like I'd been a puppet and someone had just cut my strings. I was fully, horribly aware that I was drowning. And then came the pain.

I could feel wriggling under my skin. A burning, itching agony, like needles shooting up from inside my own flesh. I looked down and saw long, pale worms erupting out of my skin, the way moles push up out of the earth. I tried to scream, and my mouth flooded with water again as one of them squirmed out from underneath my eyelid. Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. All of them writhing upward as they burrowed through my flesh. The pain was unbearable, and my vision started going black as I passed out from some combination of agony and terror and no oxygen.

I woke up in a hospital, my parents standing over me, their eyes full of worry. I felt exhausted, but mercifully, I wasn't thirsty at all. When they realized I was awake, my mom smothered me in hugs and kisses while my dad just sobbed with relief. I asked about the others — the three students who'd walked into the lake with me — but they didn't make it. There was only time to save one of us.

The doctors couldn't explain the puncture wounds covering my body, but they said it wasn't anything too serious, and that I'd recover with some pain medicine and antibiotics. I never told them about the worms. I knew nobody would believe me, and I didn't want to end up locked away in some institution. I had to go to therapy sessions, and they put me on antidepressants. Apparently the authorities cooked up some story about a suicide pact between Jeremy, Ashley, Lee, and me. I played along with the therapist, talked about feeling overwhelmed at school and all that, but it was all nonsense. I wasn't depressed. At least, not before all of this happened.

I did some research on my own, trying to figure out what had happened to me. What I found was startling.

There's a phylum of worm called nematomorpha, also known as horsehair worms. They typically infect insects, growing inside them and hijacking their central nervous system to make them leap into water and drown. Once the host jumps in, the worm burrows its way out and continues its life in the water, finding a mate and laying eggs. There are a few recorded cases of accidental human infection, but there's no documented evidence of them ever manipulating a mammal the way they control insects.

I found something else out, too. A few weeks after Halloween, every year, like clockwork, there's a spike in child deaths by drowning. It's not enough for most people to notice. But once you're looking for it, it's obvious.

So I'll say it to you one more time: always check your kids' Halloween candy. And if you find a greenish-yellow chocolate bar with writing on it in a language you've never seen before — don't let them eat it. No matter what.