Once upon a time there was a pleasant little celebration called Halloween, which occurred on the evening of October 31. Children would dress in improvised costumes as ghosts or witches and parade from door to door, receiving apples or homemade cookies from the delighted neighbors, and returning home to popcorn and hot chocolate with the family.

But somehow, through the unspeakable influence of the almighty dollar, the demons of capitalism turned the homey one-night celebration into a commercial extravaganza occupying two months of the calendar and second only to Christmas in the filthy lucre it brings into the pockets of the robber barons. Now Halloween costumes are sold in vast emporia that spring up all over the suburbs like poisonous mushrooms, and children are warned by television and newspapers never to accept fruit or homemade treats, the warnings reinforced by horror stories straight out of the Brothers Grimm involving children who were injured or poisoned by wicked ogres with delicious-looking apples and brownies. These stories, if one follows them back to their source, inevitably turn out to have been supplied to the media by associations of packaged-candy manufacturers.

This is without qualification the scariest story Dr. Boli has ever heard.