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GLEN IVY SPRINGS, CALIFORNIA — Helen and Shawn McGraw live in a gated community in Southern California’s Orange County. Shawn is a real estate agent and the couple have managed to afford a very comfortable lifestyle for themselves and their three young children, ages 3 to 11. The McGraws do not vaccinate their children because they’ve “done tons of research” and tonight as they return home from trick-or-treating with their children, they say they have no intention to check any of the candy their kids received from strangers for irregularities.

“We just don’t think the mainstream, corporate owned media is going to tell us all facts about candy checking,” Helen told our reporter, “and so we did our own exhaustive research and found out that a doctor in Wyoming has found what he believes is the link between Autism and checking your kids’ Halloween candy.”

Shawn said that at first he was skeptical too, because he always believed that “common sense protective measures that have kept kids very safe and healthy for years” were a good thing. But once Helen showed him the information she found, and then corroborated it with a Facebook post from David Avocado Wolfe, he was convinced.

“It was the same thing with vaccinating our kids,” Shawn said, “at first I really wanted to do everything we could to stave off deadly infectious diseases. But Helen found some really great Google resources maintained by some really knowledgeable other people without medical degrees and advanced training in immunization. So we became anti-vaxxers for the same reasons we stopped checking our kids’ candy on Halloween night – blind faith that we know better than the experts do.”

Despite the fact that all three of her children fought through Whooping Cough and her middle child dealt with a bout of smallpox that nearly killed him, Helen says that she’s confident in her research and her decision not to vaccinate her kids. She said she’s similarly positive she made the right decision to stop checking her kids’ Halloween treats.

“Did we skip checking the candy in 2014 and our oldest daughter nearly choked on a little metal washer that got accidentally mixed up with her candy,” Helen asked rhetorically, “sure. Of course. But we got the washer out. She only suffered minor brain damage from the lack of oxygen, and most importantly, I got to stay firmly planted in my beliefs despite all rationality and common sense to the contrary.”









Next year, the McGraws say they might take their laissez-faire attitude to another level.

“We’re thinking of actually rubbing their candy in a little anti-freeze,” Shawn said, “like when we purposefully took our unvaccinated children over to play with their cousins who were sick with the Chicken Pox. We figure it’s the same idea. Purposefully expose them to dangerous stuff unnecessarily because we think tried and true methods of preventing tragedy aren’t good enough for us, because we’re so special, of course.”

October 31st also marks the anniversary of their first child’s passing. The McGraws did have one other child who died thirteen years ago on Halloween night. Helen and Shawn had decided that safety experts were hiding something and they didn’t send their then eldest son out to trick or treat with a flashlight or reflective patches. He was struck by a car crossing the street and died that night.

Follow James on Twitter @JamboSchlarmbo.