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What's So Great About Halloween? Kids Weigh In

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October 31, 2009

Kids say the darnedest things. Host Guy Raz gets an earful of haunting words from a local child describing the scariest and best parts of Halloween.

Copyright © 2009 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

GUY RAZ, host:

On this Halloween night, we were curious about the psychology of fear. So we asked a roundtable of experts, what scares you?

Unidentified Child #1: Monsters.

Unidentified Child #2: It's scary because you have witch stuff and crazy stuff and zombies,

Unidentified Child #3: Zombies with pimples.

Unidentified Child #2: Yeah.

Unidentified Child #3: Zombies with pimples.

Unidentified Child #4: When I'm go outside in the dark, when it's pitch black and I'm all by myself, and I see something move or something, I just get really scared. My heart, like, pumps up and then I just run upstairs.

Ms. SAVANNAH McADAMS: Ghosts, goblins and witches.

RAZ: That was six-year-old Savannah McAdams, and before her: Yasmin Margus(ph), age four; Lance Johnson, age six, and two of their elders: 10-year-old Jacqueline Legier and nine-year-old Nathaniel Gobersodick(ph). We met them at the community center in Burtonsville, Maryland, last night.

There were a few brave souls in the crowd. Alya Yingling(ph) turns nine next week, and she says she's not scared of anything.

Ms. ALYA YINGLING: No, nothing. Nothing.

RAZ: But we were wondering: if so many of our experts were, well, scared of scary things, then what's the point of Halloween anyway?

Unidentified Children: Candy.

Unidentified Child #5: Candy, trick or treating, and mostly candy.

Unidentified Child #6: I get so much candy, but I don't get that much. To candy.

Unidentified Child #7: Yeah, it's just - it's the only time of the year you're allowed to get candy without permission.

RAZ: The kids at a community center in Burtonsville, Maryland, last night.

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