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Claim: A suicide by hanging was mistaken for a Halloween decoration.
Origins: A few decades ago, Halloween decor amounted to a lone jack-o-lantern left grinning in a home's window as a welcome to trick-or-treaters. More recently, that aspect of the annual candy-grab has been elevated to 
dizzying displays of orchestrated spectacle even as the door-to-dooring of costumed tykes has dwindled to the merest trickle in some areas. The more sedate homeowners unbend enough to set out a plastic skull or two or festoon their property's shrubbery with fake cobwebs, but their more exuberant neighbors go whole hog with the spooks and gore, strewing a coffin here, a skeleton there, and a hanging man somewhere or other.
It is that last bit which has contributed to an occurence of the most macabre sort. Having become accustomed to over-the-top Halloween ornamentation and even inured to it, in On 26 October 2005, the corpse of a 42-year-old woman was left suspended in public view for hours in Frederica, Delaware, because her lifeless body was assumed to be yet another Halloween display. The unnamed woman hung herself from a tree located across a moderately busy road State police spokesman Cpl. Jeff Oldham and neighbors said people noticed the body around 7:30 that morning but dismissed it as a holiday prank. Authorities arrived at the scene at 11:00 to begin the process of examining the scene and removing the body. The death is being investigated as a suicide. The deceased lived about a quarter-mile from where her body was discovered. This grisly account of intentional suicide by hanging being mistaken for Halloween tomfoolery is the reverse of what we've previously seen; deliberate attempts to present spooktacular visual effects resulting in accidental demises by the noose. All too often, young persons called upon to stage fake hanging scenes as part of scary tableaux have fatally miscalculated, thereby ending their lives. Barbara "just say no to fake hangings; friends don't let friends hang out" Mikkelson Last updated: 28 October 2005 Urban Legends Reference Pages © 1995-2008 by snopes.com. This material may not be reproduced without permission. snopes and the snopes.com logo are registered service marks of snopes.com.  Sources:
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