Candyman

Character History

Moreso than any other antagonist featured among these pages, Daniel Robeitaille (The Candyman) was a tragic figure. In life, he was as much a victim as any of those he would later go on to slaughter in his death.

The son of slaves in the turbulent 1890's, Daniel was an educated, gifted, and somewhat tortured artist. He eventually fell deeply in love with one of his artistic subjects, a beautiful white woman named Caroline Sullivan, who fully returned his love. However, their affair was discovered by her racist father, who happened to be a rich landowner, and he stirred up an angry bigoted mob for the aim of making Daniel pay for the percieved crime of impregnating his daughter. The mob beat Daniel near-senseless and then chased him out of town. Exhausted, Daniel could neither run nor fight when the mob pinned him to the ground against a fallen tree, and sawed off his right hand with a rusty blade. Their bloodlust still unspent, they went on to smear him with honey from nearby beehives, and the agitated bees swarmed upon him en masse' and stung him hundreds upon hundreds of times. As the crowd chanted, dubbing him "Candyman", an agonized Daniel could only watch as Caroline arrived in tears, enraged at what her callous father and his mob of bigots had done. Daniel's last sight, was of his own marred face in Caroline's mirror, and upon seeing that...he died. However, as the mob went on to burn Daniel's body, what they didn't realize is that his embittered soul had become trapped inside Caroline's mirror.

As Mr. Sullivan scattered Daniel's ashes over the land, he had no idea that his sins would find him and pay him in full so soon. It is said that the last thing he ever saw was the face of the Candyman, now a tall, looming spectre. From the bloody stump of his right wrist, which was once the hand with which Daniel created his beautiful paintings, now protruded a huge, sharpened hook. Sullivan must have recoiled in absolute horror as the Candyman spoke, and from his open mouth came a swarm of stinging, angry bees which enveloped the racist landowner. Before he could expire from the stings, the Candyman would split him open from groin to gullet with his viscious hook. Now the change was complete, and the atist in life had become a destroyer in death. His canvas was now the human body, and his paintings would be completed in his victim's blood.

Across the stretch of time the legend of the Candyman would grow, and the tale became especially popular with children who would go on to say that if anyone should chant Candyman five times while looking at their reflection in a mirror, the hookman would come to claim them.

Fast forward to the late 20th century, 1990's Chicago. A graduate student named Helen Lyle has chosen to write her thesis on the lure of urban legends and myths. She hears the tale of the Candyman, and in her search for information she travels to a run-down, dangerous district of the city known as Cabrini-Green. Despite her fierce skepticism, Helen finds that the people living in the district are truly terrified of the hooked spectre. Ignoring their warnings, Helen goes on to further her investigation in areas where the Candyman has been said to appear, and afterwards a series of brutal murders begins. Suspicion begins to fall upon the inquisitive Helen, and in the events that followed she would go on to find out the truth behind the myth in a journey that could lead to her own grisly end.

Several years later, a young schoolteacher in New Orleans named Annie Tarrant is putting her life back together in the years following the brutal murder of her father. Rumors had spread among the superstitious that he had run afoul of the Candyman during his studies into the myth of the hookman. Her life is once again shattered when her brother Ethan is arrested and charged in the murder of a man who had attempted to debunk their father with a new book. She becomes even more unnerved when a young student named Matt begins to sketch pictures of the Candyman. Intitially, Annie believes the whole thing to be an urban myth, but her skepticism gradually becomes belief until it culminates in the murder of her Husband before her very eyes at the hook of the Candyman. As he goes on to slaughter her remaining emotional ties, Annie finds the reason for the Candyman's attentions towards her. She discovers that she is the great-granddaughter of Caroline Sullivan, Robitaille's lover. As her quest continues, she becomes more horrified at what she finds, but is still lured by the Candyman's seductive voice, seeking, almost pleading for her acceptance and acknowledgement as a part of his family. Eventually, her search leads her to the very beginning in her ancestral home, and to Caroline's long-hidden mirror...where she must decide to give in to the lure of the Candyman, or to put an end to his horror once and for all.