That slight rustling sound behind you. Was it  just the air conditioning, or the movement of a  

vengeful wraith? What is it exactly that's making  the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end?  

It's nothing, you say to yourself, only  to feel the cold,sharp steel of a hook  

running along the naked skin on the back of  your neck, tracing a pattern to your throat.

“You called, I came. Now,  come with me, to paradise!”  

The gravelly voice is the last thing you  hear as a hook plunges into your throat.  

Candyman has struck again, and  claimed one more curious victim.

But hold up, let's pump the brakes and press  rewind. So, you called out to an ancient  

ghost refusing to believe it was anything more  than an urban legend, now the hook-handed wraith  

is after your very soul. How are you  going to defeat and survive Candyman?

Who- or what- exactly is Candyman?

Like most vengeful wraiths, Candyman's  origin tale is a tragic one.  

Born to a slave who became wealthy mass  producing shoes during the Civil War,  

Daniel Robatille was a talented and  slightly famous painter who toured the land.  

One day he was asked to paint a portrait  of a wealthy white landowner's daughter,  

only to commit one of the gravest of sins for  a black man in America during the turn of the  

20th century - falling in love. Pregnant with his  child, the father sent a lynch mob after Daniel.

Before killing him though, the mob used a rusty  blade to saw off his right hand. Then, they beat  

and whip him before covering him in honey from a  local apiary. The frenzied bees swarmed Daniel and  

stung him to death, but not before he was forced  to look at himself in his beloved's fancy mirror.

Years later, Daniel would rise again  as a vengeful ghost, taking on the name  

'Candyman' as he was termed by local  children due to his death by the bees.  

Now, anybody brave- or foolish- enough  to utter his name five times in a mirror  

and then turn the lights off will meet  death at the end of Candyman's hook-hand.

Alright, we best get strategizing because  Candyman is one of the most terrifying villains  

you've ever encountered. He's also one of the  most relatable though, and his death the most  

tragic, but you better push all sympathy  aside because Candyman will show you none.

First, you're going to have to  deal with your mirror situation,  

because unlike most spirits, Candyman needs to  use a mirror to access the physical world. Of  

course unlike most spirits who can't physically  harm people and need to possess a body to do so,  

Candyman can and absolutely will harm the  crap out of you with his meathook hand.

You need blankets, and a lot of them, because  you're going to have to cover up every mirror  

in your house. With no mirrors to travel  through, Candyman is stuck on his side of death,  

and unable to cross. But what if he's already  here? How do you deal with Candyman then?

Well, your most immediate concern is making sure  that your insides stay, you know, on the inside,  

because Candyman is going to try to ventilate  your guts with that meathook first chance he gets.  

You can go the prison route, and make yourself  body armor out of phone books, but Candyman is  

crazy strong- strong enough to pick you up  and fling you across the room with one hand.  

So you need something a bit more heavy duty.  It's time to head down to your local museum,  

or just raid your fantasy nerd friend's house and  get your hands on an authentic steel breastplate.

Modern body armor is great for bullets, but it  doesn't do so well against low speed impacts from  

knives and the like. For this, it's time to go old  school- literally- because our medieval ancestors  

definitely knew a thing or two about keeping  sharp bits of metal away from their insides.

Now that you're somewhat protected from getting  hooked to death, you've got another of Candyman's  

weapons to worry about- bees. Unless you want  to go the way of Nicholas Cage in Wicker Man,  

you're going to need to find a way  to keep the endangered, but lethal,  

buzzbois from stinging you to death.

Wherever he goes, Candyman has access to swarms  of bees he can send on unsuspecting victims-  

not unlike one of Bioshock's best plasmid  powers. That's thanks to a whole hive of  

bees that live inside his hollowed out rib cage,  which is a pretty metal place to have a beehive.  

While having a Big Daddy around right now would  be a big help- not to mention the ability to shoot  

fire or ice at will- you're on your own, and you  gotta find a way to protect yourself from those  

bees. A simple bee suit will do, though you  better keep plenty of duct tape on hand because  

a slash from Candyman's hook-hand will open  your suit and allow bees to swarm you to death.

Of Course you could just kill Candyman's bee's  directly by using any number of modern pesticides.  

What this will do to Candyman  himself is largely unknown,  

but if humans are good at anything, it's  definitely driving bees to extinction.

Alright, you got your bee suit, your duct tape,  and a 15th century breastplate to protect your  

gooey bits from getting hooked to death- now how  do you beat an immortal vengeance-fueled wraith?

Well, with Candyman you actually have two  choices- you can either find and destroy  

the hand-held mirror given to him as a gift  by his beloved, and thus set his spirit free  

to move on to the afterlife, or you can  simply make people forget about Candyman.

Candyman is actually, well, kind of a narcissist.  He's the kind of guy that shows up at the dinner  

party and never asks you even once about your  life, instead just going on and on all night about  

his rib-cage bee hive or how he was murdered  for loving a woman of another race. Sheesh,  

we get it, you had a tragic life and now carry  bees where your internal organs used to exist,  

but can you ask even just  one single question about us?

No, Candyman cannot, because Candyman is all about  Candyman with a capital C. At some point in his  

unlife, Candyman grew to love the notoriety and  fear that he spread through the community that he  

haunted, even going so far as to spur his own  pseudo-religion complete with altars, murals, and  

devoted faithful. Candyman's love for himself grew  to such levels, that his very power is now tied to  

people's fear of him- if not enough people fear  Candyman, he's not able to manifest in our world.

Don't get it twisted- we're not saying  that you have to not fear Candyman,  

he'll definitely still turn your guts into  garters even if you're not afraid of him.  

You have to get everyone else to not fear  him, because only when he fades from the  

public consciousness, like all of Alec  Baldwin's brothers, will he stop existing.

Of course getting people to not be afraid of a six  foot five killer with a hook for a hand and killer  

bees for organs is probably not an easy task- so  maybe go for the mirror instead. This will require  

some digging to find where Candyman's remains are  buried, but with some good old fashioned elbow  

grease and a whole lot of digging, you should find  his casket and the mirror that keeps him alive. 

Then it's as simple as taking a rock  to said mirror and goodbye Candyman,  

because without the mirror of his beloved  to hold his soul in this world, Candyman can  

no longer return to the world of the living as a  hook-handed, murder-bee plasmid power evil wraith.

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