Halloween is a conspiracy.

Much like the tastiness of Soylent Green and the suppression of the elves by Santa Claus, this is a scientific fact.

I have uncovered documents — most of which are not soiled napkins and are actually printed on real paper — that certifiably demonstrate that the so called “spooky holiday,” Halloween, is in actuality a conspiracy devised by a very powerful capitalist conglomerate.

Right now, you, dear reader, are probably thinking what I was thinking before the light of understanding was cast on me. You’re probably thinking, “Eureka! It’s the candy companies! They created Halloween and its mythology to sell candy by the butt-load! Brilliant!”

But you’d be wrong.

That’s what they want you to think.

Who?

The real conspirators behind Halloween.

Ladies and Gentlemen, meet your local dentists.

That’s right. Dr. Rutkannel, along with Dr. Flowraid and Dental Practitioner I’mgoingtoputsharpandshinyobjectsinyourmouthandyou’llpaymeforit, have headed the movement for years, creating the whole mythology about pagan rituals and medieval beggars in order to promote what the dental industry has loved for years: children eating candy.

Think about it. Didn’t it ever seem funny to you that the dentist, after telling you that you weren’t brushing enough and that you needed to cut down on your sugars, would give you, of all things, a goddamned lollipop?

Dentists want kids to eat candy. Not the candy companies. The candy companies make a lot of money, yes. But the resulting cavity boom ensures that kids won’t be eating candy for a looooong time. Weeks, days, months, even. It all adds up, but those miniature Snickers aren’t really that profitable. Not when compared to the money that dental practitioners make.

Because Snicker bars cost one dollar. Dental procedures can cost you your house.

Halloween leads to the most profitable period for any industry on any given time range. Ever. It is what the dental companies like to call “November.” During this “November,” when cavities and gingivitis are at a high-point, root canals, crowns, drilling, and tooth-pulling reach their respective peaks. On a more somber note, the number of overdoses due to Nitrous Oxide spike, resulting in an abnormal number of people getting kicked out of wakes and funerals for “laughing at the twitches.”

It makes so much sense, doesn’t it? It certainly makes more sense than evolution. Maybe not as much as intelligent design, but it’s close. It’s right there on the table, the purloined letter of our generation, and nobody saw it. Like the WMDs. Or Elvis’s body.

Lewis and Clark didn’t find it, and they looked all over the place. Barnum and Bailey didn’t chance upon it, as good as they were, finding creatures like “the three-nosed bearded frog” and “Michael Jackson.” Stephen Baldwin came close, finding Jesus, but losing all common sense in the process.

But this is bigger than Jesus. Hell, it may even be bigger than The Beatles.

How did we find out?

It wasn’t easy. Like I said — it’s so obvious that you can’t see it. It’s a phenomenon that has its most apt parallel in the behavior of men at bars that have a hot bartender. The bartender is hot. Because you are a guy, and because you are drunk, you think that, because the bartender is hot, she will do you. You smile at her. You assure her that you don’t normally drink this much. You show her your Purple Heart and Medal of Honor. You leave her a 40 percent tip. You know that everyone else does this, but, because she smiled at you once, maybe even twice — because that was a smile, right? — she will leave every other schmuck alone and go home with you. There is one problem with this. It’s not going to happen. It’s so damn obvious to everyone in the bar, from the bartender to the other patrons to your wife, but you still don’t see it. This is how it is with the Halloween Conspiracy.

So we had to find out the hard way. And we lost some good men along the way. Too many, in fact. William Fleming died during an operation to storm the Illuminati’s castle in the Norwegian wild. It was actually a mild winter, and we encountered opposition only in the form of a kind old man whose age and pension had both outgrown his usefulness in his job as a security guard. But William foolishly challenged me to a drinking contest and perished sometime between the thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth hour. May his soul rest in Eternal Peace.

Broaching the castle was accomplished by walking through the front door. Unfulfilled, I walked back out and scaled the wall, if only to give myself a sense of adventure. After many ripped fingernails and even more hours, I gave up and jumped those two feet back down.

Then I gained entry into the vault. Or, as the tour guide described it, “the public library.” I split from the group effectively, using the age-old technique of “straggling.” I went into a musty room and found an unmarked door. I opened it to find a toilet. The lady sitting there was not pleased, and screamed at me to get out.

Her urgency and uninviting demeanor spelled one thing out for me: cover-up.

Grinning, I knew I was on the right track. I was about to discover the great Halloween conspiracy. If my life were a movie, this is where the stirring patriotic music would sweep in like a giant, manipulative banshee.

And then I walked into a room with many Roald Dahl and Dr. Seuss books, and found the damning documents — written in red crayon. Red. The color of death. And of embarrassment. But mostly death. It was the Halloween Conspiracy, written in highly illegible penmanship, and annexed to a subscription form to very boring magazines.

And I knew then that this was the work of dentists.

I expose it to the world now, not as the product of a paranoid, irrational mind, but as the product of a genuine desire to show the world, once and for all, that dentists are evil, evil people, bent on destroying America’s youth.

It’s not like I have an agenda. I mean, I did hate my braces.

But that doesn’t have anything to do with anything.

Really.

Carlos Maycotte is The Sun’s Associate Editor. He can be contacted at cam98@cornell.edu. Tequila Sunrise appears Thursdays.