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In "The Watchmen" comic book series, there are two Silk Spectres, with mother handing down the role to daughter.

Unlike most comic book superheroes, Silk Spectre has no special powers, but she is an expert at hand-to-hand combat.

You can find any number of Silk Spectre Halloween costumes online. Black boots, yellow-and-black zipper-front "romper," silver belt.

A 23-year-old Crete woman was reportedly wearing a Silk Spectre costume Saturday night at a massive Halloween party at the Palmer House Hilton, where she fell to her death in a terrible accident.

Authorities say Megan Duskey, a special education teacher from Crete, apparently was attempting to slide down a banister when she fell four stories and was killed instantly. Although there's no indication the tragedy was alcohol-related, the fire department put a stop to the party shortly about 12:30 a.m. after ambulances had been called on four separate occasions for partygoers who appeared to have gotten sick from too much drinking.

In Megan's case, it appears as if it was just a silly, risky moment of whim that went horribly wrong. How many of us can look back to our 20s and say we didn't try to pull off at least one stunt that could have resulted in injury or death if we hadn't been lucky-

This is the second time in less than a week that a young person from the Chicago area has died in a freak accident. Last Wednesday, Declan Sullivan, 20, of Long Grove, was killed when gusty winds blew over the tower from which he was filming Notre Dame's football practice.

Notre Dame officials are still dealing with questions about that accident, and whether anything could have been done to prevent it.

In the Halloween party tragedy, it doesn't appear as if this was anything but a young woman having fun with friends on a Saturday night and making a fatal mistake.

And for everyone who knew and loved her, Halloween has forever been transformed from a festive faux-holiday to a terrible anniversary.

Wag the dog redux-

Shortly after we started getting reports about terrorist threats Friday, the text messages to WLS-AM and the e-mails to my Sun-Times account came streaming in. Not a tsunami -- but more than a trickle.

"Wag the Dog!"

"Coincidence this is happening days before the mid-term elections- Come on!"

"Obama admin. trying to appear strong just before election. Convenient timing."

"Wag the Dog all over again."

"Now media will spend next several days reporting on supposed terrorist threat and will ignore coming revolution at the polls."

"Wag the Dog!"

Sigh.

"Wag the Dog" is a 1997 satire about a political spin doctor (Robert De Niro) and a Hollywood producer (Dustin Hoffman) who team up to stage a fake war with Albania to divert the nation's attention from a Clintonesque president's sex scandal just days before the president is up for re-election. It's a smart, dark comedy filled with absurdities -- yet it seemed just plausible enough that the movie's title has become shorthand for just about any presidential action that could possibly be viewed as a cynical attempt to manipulate the public focus.

"As we predicted on four separate occasions . . . the Obama White House has contrived a fake terror scare on the eve of the mid-term elections in an effort to subdue the rampaging . . . appetite for anti-huge government candidates," claimed a blogger for the always-entertaining conspiracy site Prison Planet in the wake of last Friday's threat.

Just to be clear: If you believe that threat was a case of Wag the Dog, you're saying the president and dozens of co-conspirators hatched a plan to plant explosive devices on airplanes in order to overshadow domestic media coverage of the pending mid-term elections and to give the president an opportunity to burnish his image.

Right. And if just one person with knowledge of this insanely complicated, international scheme of deception stepped forward with evidence, not only would the president be impeached, he'd be on his way to prison.

Of course the average American doesn't believe this was all a giant conspiracy. I'm just fascinated that anyone, whether fringe blogger or anonymous texter, could entertain the possibility.

Then again, there are people among us who believe the moon landing was staged, a plane never crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11 and Tupac lives.