This year’s Halloween portents are very scary indeed

As the kids gear up for tricks and treats, Will Gore tackles a series of pumpkin horrors

Gourd help us all... despite a recent tooth filling, the lure of sweets from the fancy estate is eerie-sistible (Getty)

Last year we cracked it at Halloween. A tip-off had led us to a new and fancy estate at the edge of town – the kind of place where the cars are even bigger than the recently constructed garages.

The kids, dressed in their hideous finery and with scary buckets in hand, went from one tightly packed executive home to the next, revelling in the artful decorations and marvelling at the vast quantities of sweets and other goodies on offer.

After a mere half hour of the easiest trick or treating you could wish for, we hopped in the car and returned to our own road – dour by comparison – to examine the spooky spoils. There was enough to last till Christmas, I thought. Ho, ho, ho; as if.