We were in Dublin for half-term and spent the week enjoying the gradual agglomeration of Halloween decorations we saw encroaching on my in-laws’ house. The night we arrived, two full weeks before Halloween, there were already a few pumpkins scattered around the neighbourhood, more than a few comically oversized spiders crawling up outside walls and at least one bafflingly involved grave site in a nearby front garden, replete with mossy tombstone and skeletal remains captured in a state of mid-escape. As the days went by, we watched as cobwebs, ghosts and other units of frightful drear enveloped the houses around us – a process I believe scientists call ‘enspookification’.
