Who needs Halloween? The real world is scary enough

It’s not exactly the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, but for some of us the state of the world right now is as bad as we’ve ever seen it.

A deadly virus grips west Africa and causes increasing panic as it spreads to other parts of the world, with the US – probably the best-placed to deal with Ebola – flailing desperately amid a series of worrying mishaps.

At the same time, Islamic terrorism spills over in the Middle East, as Syria tears itself apart and a resurgent conflict in Gaza reminds everyone how fragile the region has become.

No laughing matter: Clown terror spreads in #France #evilclowns #evilclown… http://t.co/OMJbJzKGhc pic.twitter.com/VozBwcAaEl

— Politolizer (@Politolizer) October 26, 2014

Not to mention Russia’s surprising willingness to rattle Nato cages by annexing Crimea and fomenting instability in Ukraine, while financial markets are rocked repeatedly by all of the above.

But now Halloween comes around again, giving us a renewed chance to revel in gory costumes, scooped-out pumpkins and gruesome pranks involving more fake blood than anyone really thought advisable.

The American trend for commercial Halloween has seeped ever more onto these shores, so that while far from obligatory, there are plenty of ways to “remember the dead” or just scare the wits out of someone you know – or indeed someone you don’t.

Read more: a brief history of the end of times

This year, some French teenagers have definitely taken Halloween too far, terrorising their neighbourhoods dressed as clowns while wielding pistols and knives.

One of these “evil clowns” was arrested in Montpelier after beating a man with an iron bar, and police have warned against vigilante reactions to the clown craze after a 19-year-old was sentenced to s suspended jail term for threatening passers-by while dressed in a clown suit.

Apart from the reported case of a “mystery clown” scaring Portsmouth locals, the craze has thankfully had little impact over here, aside from its popularity on social media and the ever present vein of coulrophobia (that’s fear of clowns to you and me).

So is Halloween becoming a bit too real, or is it unfair to lump it all together when teenagers ransack their town wearing seasonally appropriate costumes? Or is Halloween justified when fear becomes a bizarre new form of security blanket, giving us something certain to grab onto when everything else is in flux?

Horror films haven’t exactly nosedived in popularity in recent years, and the rise of the zombie obsession suggests there’s a lot more to the fear economy than a yearly autumn frightfest.

And if you’re in the mood there are even more things to worry about, given the uncontrolled propagation of drones and the Met Office’s brand new predictive supercomputer, which some fear may do more than threaten the livelihoods of our own Liam Dutton and his forecasting counterparts.

Unfairly or not, this giant computer – weighing the same as 11 double-decker buses – has prompted renewed fears about the onset of the “singularity”: the point when artificial intelligence outdoes its human creators.

Even so, predictions vary wildly on when that could actually happen, so we might be able to rest easy for a couple of decades yet while the robot uprising gathers its inevitable strength.

All of which leaves just one question unanswered: what’s that pumpkin fixation all about?

It’s true that carved-out vegetables have been around in several civilsations for thousands of years, although the Halloween speciality Jack O’Lantern appears to be an Irish invention, backed up by some frankly unnecessarily complex folklore.

But in short, Jack was forced to roam the wilderness perpetually after being cursed by the Devil. So there you go.