‘This is so much better than the vampire costume I wore last year,’ said eight-year-old Troy Winklemann, dressed in a well-cut suit from the fancy dress store and a Barack Obama mask. ‘Usually the grown-ups just pretend to be scared, but at all the houses with Republican posters in the windows, they’ve been genuinely terrified. Can we scare the shit out of them? Yes we can!’

Nine-year-old Nathan Pintle, a life-long Republican from Kansas, agreed. ‘This costume’s just neat. Obama is easily the scariest thing that’s ever happened to America – papa told me. The only problem is so far I haven’t got any candy. Instead people keep promising to vote Democrat if I’ll just leave their families alone, or frantically offering up their taxes and telling me to spend it all on Hispanics.’

As conservatives across the US prepare for a night of terror, the White House has taken the opportunity to reassure citizens. ‘There is absolutely nothing to worry about,’ said press secretary Robert Gibbs. ‘If children choose to go out dressed as the President, it is simply because they want to express their support for his policies. And please don’t try to pretend you’re not in. All these kids ask for is a Democrat majority in both Houses, and universal healthcare for all. We’d hate to see any terrified elderly Republicans suffer seizures they can’t afford to pay for.’

Right-wing politicians have fought back by encouraging their supporters’ children to dress up as self-confessed witch Christine O’Donnell, while advising homeowners to adopt the progressive politics of Sarah Palin and shoot any intruders on sight.

Despite the good-natured political rivalry, things appeared to get a little out of hand in South Carolina when a group of diminutive Obamas were chased from town by a gang of Republican children dressed in white-hooded robes. ‘It was all we could find in our parents’ wardrobes,’ said one of the protagonists. ‘Besides, grandpaw always said you can’t bring about change from the bottom up, you’ve got to do it from the neck down.’

‘He should really have known better,’ said his wife Abigail, today. ‘It’s not as if they don’t stand out the way they dress up especially to go door-to-door, and there’s always at least two of them, though only one ever does the talking. Poor Mark thought he might be able to talk them out of a few of their misguided beliefs, but his ‘Have you heard the good news about our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’ was no match for their dogmatic chanting of ‘trick or treat’.’

Abigail tearfully relayed that as the conversation progressed, her husband cautiously suggested that the callers’ shortage of confectionery may be a sign of God’s disapproval at their way of life. ‘But they simply threatened to egg him and smash the car windows,’ she said of the two nine-year-olds. ‘They had an answer for everything, but then I don’t suppose you go out walking the streets in the dark and the cold unless you passionately believe in the truth of what you’re doing.’

After several hours, the discussion finally began to take its toll on Mark. ‘I could see him thinking, ‘This is my house. I shouldn’t be a prisoner in my own home, afraid to open the front door,’ all the while smiling patiently and periodically checking his watch. He even tried to give them a copy of The Watchtower, anything to get rid of them, but they just wouldn’t take the hint.’ The siege finally ended with Mark agreeing to buy the trick-or-treaters two giant packets of Haribo each from the all-night garage, but by the time he returned the boys had been collected by their parents and grounded for staying out way past their bedtime.

But the experience proved to have a lasting effect on Mark. ‘As he sat there eating his way through those sweets instead of the dinner that had gone cold,’ recalled Abigail, ‘he began to think that maybe the encounter was a test, and only the 144,000 bound for Christ’s kingdom would pass. And by the end of the fourth bag of Haribo, his face filled with a heavenly glow, he was certain that the ghouls and witches openly walking the earth and buying rizla and crisps from the Texaco must be the coming of Armageddon.’ Sadly the heavenly glow proved to be glucose poisoning, and Mark died shortly afterwards when his wife refused to allow him a blood transfusion.

Elderly residents of Manchester are reporting that they found it much easier to walk the streets yesterday evening, since the trick-or-treaters were in fact far less frightening than the same youngsters in their normal clothes.

‘It was such a relief’ reported Edna Jeffries, 76, of Whitefield. ‘I can cope with skeleton masks, devil outfits and ghost costumes. It’s the rest of the year when they lurk around with their hoods up that terrifies me.’ Other pensioners were reported to be delighted that just a handful of stale chocolate buttons seemed enough to make the muggers disperse. ‘Normally they take my purse and my keys, and then come back to the house to get the television and the bottle of sherry.’

Local residents were reportedly using this brief period of calm to stock up on supplies and shopping so as to avoid having to venture outside in the run-up to Bonfire Night, when the youngsters will be armed with projectile explosives.

In other parts of the country, police were called out to a cul de sac in Norwich where youngsters had been left confused and disorientated when a householder responded to their rhetorical question ‘Trick or Treat’ with the cryptic reply ‘Trick!’ Eleven year old Darren Hayes later told reporters: ‘I didn’t know what to say – in all my four years of trick or treating I’ve never seen anything like it. Normally people just hand over the goodies without a fuss.’ His friend, 10, agreed, adding: ‘this came completely out of left-field – we were quite simply lost for words.’

Meanwhile, parents groups took the opportunity of Halloween to reiterate their assurance to children that there were no such thing as ghosts or monsters, and that their children should not take sweets from strangers. They then dressed them up as ghosts and monsters and sent them out to knock on strangers’ doors to ask for sweets. ‘You think that’s weird’ said one Thames Valley policeman. ‘We’ve had a report come in of a Bracknell family, actually eating the flesh of a pumpkin!’

andrewtaylor, Peter74940, Quaz and The Big Yin

A gang of dangerous but physically small armed robbers were left blaming each other as an ambitious bank raid, intended to secure £20m from a City of London bank, went awry on Halloween as the criminals, wearing ‘Scream’ fright masks and George W Bush disguises, failed to find anyone in the financial institution that would take them seriously.

After months of meticulous planning, two members of the East End gang burst into the Chancery Lane HSBC brandishing sawn-off shotguns, shouting ‘Open the safe or we’ll blow your heads off!’ However, the bank robbers did not get the reaction they had expected; instead of staff handing over stacks of unused notes amid scenes of hysterical panic, queuing office workers gave them a patronizing chuckle, while the cashier told them ‘to wait while she got them some sweeties’.

‘I blame the boss Thommo,’ said ‘Wheels’ Wilson the getaway driver, ‘sending in ‘Alf Pint ‘Arris and Mitch the Titch to do the business with the shooters was a schoolboy error. They have trouble seeing over the counter at the best of times and watching that old dear on the CCTV rustle their hair and give ‘em a fluffy old Werther’s Original while they tried to take hostages…We’ll never live it down.’

However Mitch the Titch blamed the robbery’s failure on getaway man Wilson who provided the robbers’ latex masks. ‘How was I supposed to be taken seriously disguised as Casper the friendly ghost or a bloody smiley dracula?’ asked the diminutive ex-con as he counted out the proceeds of the hold-up, I’m not going to get my English pub on the Costa del Sol on a load of fun-size Mars bars, that’s for sure.’

Although the failure to be taken seriously did enable the hoods to make a clean escape, the police are now looking for anyone trying to launder large amounts of chocolate Celebrations or Cadbury’s Heroes.

The gang members’ reputations in the criminal underworld are now said to be ‘totally screwed’, principally for their naïve belief that any bank in the UK would have ‘anything like twenty million going spare these days’.

nealdoran (with thanks to ugi)

There was a disappointment in Guildford, Surrey last night when a much anticipated Halloween fancy dress party failed miserably to be either scary or amusing. Party-goer Steve Wellington had spent the week before carefully pre-paring his ‘serial killer’ costume and looking forward to what he hoped would be a spooky night of drunken entertainment. ‘I had this image in my mind of everyone in outlandish, creative costumes but most people just turned up in their normal clothes with like, a pirate hat or something which they took off anyway.’

Wellington; one of three hockey-masked attendees was also disappointed to discover a dearth of ‘sexy costumes’ such as slinky vampires or hot witches in fishnet stockings. ‘One woman came in a nurse’s costume, but she was actually a paediatric nurse who had just finished her shift.’

Mark Spelling who came as ‘someone from the 80s’ bemoaned a combination of poor music and a lack of new people as the main contributing factor for the boredom. ‘No one was in charge of the music. Once we got to the end of a CD there was a period of silence while whoever was sitting next to the stereo chose what to put on next. Apparently the host had done a special Halloween-themed play list with songs like ‘Thriller’ and ‘Monster Mash’, but it finished before everyone arrived. Without loud music I was forced to talk to the other guests, most of whom I had seen at work that same day and didn’t really have anything to say to.’

Host Mandy Jones was unsure of the problem; ‘I don’t understand. I thought if everyone was in funny costumes we would have much more fun. All the food had a horror theme, like red jelly with gummy snakes in it. I had fake cobwebs everywhere and a cardboard skeleton on the front door. How could you fail to have a blast? Maybe next time I just won’t build it up in my mind beforehand. Anyway this year’s New Years Party is going to be awesome!’

Phil Smith