Halloween indulges a very human obsession

Halloween is approaching. The Americans, who go very big on it normally, are distracted this year by the election, so it feels like we have it more to ourselves than usual.

And nobody in Britain will be having a happier Halloween than Danny Robins, a former comedy writer and journalist who has cracked the big time with his extremely successful spooky BBC podcast Uncanny (which became a TV show last year), and his play 2:22 A Ghost Story, which had a four-year run in the West End and was taken up in productions around the world. This year the podcast is running an advent-style Halloween event, serving up a fresh, bitesize experience sent in by a listener every day throughout October.

I’m afraid I’m completely hooked on Uncanny, despite – in fact, often because of – the flimsiness of the content. The great advantage of paranormal paraphernalia as a genre, particularly when it’s as expertly packaged, is that it cannot really fail.