You may have noticed that the shelves of the shops have become more macabre, or perhaps you had a sudden urge to dig out that book of Edgar Allen Poe stories and give yourself a good literary scare, or maybe you just had a cold shiver down your spine (though I think we’ve all had one of those with the recent Autumnal turn in the weather!). Either way, it all points in one direction – October is here, and with it comes Halloween.

We are all used to the classic horrors of Halloween; skeletons, ghosts, banshees, vampires, werewolves and other monsters under the bed, but what about the lesser known but no less dreaded theatrical horrors?

Read ahead to find out more, if you dare…

The ‘BZZZT BZZZT BZZZT’ of doom

Or worse, the full blown Nokia ringtone. Another theatrical terror that lurks in the shadows ready to appear just as the dramatic tension of a play reaches its climax, the mobile phone.

The near imperceptible hitch in dialogue on stage, the long awkward pause in the audience as the owner realises it is their phone ringing, the panicked scramble through a handbag. It is a familiar tale and one that never becomes less of a horror. It’s a too-familiar tale and the wail of a banshee could barely strike more dread into the hearts of a production team and audience.

The rustling sweet wrapper

We all know it, the moment the action on stage goes quiet, perhaps as Romeo and Juliet share a last embrace, or the last note of Somewhere hangs in the air in West Side Story, and suddenly, crkhskhskhskhskhskh. It’s the dulcet tones of a sweet wrapper being unwrapped oh so slowly. We all sit in agony, the rustler no less than the listeners. Is it better to unwrap it slowly to try and minimise the noise, but just draw it out painfully instead, or to get the horror over with quickly and loudly? Perhaps a quiet Polo Mint is altogether the less horrifying option.

The missing prop

The stage manager’s nightmare, the actor’s nightmare, the director’s nightmare, just a nightmare all around. The show is going brilliantly, the suspense is building, then an actor reaches into their pocket to pull out a gun and finds…nothing. Adapting to a hand-gun, in the most literal sense, they improvise but there is no escaping the sinking feeling of realisation. The item’s outline sits on the prop table like a chalk outline at a crime scene. It’s not in the pocket, it’s not on the table, where is it? The horrifying Holmes-worthy mystery will haunt the stage manager until it is found. We can only hope it is solved by the time the next show goes up.

The ‘If Only I’d Seen…”

Is there anything worse than sitting over breakfast with friends listening to them rave about a show that you missed? Maybe you left it too late to book a ticket, maybe you were too busy, maybe you weren’t in the mood.  Is it just me or is it always the shows you miss that become the classics that people talk about and reference for years? This, thankfully, is a relatively easy horror to avoid. If in doubt, just go to the theatre!

And if you do want to take my advice and go to the theatre, there are plenty of spooky offerings to keep you suitably terrified, unsettled and entertained this Halloween. Streaming from Dunamaise Arts Centre, a new filmed adaptation of the MR James story Lost Hearts, written by Michael James Ford and Stewart Roche, is a captivatingly eerie work that is the perfect Halloween watch. Or, if you are more into real-life horrors, Glass Mask Theatre’s production of Summerhill by Stephen Jones, tells the story of a true crime enthusiast who re-enters the world of dating with the ‘strange and mysterious Clara,’ and promises to be a darkly comic tale. Finally, returning to the supernatural but based in real life events, Irish National Opera presents Peter Maxwell Davies’ opera, The Lighthouse, a disquieting tale of a lighthouse left mysteriously vacant. Touring to several venues across the country, this production promises to be an absorbing and unsettling tale.

So, this Halloween, brave the púca, witches, rustling sweet-wrappers and other horrors that may be lurking in the shadows, and take yourself to the theatre.