ONCE again, almost without warning, it appears the Hallowe’en period is upon us – though this year it’s a little different.

Whereas once upon a time the ghastly creatures and ghoulish monsters would only show their faces on October 31, this year they seem to have been out all year round.

It’s funny, in a way, that while everyone’s been going crazy for the so-called ‘Killer Clown’ craze, neither the coulrophobes (those scared of clowns, to you and me) or the Grammar Nazis have pointed out that – to the best of my knowledge – the only thing these imbeciles would be capable of killing would be the atmosphere at a kids’ party.

It’s also amusing that we’ve been distracted from the most dangerous clown who isn’t wearing white make-up and jumping out at pensioners at bus stops, but instead is running around in orange make-up as the Republican nominee for the President of the most powerful country on the planet.

But enough about the bigoted buffoon with the bizarre bouffant – plenty of people funnier than me have already written about that particular horror show.

Instead, let’s talk about a couple of scientific events that have taken place in the last few weeks which are in equal parts exciting and terrifying, and which seem to have been timed almost perfectly for a pair of spooky Hallowe’en stories, or a classic sci-fi/horror double feature, the likes of which haven’t been seen since the fifties.

First up, scientists at the University of Kentucky have managed to read an ancient scroll which was reduced to a lump of charcoal after being crushed and burned in a fire. In this case, it turned out that the document was a copy of the Book of Leviticus which dated back to about AD 300.

Apparently, it was found in the holy ark of a synagogue at the site of a town on the shore of the Dead Sea that was destroyed by a fire in about AD600.

The technique used to decipher the document, called ‘virtual unwrapping’, enables historians to read scrolls which are thousands of years old while they are still rolled up.

This means that even if the documents are too fragile to be touched, let alone flattened out, we can still make them yield up their secrets so as to give us a fascinating insight into ancient peoples. Which is amazing, obviously.

However, the leader of the project – Professor William Seales – says he now wants to take things further and use the technique with other ancient documents,, including having a go at reading the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

Now, if watching classic Universal and Hammer horror movies has taught me anything, it’s that Professor Seales should instead just stop RIGHT NOW, then go have a Twix or something, because nothing good can come of this.

We’ve already got one seemingly unstoppable monster terrorising women, the general public and threatening world domination.

The last thing we need is to unleash another timeless terror like Imhotep (Karloff, not Lee – sorry Hammer fans), on the planet.

In other news, an attempt to land a probe on the surface of Mars by the European Space Agency was going swimmingly until Wednesday.

The Schiaparelli robot was launched in March, and safely made the 33.9 million mile journey to the red planet, before separating from its orbiter and starting the three-day descent to the surface earlier this week.

Up until Wednesday, everything was hunky dory.

However, the robot suddenly broke contact with the ESA, and despite efforts from the agency and even from an American satellite, at the time of publication, nothing has been heard from the little probe.

Now, I’m well aware that the chances of anything coming from Mars are – apparently – a million to one.

However, those odds are significantly better than winning the lottery, and hundreds of people do that in the UK every single year.

I’m not suggesting there’s life on Mars.

But again, if classic horror and sci-fi have taught us anything, this doesn’t bode well for poor old Schiaparelli.

More to the point, if there are Martians capable of shooting down multi-million pound spacecraft, what happens when they work out where the intruder came from?

I guess that could be a story for another time, but if nothing else, it’s a welcome distraction from the more tangible terrors on the news at the moment.