Ghosts and ghouls are coming to town, but even these paranormal fiends don't scare the Metropolitan Police, who have issued a Halloween crime prevention guideline. The Halloween Code states that children shouldn’t be out without adult supervision, and care should be taken to not scare the vulnerable.
Aviva Investor found that more than three-quarters of spooked out Brits admit to hiding from trick-or-treaters. Their fears seem well founded with Norwich Union figures revealing claims increases of 150% on Halloween.
The Halloween story was decided by the timing of the holiday event. The information was attained from the local police press-release bureau. It was approached with a relatively light-hearted nature but not too much so as to cater for the serious nature of the evening’s possible outcomes.
The police press release was very basic so the internet was use for further research to attain figures adding punch to the power of the story. Since this was a short story for a local paper the readers would largely be elderly which made this story perfect for their attentions. Also as it was a fairly simple point it was a short story so as not to milk too much the fear factor involved with a holiday experience.
The story avoided references to local areas and remained concise so as to afford its availability to all newspapers. Since it was a rather bland story without figures I added those and complemented them with a photo to further the attraction. I used a standard Halloween image so as to attract the eye of the reader to a topic that would be in their mind anyway at the that time of year.
I found keeping the issue concise and to the point rather challenging as it was tempting to use puns and jokes with regard to a holiday issue. However since the crux of the story was serious I endeavoured to avoid these things and stick to facts.
