Halloween appears to be enjoying a good exhuming. Many would say a lolly-fest is the one place superstition belongs. Still, you may have noticed that people who say they aren’t superstitious often hedge. As a friend said, “I’m not really superstitious, but I never keep my hat on inside – the second I’m in the door the hat comes off.”

The real thing isn’t hard to recognise when you meet it. Years ago I played cricket with a man who never went out to bat without a mini Garfield toy protruding from his back pocket. Once, during tea, a teammate hid the furry charm in a box of Lan Choo teabags – our superstitious friend, all set to resume batting, reacted to its vanishing as if he’d lost his passport an hour before boarding. The same human owned and ran an engineering firm.