Who needs Halloween when modern travel is full of these horrors?

Welcome to All Hallows' Eve! I hope you've brought your broomstick, jack-o'-lantern and pitchfork.

Wherever there's a holiday, there's always been a horror story - from Death on the Nile to Deliverance - but today's spectres are far scarier than the headless highwaymen and haunted hotels of old.

Shudder with me as we confront flight-mares, gremlins and things that go bleep in the night. These, dear reader, are the monsters of modern travel.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Beware all who enter the cabin! A hunchbacked horror lurks within.

Gasp as the colossal abomination lurches along the aisle, crushing all within its path. Cower before the human servant labouring beneath its grotesque bulk. Avert your eyes as the ghastly grappling begins.

Heed this, unwary traveller: when there is no more room in hell, someone will still try to stow a bag the size of Godzilla in the overhead locker.

Pity the tormented spirits of the departure hall, trapped in their eternal search for these purgatorial portals.

The airport map says they exist, but they're invisible to the naked eye. Where they claim to be, you will find only a Starbucks or an assistance animal relief area.

Some are legendary. At Charles de Gaulle airport, gate 2G remains so infernally elusive that some believe it only appears every other full moon.

London Heathrow's notoriously furtive gate A10 lures its victims into a duty-free doom loop in the bowels of Terminal 5's shopping precinct. Some survive to tell the tale. Others never leave the Armani counter.

And then there's Sydney Airport's Gate 26. This six-headed horror hides a terrifying true identity: a basement "bussing lounge" of quasi-gates lettered from 26A-F like a diabolical version of Harry Potter's Platform Nine-and-Three-Quarters.

There is no Hogwarts Express, just an interminable ride to an aircraft parked somewhere near Wollongong.

The night is long, the flight is packed. Somehow, you've subdued your airborne Damiens and Carries with a weapon more powerful than holy water: the in-flight entertainment.

All are plugged in. The fury has subsided. Peace reigns at last.

Until the PA aborts Bluey with an announcement at top volume and in four different languages about the on-board duty-free offers. It might as well be an incantation to summon Satan.

The above, from the PoV of all the other passengers.

Similar, but smaller and angrier. Often triggered by turbulence.

Nobody will hear you scream, but everybody hears them. Destroyers of joy, screeching into and out of satanic speakerphones, these noisy nightmares are the scourge of carriage, cabin and cafe.

He's a good bloke, until his room isn't ready at 2pm. Or he's in the last section to board. Or he's told to put his phone away or his seatback upright.

And as you watch his transformation into an accursed creature frothing at the mouth and barking at the moon, admit it: you're just a teeny bit relieved it's not you.

In glitch-prone 2026, travel rage stalks us all. As Norman Bates said: "We all go a little mad sometimes."

"Where's my other flipper?" "Why doesn't this museum have laser tag?" "Sophie threw up on my passport." "I dropped Bunny over the railing. He can't swim." "Those dingos are scary." "ARE WE THERE YET?"

They're here! Disembodied voices, unearthly lights, a possessed shower and the demented screen from Poltergeist. They cannot be unplugged. They're smarter than you. Welcome to your 2026 smart hotel room and its evil master, AI. It's alive!

Governed by a hive mind and an algorithm, the horde shuffles, dead-eyed, towards its prey: a monument, the Mona Lisa. A rock shaped like a heart.

As one, the herd raise their selfie sticks. Then on they go, swamping everywhere, seeing nothing.

Fee, fi... FOMO!

The greatest fear is fear itself. And nothing haunts a holiday quite like the dread of your trip being less perfect than everyone else's.

Know this, TikTok tortured traveller: you are chasing a phantom. A wraith, a will-o'-the-wisp. A myth conjured by influencers and Insta-elves, always just beyond reach.

Like Freddy Krueger, only your belief keeps it alive. So forsake the feed, and swap FOMO for fun because, as that kid in A Nightmare on Elm Street said: "If you turn your back on the monster, it can't hurt you."