A failure’s guide to watching scary movies in Manchester this Halloween

“I'm scared to close my eyes, I'm scared to open them. We're going to die out here.”

It’s that quote - famously accompanied by a melange of tears and snot dripping from Heather Donahue’s face - that punctuates the memories of any horror fan my age.

The extreme close up of a terrified young woman cowering out from beneath a woolly hat has been much lampooned over the years. But it is most definitely one of the most effective images in modern filmmaking.

I was 14 when The Blair Witch Project was released in UK cinemas in 1999, a few days before Halloween. The advertising campaign was like nothing that came before or after it.

An official website featured fake police reports and newsreel-style interviews and the filmmakers distributed missing persons posters in a bid to convince audiences the footage was real.

Like all teenagers, I was desperate to see it at the cinema. Unfortunately, it had a 15 certificate. “We’ll definitely get in,” a naive school friend insisted. I wasn’t so sure.

Rocking up to the Odeon on Oxford Road, in Manchester, the smell of disinfectant and popcorn peppered our nostrils. We requested four tickets and were immediately asked for ID. We didn’t have any. “I can’t let you in then.” It was disappointing, humiliating, inevitable.

My then tallest friend swivelled on her heel and, while towering over me with all her 5ft 1” stature, accusingly said: “It’s coz YOU look dead young.”

There is a very special shame associated with walking out of a multiplex having failed to acquire tickets. But in the collective opinion of the three friends I was with, the burden lay entirely on my shoulders.

But my thirst for scares wasn’t quelled by failure. Later that year I was found cowering behind a friend during the