In the week or so this year of what we got for a fall season, between the abnormally high temperatures and the all-out assault for Christmas that begins Friday night, there have been some scary things going on.

However, not among these, for a change, is the proposed tuition increase for next year. (If you are paying $1.50 as a senior for every dollar you spent as a freshman on college costs, which is what has happened to in-state students since fall 2000, an 8 percent increase is more along the lines of a “Scooby-Doo” episode than a “Scream” movie.)

Sixty-five years to the day after Orson Welles freaked out the public with his “War of the Worlds” broadcast, the public can be freaked out on bulletins that aren’t made up. Consider the following:

* “I Don’t Know What I Did Last Summer”: New York real estate heir Robert Durst is accused of killing his neighbor, Morris Black, in a scuffle over a gun — then chopping Black up with two saws and an ax.

During his testimony Monday, Durst said he could not remember how he did so. The Associated Press quoted the prosecutor, Kirk Sistrunk, asking “You were drunk when you cut up Morris Black?” Durst responded, “I hope so, yes, sir.”

* “What Ever Happened to New Jersey’s Standards?”: Four boys in a Collingswood, N.J., home were found severely malnourished. The oldest of the four is 19, four feet tall, and weighs only 45 pounds.

What makes this story even scarier is that social workers had supposedly visited the house as many as 38 times, but Department of Human Services Commissioner Gwendolyn Harris said officials have doubts whether the visits took place. “I had staff that were either incompetent, uncaring or who had falsified records,” Harris told the AP. “I have members of this division who have failed children almost to the cost of their very lives.”

The story also said this about the boys’ living conditions: “[They] were locked out of the kitchen and fed a diet of uncooked pancake batter, peanut butter and jelly, and cereal. The boys told investigators they also gnawed on wallboard and insulation. They were found after a neighbor discovered the 19-year-old rummaging through trash for food.” In light of this case, nine workers have been fired. Stories such as this can give any social worker or parent nightmares.

* “Alligator”: Unlike the 1980 movie that had a 50-foot reptile crawling through the sewers of Chicago, this gator was only five feet long but thousands of feet in the air. It escaped from a crate in the baggage hold of a Miami-to-Newark flight Monday. If visions of an alligator running free in a plane scare you, don’t worry; it was still constrained in a burlap bag. And lest you think this was a security lapse, the AP article quoted Tim Wagner, an American Airlines spokesman, as saying their health certificates and other paperwork were in order.

* “Invasion of the Currency Snatchers”: They look like the new $20 bills — the ones that look like the middle was left out to bleach in the sun. They have many characteristics of the new $20 bills. But if you’re in Boston, better take a second look. According to a story posted on the Web site of WKMG, a TV station in Florida, Boston suburbs are already reporting occurrences of counterfeited greenbacks — uh, green-and-peach-backs. All it takes to spot them is a cursory look at the bill in the light, because the security strip and watermark are missing. This story isn’t scary so much as it is a warning to check your cash closely — it gets frightening when you discover you’re out $20.

* Finally, there’s a different type of scary. This type is much in the vein of Freddy or Jason; it keeps coming back while we yell “Make it stop!”

It’s a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas, much like that twilighty show about that zone; it’s “Night of the Living Democrats.”

Yes, there was another debate Sunday night. Except for the absence of Sen. Bob Graham, the series’ first casualty, this episode was similar to those before, split between taking stabs at Bush and stabs in each others’ backs.

The first part was slamming Bush’s postwar Iraq policy or perceived lack of one, yet at the same time explaining why $87 billion shouldn’t be allocated to helping further one. The latter part was attacks on other candidates for their positions on how much of Bush’s tax cuts to repeal.

The sameness of the debates alone is enough to make you run. However, until the candidates suffer a collective attack of amnesia and forget where Iowa is, which will be Jan. 20, 2004, they shall walk among us. Right now Howard Dean is a front-runner in the polls.

President Dean?

Now that’s scary.