Hollyoaks has treated its viewers to suitably spooky scenes for Halloween week tonight, as the entire Osborne family seemed to disappear into thin air.

In a creepy instalment, their home was shown recently vacated, with dinner laid out on the table and a pan still on the boil – but there was also a smashed family photo on the floor, furniture knocked over and the Osbornes were nowhere to be seen.

The plot twist was the latest in a tense storyline that saw Jack Osborne (Jimmy McKenna) placed in grave danger when his niece Eva (Kerry Bennett) set out to wreak her revenge on him.

Eva has been looking to tally the score with Jack over a terrible secret he has been harbouring to do with his brother Billy spending decades in prison, seemingly because of him – which left Eva to grow up without a father.

Fans of the Channel 4 soap had already seen Eva try to trick her boyfriend Liam Donovan (Maxim Baldry) into killing Jack, but he managed to persuade her to change her plans.

However, Liam’s calming effect was short lived when Eva spotted Jack laying a wreath in the river on the day of Billy’s funeral, and flew back into a rage against her uncle.

The Osborne family, which includes Jack, Frankie, Darren, Nancy, Charlie, Oscar, Esther and Tom Cunningham, were about to start dinner when a phone call came warning Jack that someone was on their way to kill him, while Eva marched over to their home.

But when Cindy Cunningham (Stephanie Waring) later came in to find the scene of devastation and no clue as to where they had gone in such a hurry, viewers were left wondering whether Eva had managed to get there first.

The episode aired this evening on E4 as a first look programme and is due to be shown tomorrow on Channel 4 at 6.30pm.