STREET lights mysteriously went out across Bolton last night and concerns for children's safety were voiced as they headed out for Halloween trick-or-treating.

Street lamps went out around the borough last night, with streets from Westhoughton to Farnworth being plunged into darkness.

No power cuts had been reported by Electricity North West in the area, making the power outage even spookier on Halloween night.

Residents began to worry about their children, saying that the lack of lights 'made it impossible' to take their youngsters out for the festivities.

This morning, Bolton Council has announced that the problem has been fixed thanks to hours of work from engineers, putting the outage down to 'an operating system fault'.

A council spokesperson said: “We know that there was an issue with street lights in some areas of Bolton on Thursday night.

“We are pleased that the issue has now been resolved.

“The software operator had engineers working throughout the night to fix the operating system fault.”