If there’s something strange in your neighbourhood, who you gonna call?

Kent Police, of course – that’s if a list of some of the weirdest calls to the force over the last ten years is anything to go by.

A Freedom of Information request on reported paranormal activity in Kent revealed 50 strange reported incidents since 2013, with calls referring to “zombies on a house” in Thanet, a “UFO” in Sutton-at-Hone, and one intriguing call from Medway informing police that “my sister thinks she's a vampire”.

Kent Police declined to offer further information on almost all the calls, with some relating to vulnerable people, but others remain unexplained.

In April 2015 police confirmed a man reported being concerned about something that landed in a field with strange flashing lights, but although officers attended the scene, nothing fitting the description of the craft was located.

So was the man seeing things? Perhaps, but he wasn’t the only one – just a few months earlier in January that year, news reports record another man said he’d seen a ‘saucer-shaped object’ in the sky above Bexleyheath and Swanley, which had hovered momentarily and then ‘shot-off’.

So did the Swanley UFO return to land at Sutton-at-Hone? And what would police have done if they’d accosted it?

Flying an unlicensed vehicle onto private property is surely an offence that would warrant impounding the craft, before summoning the owners to court and slapping them with a hefty fine. But sadly for KentOnline’s court reporters, no such action was taken, and the unidentified offenders had long vanished into the night before officers arrived at the scene.

Of course other strange calls are far more easily explained. Reports of a ‘Sheppey Zombie Attack’ in Swale in October 2015, coincide rather unmysteriously with the Sheppey Zombie Attack event that ran in Sheppey in the same month.

Thousands descended on Sheerness to take part in the event, which saw people trying to make their way to ‘safe-zones’ while ‘undead’ characters with gruesome makeup stalked the seafront in search of brains to eat.

Thankfully no-one had their brains eaten for real, and the zombie attack was merely reported to the police for information – but perhaps other similar events felt real enough to some to scare them into calling the police. Just a year previously in October 2014, a call from Thanet reported ‘zombies on a house’ in the same month the Winter Gardens in Margate hosted a Zombie Apocalypse event.

But not all zombie reports relate to a fancy-dress event. A report of “people acting like zombies” in Swale, in March 2019, was recorded simply as “drunken or rowdy behaviour”, which means the offenders were unlikely to have been genuine undead creatures of the night – and by the same token reports of people ‘acting like zombies’ could be recorded on any given weekend, in any town around the country.

Other cases were more clearly related to people suffering from mental health issues, and in such incidents, police were able to provide help by giving advice or seeking medical assistance.

When someone reported that “my sister thinks she’s a vampire” in Medway in October 2021, police say officers attended the scene and the individual involved was transferred to hospital. Likewise, a report from someone who said they had “been witchcrafted” in Thanet in Feburary 2014 resulted in the same outcome, as did someone reporting they had been “possessed by the devil” in Sevenoaks in 2015.

In other cases, officers were able to resolve situations by simply giving advice, such as in October 2016, when a caller from Gravesham informed the police call centre “I am going to lay with the devil”, and in Canterbury in May 2020, when a man reported he was “waiting for zombie apocalypse”.

Successive reports of a “ghost problem” and “religious exorcism” in Shepway in December 2014 both resulted in officers visiting the location and completing welfare checks, while reports of a “witch hunt” in Swale, in February 2018, was recorded as a “case of harassment”, with police offering advice to the caller.

Other cases are less clear – a report in Tonbridge and Malling of “devil, jumping off bridge” in March 2023, could perhaps have been a short-form way of police recording a “daredevil”. But who knows - maybe it was the devil himself.

The log report ends with “Police attended and the individual has been located”, raising the unlikely prospect that officers from Kent Police apprehended the dark lord of the underworld himself.

That would be big news indeed - coming just a month after Darth Vader (or someone dressed like him) was escorted from Edgbaston cricket ground – and particularly great considering the dark times we’re living through. But sadly Kent Police did not wish to comment further on the report.

If you’re into all things paranormal, you might well speculate that police silence on the matter speaks volumes, and that they’re hoping to quash news of one of the biggest arrests in the history of international policing. After all, Satan’s first hearing at Maidstone Magistrates’ Court would create a logistical nightmare for security, with the press descending on the court and crowds causing traffic chaos on the County Town’s one-way system.

Others might suggest they just don’t want to waste any more time by commenting on reports that might already be deemed a waste of police time.

Either way, it’s devilishly intriguing, and of course... the truth is out there.