Bored stiff of zombies? Sick to the back teeth of vampires? Disenchanted with witches? Tired of restless spirits?

Halloween can be a predictable time of year with everyone reeling out the same old spooky stories and costumes – but it doesn’t have to be that way.

While most Kent towns and villages are bursting at the seams with ghosts and creaky floorboards, the county’s backwaters and byways withhold a few uniquely dark and strange stories that surely warrant an outing at this time of year – some of which might even contain a grain of truth.

The Crow Sandwich of Cranbrook

One man’s hell is another man’s heaven, and back in the early 1980s the Duke of York pub in Cranbrook High Street was probably described as both on numerous occasions.

According to those who remember it, including Grammy award-winning musician Jon Cleary, the place – which is no longer open – was packed with dreamers and rogues, and ruled over by landlord, Deano.

Jon recalls on summer nights how you could sometimes see the whole pub slink off after hours, into nearby woodland, to the secret den of Woodpecker Island, where the drinking would carry on around a campfire into the early hours, and anyone who passed out would be carried off to slumber in a nearby graveyard.

Weird? Sure, but not as weird as the supposed menu, which although lost to the mists of time, sounds like it was designed to put people off eating there.

On one occasion, a group of tourists wandered into the pub in search of a lunchtime bite and must have thought they’d ended up into a genuine English folk horror story. Having asked for the menu, the story goes that Deano smiled, nodded and headed out to the back of the pub, before returning with a meal for a regular who was sitting alone at a nearby table.

“Your crow sandwich, sir” said Deano, placing the dish onto the table – the dish being an actual dead crow in between two slices of bread. Keeping a straight face, said regular allegedly took a bite from the sandwich – or surely just the bread – and the group of newcomers promptly left.

The non-phantom sleepwalker of West Malling

Over to West Malling, and the Scott House Bed and Breakfast, owned by Ernest Smith and his wife Margaret.

Former KM reporter Nick Lillitos takes up the story, writing back in 2011.

“Ernest Smith was in deep slumber, snoring away next to his 70-year-old wife Margaret when their lodger sleepwalked in their bedroom, gripping her arm in the dark of night.

“Their High Street 18th century bed and breakfast period property, called Scott House, is said to be haunted by the 'happy' ghosts of giggling and laughing children.

“But the hand that gripped a terrified Mrs Smith was not that of a child, but of a man who had checked in the day before.

“‘He came for bed and breakfast but somehow sleepwalked into our bedroom,’ Mrs Smith told the Kent Messenger, ‘I was terrified as he stood standing over me in the dark, holding my arm.’

“‘Thankfully after a few nudges, I managed to wake Ernest from his snoring.

“‘He shouted 'get out' but our lodger just stood there asleep, and in the end Ernest had to escort him back to his bed.’

“‘In the morning the lodger had no recollection of it. We never said anything and neither did he.’”

The General’s Tombstone

Some stories, even though tantalisingly scant, can offer the faintest glimpse of real terror through the smallest detail.

Over on the slopes of Blue Bell Hill, the stones at Kits Coty House, together with the nearby Countless Stones and White Horse Stone, have been the subject of centuries of legend, speculation, intrigue and fear.

Were they tombstones from a legendary battle between Anglo-Saxons and ancient Britons? That was one theory for years, but the accepted history now is that they were part of long-barrows, dating from a much earlier time, in the early Neolithic period around 6,000 years ago.

You can still go and see the stones and ponder their significance as you walk around them – except one of them. According to historical accounts, a huge monolith known as The General’s Tombstone once stood at the end of the Kits Coty House, around 70 yards from the chamber, but was buried by a tenant in 1787.

Why it was buried, we don’t know for sure. Perhaps it was getting in the way of the plough, or perhaps it was obscuring the view. Or perhaps it was causing problems of a less tangible, more sinister nature.

We can only speculate, but whatever the problem with The General’s Tombstone, it was still a problem almost a century later when it was blown up in 1867.

Why? If anyone knows please get in touch, even if from beyond the tombstone.

Aleister Crowley

One man who would probably have a thing or two to say about The General’s Tombstone is Aleister Crowley – but you might not want to spend too long chatting to him.

Once dubbed the Wickedest Man in the World by the press, Crowley rose to infamy in the early decades of the 20th Century as an occultist, philosopher, ‘magician’. He founded his own religion –Thelema – which was centred around a central axiom “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law", and he basically spent his life doing just that.

It’s a lesser-known fact that prior to that he also went to Tonbridge School, where it should be stressed nothing along the lines of Thelema was on the curriculum.

So much has been written about Crowley, it’s impossible to condense his life into a few paragraphs, but a snippet from a Guardian interview with him at his home in Kent offers a glimpse into the man and how society viewed him.

Crowley had been due to speak at Cambridge about the 15th century magician Gilles de Rais, but the dons had decided to ban him, reported the Guardian, adding: “Mr Crowley, when interviewed at his home in Kent, said he considered that there was ‘some underhand business’ behind the prohibition.

“He said he thought the trouble was due to a report that he was responsible, directly or indirectly, for the death in Sicily of a young Oxford undergraduate, Mr Raoul Loveday, who was his secretary.

“He also said: ‘Perhaps the refusal to let me lecture has come because Gilles de Rais is said to have killed 500 children in ritual murder and in some way this was connected with myself, since the accusation that I have not only killed but eaten children is one of the many false statements that have been circulated about me in the past.’”

All of which shows some of those banned from lecturing at universities today have a fair way to go to match Mr Crowley.