Ghosts & Demons etc

19th May 2025

Our Ref: FOI2025/03322

Request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 Ref No: FOI2025/03322

I write in connection with your request for information received on 16th April.  I note you seek access to the following information:

1. The number of reported incidents received by your police force from members of the public or your own officers that involve the following terms in their descriptions or classifications:
   
   a. Ghosts
   b. Demons
   c. Monsters
   d. Paranormal phenomena
   e. Supernatural entities
   f. Poltergeists
   g. Apparitions
   h. UFO's
   i. Aliens
   j. Other similar terms associated with paranormal or supernatural activity.
   
   The time period I am requesting covers the past five years, from 1st January 2020 to 1st January 2025, broken down year by year.
   
   Additionally, if available:
   
   2. please provide any information or estimates regarding the cost to the police force of responding to these incidents
   
   broken down year by year,
   
   a. either as individual call-outs or
   
   b. an average cost per type of report.

I am required by the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (The Act) to handle all requests in a manner that is blind to the identity of the requestor. Any information released in response to a request is regarded as being published and therefore, in the public domain without caveat.

Response - Following enquiries within the Constabulary please see our response below.

Please see the following caveat

The below tables show the total numbers, and only 2 apply if we only count incidents with term mentioned in the description as most are not found in description but sometimes in the comments. Data is then split by those incidents that show as attended (due to having an arrival date time for officer(s) or those that don’t.

Please also note that the data is very low quality, as we think most of these incidents do not actually relate to the terms being used to actually refer to monsters, demons ghosts or UFOs etc… but are present because of What 3 words locations using one of those terms or usage in another context. We have tried to remove some such as frequent references to (mobile phone) ‘ghost mode’ but many other erroneous uses remain.

2. No information Held

The numerical data presented in this response is an un-audited snapshot of un-published data sourced from "live" systems and is subject to the interpretation of the original request by the individual extracting the data.