Double takes
At a time when there have been plenty of emergencies of one sort or another being announced, one welcomes the news that the police do not consider being visited by a ghost as a top policing priority. This emerges from a story accompanying the headline “Haywards Heath woman calls 999 accusing a neighbour of ‘sending a ghost to haunt them’”, which appeared in the Mid Sussex Times (22 May 2021), apparently later the same day.
Shortly after midnight that morning, Mid-Sussex police received just such a call summoning them to confront a ghost persecuting the unnamed woman. According to Inspector Darren Taylor, the caller readily shared her supernatural concerns with attending officers. In response they proceeded to reassure her “about the nature of ghosts” and then issued a warning message about only using the 999 number for real emergencies. Referring to how the police get all kinds of “weird and wonderful calls” Inspector Taylor stated: “It’s absolutely key that we allow people who need the police straight away to be able to get through” and that “for nonemergency incidents, the public are advised to call 101 or email Sussex Police.”
Not that the criminal law would be much assistance in any event, presuming such a claim to be true. The plea for help came three centuries too late to expect much in the way of any official response. Witchcraft and conjuring up evil spirits to go and persecute people have not been deemed crimes in law since 1736, save for the exception of falsely pretending to conjure spirits, which survived until 1951.
Contrary to much 1985). A French police officer, Emile Tizané, acknowledged the same problem with repeated poltergeist visitations as a puzzle detectives could not solve or prevent ( (‘), 1951).
