FOI 602/25 Paranormal Activity
Date: 24/06/25
Enquiry Reference: 602-25
I write in connection with regards to your Freedom of Information request. Below is your request and our response.
Request for Information on Paranormal, Ghost, and UFO/Alien Sightings
Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I am requesting any records held by Cleveland Police concerning reports or investigations related to paranormal claims, ghost sightings, UFOs, alien encounters, or other unexplained phenomena within the Cleveland area.
Please provide the following information:
- The number of calls or reports made to Cleveland Police regarding paranormal activity, ghost sightings, UFOs, or alien encounters in the last 10 years.
- Details of any investigations or police actions taken in response to such reports.
- Copies or summaries of any official documentation or correspondence related to these matters.
If no such records exist, please confirm this in your response.
Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) places two duties on public authorities. Unless exemptions apply, the first duty at Section 1 (1) (a) is to confirm or deny whether the information specified in a request is held. The second duty at Sec 1(1) (b) is to disclose information that has been confirmed as being held. Where exemptions are relied upon s17 of FOIA requires that we provide the applicant with a notice which: a) states that fact b) specifies the exemption(s) in question and c) states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies.
Your request has now been considered and although the information is held, there is no facility to easily access and redact the information requested.
As there are almost 300 reports and the summary of an incident can be long and would require approximately 5+ minutes to redact.
The cost of providing you with the information is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond and this falls under the exemption of 'Compliance exceeding the appropriate limit' covered by Section 12 (1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and as such this work could not be undertaken.
Therefore, please treat this as a refusal notice under S17(1) of the Freedom of information Act.
In accordance with Section 16 of the Act we have a duty to provide advice and assistance however on this occasion we cannot offer any suggestion on how you could refine this part of your request.
As a gesture of goodwill outside of the Act we are providing you with the following information which was retrieved before the it was realised that this would take in excess of the time stipulated.
The analyst has provided figures based on an incident search for various ‘paranormal activity’ keywords, taken from a similar request. Note that the results are not necessarily saying the incidents relate to Paranormal, but rather feature a keyword in the summary.
The keywords used are as follows, and the table below breaks the volume down across the 10 years requested:
- Ghosts, demons, monsters, paranormal Phenomena, supernatural entities, poltergeist, apparitions, ufo, aliens
|
Year |
Volume of incidents with stated Keywords |
|
2015 |
13 |
|
2016 |
31 |
|
2017 |
19 |
|
2018 |
24 |
|
2019 |
21 |
|
2020 |
21 |
|
2021 |
39 |
|
2022 |
42 |
|
2023 |
44 |
|
2024 |
37 |
|
Grand Total |
291 |
I am unable to provide an answer for question 2 as there is no outcomes recorded for non-crime incidents in the data.
Please note that all statistical data supplied in relation to Freedom of Information requests is a snapshot of data held at the time the request was received by the Freedom of Information office and is subject to constant change/updates.
The Cleveland Police response to your request is unique and it should be noted that Police Forces do not use generic systems or identical procedures to capture and record data therefore responses from Cleveland Police should not be used as a comparison with any other force response you receive.
If you are not satisfied with this response or any actions taken in dealing with your request, you have the right to request an independent internal review of your case under our review procedure. The Freedom of Information Code of Practice (see below link) states that a request for internal review should be made within 20 working days of the date on this response or 40 working days if extenuating circumstances to account for the delay can be evidenced. Public authorities are not obliged to accept internal reviews after this date.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/freedom-of-information-code-of-practice
Yours sincerely
Information Rights Decision Maker