Police are hunting for ‘Spider-Man’ after a series of ‘concerning incidents’ in a small East Sussex town.
For nearly a year, one resident of Hailsham has found parcels left outside their property near Western Road.
Doorbell camera footage showed a figure in a zip-up jacket and and a Spider-Man mask approaching the door during one incident on August 26.
But the mysterious delivery person isn’t always disguised as a superhero.
The latest incident, on December 29, shows a person wearing a cap and a plain mask, with headphones around their neck.
In the footage, they walk up to the door with a parcel before giving the camera a thumbs up.
What’s inside the parcels has not been publicly revealed, but it has concerned the resident enough to report to file a stalking report with the police.
It is not clear whether it has been the same individual each time since the first case on February 13, 2024.
Appealing for CCTV, photos or witnesses, a police spokesperson said: ‘Enquiries into these incidents are ongoing, and we are asking anyone with information to report it to police.’
There have been numerous cases of masked men striking fear into the hearts of villagers and small town residents in recent years.
A ‘gimp man’ with red eyes, a stitched mouth and a black latex bodysuit would jump from the dark and crawl and wriggle across the ground in Somerset in 2019.
One witness said: ‘I thought [it] was a badger. ‘His mask had two white crosses on his eyes and he was in all black.
‘I have honestly never been so frightened in my entire life and drove away so fast.’
Another, Lucy Lodge, said: ‘My first thought was it could be a possible abduction and the person was trying to get me out of my car.
‘It was terrifying although I had only seen them for a few seconds. I didn’t sleep more than three hours that night.’
The ‘Somerset Gimp’ sightings near Claverham and Yatton continued for years before Joshua Hunt, a gardener, was arrested in 2023.
He was banned from ‘crawling, wriggling or writhing on the ground’ in a full black bodysuit or mask in public for five years.
Several other sightings have been reported involving different masked individuals since then.
However, in one case it turned out the man just had a fondness for wearing a dark hoody, cargo pants, fabric covering the lower part of his face, and occasionally a pair of wellington boots.
Police, unsurprisingly, declined to investigate.
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