Horrors! He’s not wearing a seat belt ...

Shoppers have been spooked by the appearance of a skeleton in the driver’s seat of a car. The grinning figure was spotted in the Edinburgh Road car park in Ashford and is perhaps a playful way to keep would-be thieves at bay.

One passer by said that at first she couldn’t quite see what it was, but when she went to look closer she got an early fright before Halloween.

It certainly tickled our online readers, with several posting witty replies. One said: “He couldn’t get out the car and go shopping – he had no body to go with.”

Kent Online reader Andycam said he suspected some skullduggery, while Frank said: “Skeletons get right under my skin.”

Some said the chap looked like any other drivers, and some speculated that Lord Lucan had finally been found after decades on the run.

At any rate, we leave it to our readers to pick the bones out of this story.

Our Ashford correspondent Dennis Garland was taken aback by something he saw while wandering around the town centre last week on the lookout for ‘news’ to include in his community column.

Dennis said: “I noticed one of the new Kingdom litter enforcement officers ahead of me. The lady had stopped and was doing something with her machine.

“As I got closer she put her hand into her trouser pocket to get something.

“Unfortunately, a piece of screwed up paper also came out the pocket.

“I, therefore, drew the officer’s attention to the piece of paper on the footway and told her where it had come from.

“She was completely unaware of its presence. She apologised, picked it up and thanked me for drawing her attention to it.

“I did think it rather ironic that someone paid to deter the public from dropping litter in the street should be caught inadvertently doing just that.”

The great-great-grandson of Charles Dickens brought his spooky one-man show to Ashford just in time for Halloween, and it went down a storm, according to those who saw it.

Gerald Dickens performed two of the famous author’s most dramatic readings – Sikes and Nancy and The Signal-Man – at Revelation St Mary’s on Wednesday of last week.

The 11th century church provided the perfect setting for the atmospheric, candlelit performance.

Gerald created his first one-man show in 1993, a solo performance of the yuletide classic A Christmas Carol, and others have followed.

Gerald, who is also president of the Dickens Fellowship of Rochester and Chatham, regularly performs in theatres, hotels and stately homes.