Top five spookiest insurance products

Halloween is not the only night of the year people fear the supernatural, as our compilation of the morbid and bizarre but genuine insurance products show.

Alien abduction cover
In the mid-90s, when X Files was all the rage, genuine fear of alien abduction played right into the hands of specialist insurers Goodfellow Rebecca Ingrams Pearson (GRIP).

However, GRIP pulled out of the alien insurance market in 1997 after it emerged members of the Heaven's Gate cult, who had been manipulated by leaders into a mass suicide, had taken out an abduction policy worth $1m per person.

Immaculate conception protection
British Insurance (BI), a subsidiary of Towergate Financial, insured three sisters living in Inverness, Scotland against the possibility of one of them conceiving through divine intervention. Paying £100 per year, the sisters were covered for Messiah-rearing costs up to £1m.

However, in 2006 there were several complaints against BI from angry Catholics and it cancelled the policy.

Werewolf insurance
You can cover against almost any disease or ailment these days, and for a brief period, you could protect yourself against the most ancient and terrifying disease: lycanthropia. Again, it was GRIP which offered a policy to protect people against the cost of turning into a werewolf during its heyday.

Paranormal activity cover
In 2002, Terry Meggs, landlord of the Royal Falcon Hotel, Suffolk, took out a £500 per year policy protecting his property against a ghost he claimed had been throwing glasses around his bar. Legend had it that the hotel, a 500-year-old former girls' school, was haunted by a monk who hanged himself after being caught having an affair with one of the pupils.

The policy, supplied by Ultraviolet Insurance, promised to pay out £1m if staff or customers were killed or injured by the violent spirit.

Vampire insurance
Hollywood's latest line in smouldering, sensitive neck-biters might have hit sales of these policies somewhat, but back when vampires were truly sinister characters, Lloyds of London offered a policy protecting people from an unwelcome visit from Nosferatu.