A Belsize Park woman whose home was broken into 13 times in a week claims police told her to exorcise her flat as they suspected ghosts might be behind the break-ins.

Caroline Williams, 39, of Howitt Road, has sought refuge at her parents’ Hampstead home after her locks were picked, her personal possessions stolen or moved, and strange notes of poetry stuck to her fridge.

Ms Williams, who volunteered for this year’s Hampstead Summer festival committee, called the police.

But she claims officers refused to dust for fingerprints and blamed the unexplained intrusions on the supernatural.

She said: “Police said this is completely unexplained and there’s no point taking forensics – this is about other forces that are not human. They said, we suggest you get an exorcism.

“I don’t think spirits take purses and I don’t think they can move magnetic poetry.”

The former executive director of charity Weight Concern, added: “This is traumatic and distressing. I’m a strong person and I’ve tried to rise above it but when you have no proper support from the police from this kind of danger, that’s the biggest problem.

“I’ve had poetry left on my fridge using magnetic letter fridge magnets, black and yellow hazard tape left on my garden steps, roses left on my floor.

“I’ve had a bowl smashed and I’ve had things taken. It is very strange.

“I’m a single woman in a flat and I’m absolutely terrified, but I have been told not to call the boys in blue.”

The police have denied advising her to carry out an exorcism.

Ms Williams moved into her flat two years ago and said she used to wake up to find her front and back doors wide open, but had brushed it off as her being absent minded.

But she suspects more sinister forces are behind the latest spate of break-ins.

She first noticed something was awry when she returned home from the shops last week to find her front and back doors wide opened.

She called a locksmith, but within minutes of his departure her doors had been broken into again.

“The locksmith came back and he said that he had never seen anybody unpick a mortic lock he had installed in his time as a locksmith,” she said.

“It is totally unexplained.”

Her home was targeted a further 12 times.

A police spokesman said: “Police in Camden received a report of two crime related incidents on June, 19, on Howitt Road. Officers attended and investigated all possible lines of enquiry and the case has now been closed.”