Claudia Schiffer's House Is Haunted
Way Of The Ray
Claudia's frightening new house
May 29, 2002 04:59
SUPERMODEL Claudia Schiffer could be for a fright at her new Elizabethan
mansion – because it is supposed to be haunted.
The German beauty and her film producer husband Matthew Vaughn have been
warned to beware of ghostly goings-on at 16th Century Coldham Hall in
Stanningfield, near Bury St Edmunds.
The ghost of a 17th Century nun called Penelope is said to haunt the
house, where the celebrity couple held their wedding reception at the
weekend.
It is also believed to have a pair of "cursed" paintings of a nun and a
mother superior that bring bad luck to anyone who takes them down.
The Ghost Club, which investigates paranormal sightings across Britain,
has written to Schiffer, 31, to tell her about the spooks at the
12-bedroom mansion.
Alan Murdie, chairman of the Ghost Club, which is Britain's oldest
paranormal society, said: "Claudia is very fortunate to own a house with
its very own ghost.
"She has nothing to worry about because ghosts do no harm. If Claudia is
lucky enough to see the nun, she should certainly not panic or be
alarmed. We would love to hear from her to get her account of what she
sees.
"We have written to her and her husband because we want to tell them
about the nun and also the two 'cursed' paintings. We want to know if
they are still hanging on the walls.
"If they are still there, we feel strongly that they should be preserved
and left in place because they are part of Britain's supernatural
heritage."
Mr Murdie, 38, from Bury St Edmunds, said he had been shown the
paintings in Coldham Hall by its former owner when he was a teenager.
"I remember the suggestion then was that the pictures had hung on the
wall for years and there was some sort of convenant on the house which
meant the paintings would stay there if the property was sold," he
added.
Penelope the nun is said to be a member of the Rookwood family which
owned the house for several generations after it was built in 1575 by
Sir Robert Rookwood.
Local legend has it that Penelope is normally sighted at the hall during
the summer when she would have spent holidays there away from her
convent.
A spokeswoman for Schiffer said: "She and Matthew are away on honeymoon
at the moment. This is the first I have heard of any ghost stories.
Maybe when they come back, I will tell them about it."
n Schiffer fans have been warned not to try to catch of glimpse of the
German supermodel at her new home as she will not be there for months.
Multi-millionaire Danish businessman Jens Pilo, the current owner of the
12-bedroom mansion, issued a statement yesterday warning fans of the
superstar couple not to get excited too soon.
"The property has actually not yet been sold to Claudia Schiffer and
Matthew Vaughn, but they have signed an agreement to purchase," he
added.
"However, the completion will not take place until around November and,
hence, it will only be my wife and I living there.
"I am writing this in order not to disappoint your readers if they want
a glimpse of the newlywed couple as they simply will not be here for
half a year or so."
Mr Pilo, a property dealer, spent a fortune on restoring the mansion and
its ground to their original condition after buying the historic hall in
the 1990s from wealthy financier David Hart, a former adviser to
Margaret Thatcher.
Robert E A Harvey
> http://www.eadt.co.uk/content/news/NewsStory.asp?Brand=EADOnline&Category=News&ItemId=IPED28+May+2002+17%3A59%3A28%3A297
The story was initially on annanova, and has been picked up, for
example, by 'celebrity.net' and Hello magazine. The original link is
:
http://www.ghostclub.org.uk/news.html
Coldham Hall has an ancient hundred moot cross, which is a node in the
constellation Scorpio in the Bury Zondiac, a fictitious layout in the
Suffolk countryside, similar to the one alleged to be at Glastonbury