Entertainment

Sleb Safari: Courteney Cox's haunted house

Maeve Connoly

Maeve Connolly

Maeve is the deputy digital editor at The Irish News. She has worked for the company since 2000.

  Courteney Cox once lived in a haunted house
  Courteney Cox once lived in a haunted house   Courteney Cox once lived in a haunted house

HAUNTED houses give Sleb Safari the heeby jeebies and it doesn’t care for all your talk of paranormal activity unless you’re suggesting we sit down to watch Ghostbusters.

How and ever, throw a celebrity into the haunted house mix and Sleb Safari is all ears, which is exactly why Courteney Cox’s story ia extra appealing. 

She bought a house in LA that had belonged to both Gypsy Rose Lee’s house and Carole King which immediately makes it 100 times more interesting.

Everything was rosy in the Laurel Canyon mansion until Carole King popped by for a visit and dropped a by-the-way that went something like “By the way there’s a ghost in this house”.

Sleb Safari would have had its bags packed before Carole King had reached the bottom of her teacup but Courteney wasn’t fazed by a little old haunting.  

“I didn’t believe at first,” she told Jimmy Kimmel.

“But other people who would stay there with me, like friends of mine, said they felt an encounter with a woman who was sitting on the edge of the bed. And I was, like, ‘Yeah, whatever’.”

A woman? Sitting on the edge of your bed? While you were in it? Sleb Safari would be in a taxi home while Courteney’s house was still ringing with its screams.

Back to Carole King, who seemed to have quite the interest in a house she had sold. Carole came over, again, for a seance but Courteney says she was so starstruck at being in the singer/songwriter’s company that she “didn’t listen to a word”.

And life continued in the Laurel Canyon property. Until…

“I was at the house one day not being a believer,” Courteney explained.

“The doorbell rang. It was a UPS guy, or something, and I opened the door and he said, ‘Do you know this house is haunted?’ And I go, ‘Yeah, why? Why do you think that?’ And he goes, ‘Because there is someone standing behind you.’ And I was like, ‘Let’s sell’.” 

Sleb Safari has many, many questions but chief among this is why Courteney didn’t believe her friends but did believe a stranger? And how do you reckon the famous person who bought the house after Courteney feels about it now? Best of luck to the estate agent.

Courteney was the only person who didn’t have an experience with her own ghostly guest which was exactly how it started for Paul O’Grady.

Paul’s friends noticed a pong on his stairs which they identified as a perfume that’s no longer produced. Difficult to believe, but it wasn’t a fragrance from the Ghost range but Joy, by French fashion designer Jean Patou. Mais oui!

For a long time Paul did a Courteney and dismissed his friend’s concerns. Until… one night he awakened from slumber and went downstairs to get a drink and “it hit me”. No, not the ghost, her perfume.

Paul’s UPS man was a young woman he was seated beside at a function who was friends with a relative of the lady who used to live in his house and she passed on 'a message', asking Paul if he had ever smelled perfume on the staircase.

Paul was quite content to continue living in the house and it’s true that a pleasant fragrance is so much more civilized than a ghostly figure at the end of the bed

There’s a lot to be said for buying a new build isn’t there?

Love Island is homeless

Breaking Love Island news - the villa is unavailable for summer 2022 and ITV bosses are looking for a new property.

Recent series of the (awful) show have been filmed in a rented villa in Majorca but now a new property is needed for the housemates.

Might Sleb Safari be so bold as to suggest Gwrych Castle in Wales, where I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! Has set up camp for the past two series?

The conditions will be more basic and the sun not so bright but it will bring a new vibe to the show don’t you think?

Gwrych Castle in North Wales 
Gwrych Castle in North Wales  Gwrych Castle in North Wales 

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