(NEXSTAR) – The Playboy Mansion was full of things that go bump in the night, according to one of Hugh Hefner’s ex-girlfriends — and they weren’t the things you’re imagining.
Bridget Marquardt, a former Playboy bunny and one Hefner’s many ex-flames, recently revealed that she once saw an apparition in her bedroom at the Playboy Mansion.
Marquardt, perhaps best known as one of the stars of the E! network’s “The Girls Next Door,” made the claims on an episode of the “Dark House” podcast, saying she spotted the ghost while hanging out in her bedroom with her sister and a friend.
“All of a sudden, out of the corner of all of our eyes, we saw a woman standing in my closet area. And there’s no exit out there, and I’m on the second floor, and there’s no other doorway in my room,” Marquardt told the podcast’s hosts.
“She had black, long, kind of stringy hair,” Marquardt added. “She was very pale, very skinny, wearing a white t-shirt that looked way too big on her, and she had on… like black acid-washed jeans, and she was just standing there staring.”
Upon seeing the spirit, Marquardt said her friend immediately started crying, while her sister remained in shock. But even though the ghost vanished almost immediately, Marquardt claims she recognized the woman as a “social secretary” at the Playboy Mansion, whom she met long ago during a test shoot. By the time Marquardt came to live with Hefner years later, she said the woman had passed of cancer.
“I’m pretty sure that it was her, standing there, and I think that she came to see the new addition to the mansion,” Marquardt said, referring to a dog she adopted that same day. “She came to see the new pet.”
Marquardt’s stories didn’t end there. She also claimed that Holly Madison, her co-star on “The Girls Next Door,” had once seen a female apparition in the mansion’s gym, but didn’t really believe her own eyes, and “didn’t know how to wrap her head around that.”
“People have ghost stories dating back decades,” added Marquardt, who now hosts her own paranormal podcast called “Ghost Stories.” Hefner, she said, often used to tell of a previous inhabitant who suffered a fatal fall in the hall. Marquardt, too, said she always felt something “off” about the game room, in particular. The housekeeping staff shared similar concerns, she said, claiming that they always heard doors slamming, and saw some of the games turning on by themselves.
“I never felt right when I was in there,” said Marquardt.
Marquardt also said that Hefner came to her in a dream shortly after he died, but claimed his presence felt too “real” for it to be “just a dream.”
“He said, ‘My darling!’ and he put his arms around me,” she said. “I could feel the hug. I could feel his smoking jacket. I could smell his cologne. It was so real.”
“Dark House,” a podcast launched in September by House Beautiful, is hosted by Hadley Mendelsohn and Alyssa Fiorentino, two of the magazine’s editors who describe themselves as “Interior design editors obsessed with the paranormal.”
