If there's something strange in your neighbourhood...
Somebody call Bill Murray and Kristin Wiig, the Royal Family’s in need of some Ghostbusters. Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, recently revealed that she believes one of her and Prince Charles’ stately homes was haunted and refused to go back for years.
In an ITV documentary called The Real Camilla: HRH the Duchess of Cornwall, the royal opened up about Dumfries House - an 18th century Scottish property. Prince Charles brought the home back from the brink in 2007 and worked tirelessly to restore it before it was reopened to the public in 2008.
Camilla said, ‘If you could have seen it when the Prince first spotted it, you wouldn’t have believed it was the same house. It was so sad and unlived in, unloved and neglected.’
She described the heritage building as ‘eerie’ and that partially came down to its supernatural residents. She said, ‘There was definitely a ghost - without a shadow of a doubt. I walked up the steps, got into the hall and I thought, ‘I can’t go any further.’ I literally froze. If my hair could not stand on end, it would have done. I remember thinking I don’t want to come back and I didn’t for years.’
However, she eventually did and said it was like the whole place had changed.
She said, ‘Whatever was there had disappeared. The whole thing seemed to be smiling again.’
Prince Charles invested £45 million of his own funds to purchase the house and its furniture collection literally as it was about to be auctioned off, in the hopes that it would bolster tourism to East Ayrshire. The gorgeous home was previously the subject of an ITV documentary called The Royal Restoration and while there was no mention of exorcists or proton packs, we bet that price tag probably would’ve covered any ghost-related services.
The Camilla-centric documentary also touched on the relationship between her and Prince Charles, which was a point of controversy during his fraught marriage with the late Princess Diana.
Prince Charles was featured and said of Camilla, ‘My darling wife has been absolutely wonderful with all these charities and takes a huge interest. She does have a wonderful way with people. She’s remarkable, really. She’s the best listener in the world. She can get anything out of anybody and find out their history in a very short time.’
The documentary aired on Monday evening on ITV and was intended to show the public a ‘private side of Camilla they’ve never seen before’.
