Adele’s remarks about a previous home continue to haunt new buyers.
The 16-time Grammy winner, 36, rented a 10-bedroom mansion in West Sussex for six months in 2012 but later accused it of being haunted, rendering it “unsellable,” the English estate’s current owner Nicholas Sutton raised recently.
She made the claims during a 2012 CBS interview with Anderson Cooper, saying the Lock House “gives me the creeps” and was “all quite scary, really.”
Adele also went to the extent of hiring a female bodyguard to stay at the property after hearing unexplained noises, as per a previous report by the New York Daily News.
Sutton has noted that the singer’s comments “negatively impacted future marketing efforts and continue to affect the property’s reputation to this day,” per planning documents obtained by UK outlet The Times.
The property—now listed for £5,995,000—has several amenities, including seven en suite bedrooms, an indoor swimming pool, and a guest cottage as well as an in-ground swimming pool outside with gardens and a tennis court.
The property was built in the 1900s for the wealthy Harvey family.
In 1933, a 23-year-old nurse who worked for a wealthy couple in the village of Partridge Green was found dead on the nearby railway line.
In the 1950s, Lock House was twice targeted by thieves after the Harvey family renovated and extended the property. Several murders also took place in the village after 1955.
Per the BBC, the property was then divided and sold as 26 different lots in 1971 before being bought by a church and used as a convent from the 1970s.
The Convent of the Visitation closed when the order of nuns ‘could not maintain the building’, a parish councillor said in 2002. It was then converted back into a home after being purchased by the current owner Sutton in 2003.
Sutton “actively tried to sell the property for about 14 years” but only received one offer in August 2020 that was rescinded “after learning about the property’s supposed haunted status, which was publicly mentioned by Adele during her tenancy.”
Sutton is now seeking permission to transform the mansion into three houses, and to also convert an existing garage and flat into a cottage, given the “lack of demand for the property in its current form,” per The Times.
Sutton added that the proposal will preserve the historical significance of the home.
Adele is one of many celebrities, including Joan Rivers and Nicolas Cage, who have claimed to have experienced paranormal presence in their homes.