"Girls Next Door" Star Bridget Marquardt Says the Playboy Mansion Is Haunted
The former Playmate revealed that she saw a ghost in her bedroom and had other spooky encounters
It's one of the most well known mansions in the country, and, apparently, it's also a haunted one. Former The Girls Next Door star and Hugh Hefner's ex-girlfriend Bridget Marquardt appeared on a recent episode of the podcast Dark House and shared that she believes the Playboy Mansion is haunted. Marquardt talked about a specific instance in which she had a paranormal experience in the house. She also talked about being visited by Hefner in a dream after his death.
Marquardt lived in the Playboy Mansion from 2002 to 2009. She also appeared on the reality TV series The Girls Next Door about Hefner's three girlfriends at the time—Marquardt, Holly Madison, and Kendra Wilkinson—from 2005 to 2009. After her time on the show, she hosted a TV series about travel, but then took a major career turn and became a paranormal investigator and has hosted her own podcast, Ghost Magnet, since 2019. Read on to see what Marquardt has to say about the spirits she thinks are inhabiting her former home.
RELATED: See Bridget From Girls Next Door Now, 12 Years After She Left the Show.
Marquardt says she saw a ghost in her bedroom.
On the podcast, Marquardt shared that she saw a ghost in her room at the Playboy Mansion when she was hanging out with her sister, a friend, and her new dog. "We were talking, having a glass of wine, the TV was on," the 48-year-old said. "And 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 unless you came in through a window or something." Marquardt also said that when she turned to look at the woman straight on, she disappeared.
She believes she knows who the woman was.
Marquardt recognized the woman who appeared as someone she had seen early on at the mansion. "Even though it was out of the corner of my eye, I feel like I saw fairly clearly what it was," she explained. "It was a woman, and she had black long kind of stringy hair … She was very pale, very skinny. She was wearing a white T-shirt that looked way too big on her and she had on black acid wash jeans."
Marquardt said that a couple of years before she lived in the mansion, she stayed over for a couple of days when she was testing to be a Playmate. "I met this woman who was a social secretary at the mansion. She was super friendly, we stayed up all night chatting. She was kind of like the house mom. She knew about all the pets and she knew about all the girls." Marquardt found out that she died a few years later of cancer. "I am pretty sure it was her that was standing there, and I think that she came to see the new addition to the mansion, the new pet that was there," she continued. "It was shocking, but it wasn't scary."
Marquardt also gave other evidence that the mansion is haunted.
Marquardt said that there are years and years of ghost stories about the Playboy Mansion and that Hefner told her one about the home's original owner when she moved in. Supposedly, one of the original owners was either pushed or fell to her death in the home and went on to haunt the mansion. She also said, "There is something off about that gamehouse. I never felt right when I was in there." Apparently, housekeeping staff at the mansion didn't like to go into the gamehouse alone and had experienced arcade games turning on by themselves, slamming doors, and a weird feeling. Marquardt claimed that she's seen games turn on by themselves, too.
For more celebrity news delivered right to your inbox, sign up for our daily newsletter.
One of her fellow Girls Next Door also had a paranormal experience in the house.
When Madison appeared on Marquardt's podcast, she told a story about seeing what she thinks may have been a ghost in the gym at the mansion. When Madison entered the gym to use the treadmill, she saw a woman she didn't recognize. "She was very contemporary looking," she said. "She had just like regular highlighted blonde hair in a ponytail, hot pink workout top, black workout pants. And she didn't look at me or acknowledge me at all. She just was looking straight forward and walked toward where the weights were around the corner." Madison said they "met all kinds of weirdos," so she didn't think much of it. But, after her workout, she decided to go introduce herself and the woman was gone. The house has some secret passageways, and Madison noticed one she wasn't familiar with in that section of the gym and figured the woman left through it. Later, when she went to check out this secret passageway, she found that it was just a small closet.
Madison also talked about finding a secret bathroom in the mansion that was never used. Once she started hanging out in there, she noticed that the toilet began flushing on its own.
Marquardt saw Hefner in a dream after he died.
On the Dark House podcast, Marquardt told another story—not about a ghost, but about Hefner visiting her in a dream. She said that she was sad she wasn't invited to his funeral and didn't get to visit him before his death, so she didn't feel like she had closure or a goodbye with him. "A few months after he died, I had this dream," she said. "This dream was like nothing I ever had before. It was so real."
"I could tell that the house was abandoned and he was gone, but yet I was there to see him," she explained. "And then all of a sudden he comes down the stairs, and he threw his arms out. He gave me what we call his big laugh, like this big cackle that he did. He said, 'My darling!' And he put his arms around me, and I felt the hug. I could feel his smoking jacket. I could smell his cologne. It was so real." She said she's talked to people about it since, who told her you don't usually have a sense of smell or touch in a dream, which led her to believe "that happened, but it happened at this unconscious level." She added, "I literally felt like I said goodbye to him."
RELATED: See the Photo of Holly Madison as a Playboy Bunny That "Terrified" Her.
