Tunnels beneath haunted Clifton Hall were said to have been used by Satanists!

                

“We were like the

family in The Others,”

says millionaire who

fled ‘haunted’

£3.6m mansion

By ANDY DOLAN
 21st September 2008

The U.K. Mail Online

When businessman Anwar Rashid bought

the 52-room Clifton Hall,

he thought it complemented his

millionaire lifestyle perfectly.

But Mr Rashid yesterday claimed his family

was left so terrorised by a series of ghostly

sightings he had to give up the property

to his bank, only eight months

after being handed the keys.

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The final straw was the appearance of

apparently unexplained blood spots on

their 18-month-old son’s bed clothes.

 

Mr Rashid, 32, compared his experience to

the 2001 horror film The Others. 

In the film, which stars Nicole Kidman,

a family is apparently forced out of

their country home by ghosts.

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Spooked: Anwar Rashid said he and his family were driven out of their mansion by ghosts

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Mr Rashid said:

‘Clifton Hall is a beautiful property.

I fell for its beauty but behind the facade

it is haunted.

We were like the family in The Others.

The ghosts didn’t want us to be there.’

He said the first experience came

hours after the family moved in.

.

 

‘There was a knock on the wall,’ he said.

‘We heard this, “Hello, is anyone there?”.

‘Two minutes later we heard the man’s voice again.

I got up to have a look but the doors were

locked and the windows were closed.’

.

 

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Mr Rashid, wife Nabila, 25,

and their four children bought the

house in Clifton, Nottinghamshire,

in November 2006. 

The family moved in two months later,

along with Mr Rashid’s brother and their parents.

Mr Rashid, who is worth £25million and made

his money through a chain of nursing homes

and a hotel in Dubai, said the house then

remained quiet for several months until

one of the maids said she saw a grey

figure sitting on her bed.

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He claimed that things began to get

really scarywhen the ghosts started

to take on the form of his children. 

‘On one occasion my wife went downstairs

to make milk for the baby at 5am and she

saw our eldest daughter watching TV,’

the businessman added.

.

 

‘My wife realised something was up,

so she went back upstairs to check on

her and found her fast asleep in bed.

When we found red blood spots on

the baby’s quilt,

that was the day my wife said

she’d had enough.

We didn’t even stay that night.’

The hall, which dates back to the

Norman Conquest, has 17 bedrooms,

ten reception rooms, ten bathrooms,

a gym and a cinema.

Charles I stayed briefly in 1632.

According to legend,

a woman dressed in white jumped

from a window to her death,

while tunnels in the grounds

were said to have been used by Satanists.

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The family moved out of the house in

August last year and Mr Rashid found

he could not sell it. 

He then stopped paying the mortgage in

January 2008 ‘as a last resort’ so that the

bank would eventually repossess,

which happened on Thursday. 

 

In an effort to drive the spirits from the mansion,

Mr Rashid called in the Ashfield Paranormal

Investigation Network, based in nearby Sutton-in-Ashfield.

Lee Roberts, team leader of the network

and a serving police officer, said:

‘Clifton Hall is the only place where I’ve

ever really been scared.

It’s just got a really eerie feeling about it.’

He said two of his team fainted after independently

seeing the same ghost of a boy.

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Mr Rashid had planned to open the

hall for weddings, but failed to obtain a licence.

He denied suggestions he had made up the

ghost stories because he couldn’t pay his

mortgage as a result of the failure of his business plan.  

The hall was intended primarily as a family home,

he said.

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Mr Rashid now lives in the

Wollaton area of Nottingham.

He said he had never believed in ghosts

until his experience at Clifton Hall.

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Darren Brookes,

whose security firm previously guarded

the hall for five years, said some of his staff

‘refused point-blank’ to work there.

He said they reported sightings such as a

monk walking through the grounds, a woman

in the graveyard falling over,

and chairs moving in one of the rooms.

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Mr Brookes, of Sovereign Security UK, said:

‘I’ve often put officers who know absolutely

nothing about the house in there  - 

and after a night on duty they have quit.’

 

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