Wooo-an McGregor
I was spooked by a ghost, reveals star of The Shining sequel
SCOTS star Ewan McGregor is set to shine this week as the sequel to a horror classic hits the big screens for Halloween.
But the actor, from Crieff, Perthshire, has told how he is still haunted by a spooky event that happened when he was studying at drama school in London.
McGregor stars in Doctor Sleep, the long-awaited sequel to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, which is due to be released on Thursday.
Set after the sinister events at the Overlook Hotel – made famous by Jack Nicholson’s portrayal of a descent into madness – McGregor plays Danny Torrance, the tricycleriding child from the 1980 movie.
In the sequel, McGregor’s character turns to the bottle to keep the fictional ghosts at bay. But in an interview with US magazine Men’s
Journal, the 48-year-old revealed he did not know where to turn after his own chilling real-life experience of ghosts.
While at drama school, the actor was living in the top room of a house in East London. His flatmates had gone home for Easter and he was left in the house alone.
He said: ‘I was running a bath and I was standing in my robe. And I had this terrible pain in my back.
‘I ripped off my robe and there was this burn mark; the back of my robe was scorched.
‘I ran around thinking that I had caught fire or something.’
Unable to find the source of the burn, McGregor was so freaked out he slept at his uncle’s apartment that night. When he returned to his room the next day, he told his neighbour what had happened. He went sort of pale,’ revealed
McGregor. ‘I said, What the f***? I eventually teased it out of him. An old, Jewish, reclusive guy had owned the flat before.
‘He never really left the place, and it was full of newspapers. His brother used to come and give him a cooked meal two or three times a week. His brother got ill and hadn’t been over for a few days.’
‘The guy was in the kitchen – putting the pan on – and he fainted because he was so hungry.
‘This pot boiled and set fire to the kitchen. The people upstairs smelled the burning and dragged him out of the kitchen.
‘But he died of the burn marks to his back.
‘Every night after that, my door would open, the phone would ring, things would move around.’
The Shallow Grave and Trainspotting star said he moved out of the apartment two weeks later.
‘I ran around thinking that I had caught fire’