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A Grinning Ghost Terrorized Me

Space: 1999 Star: A Grinning Ghost Terrorized Me

by Edward Martin
The National Enquirer (1976 or 1977)
Article Source Provided by: Curt Duckworth

Actress Catherine Schell says she will always have a vivid memory of a weirdly grinning ghost whose eerie present drove her screaming with terror from her bedroom one night when she was a child.

"It is the only ghost I have ever seen, and I will never forget it," declared Catherine, who starred in the movie, "The Return of the Pink Panther," and is currently appearing in TV's Space: 1999.

The Lovely actress told the ENQUIRER: "It happened during my first summer in America, back in 1952.

"We had just arrived from Hungary- my mother and father and my two brothers. I was six.

"My father had some friends who lived in Virginia and they had a lovely, large estate. We were invited to spend a few weeks there."

Catherine was given a room of her own in the friend's mansion and one night she suddenly woke up while moonlight was shining through a window.

"As I lay there," she recalled, "I saw a Chinese face. It was sort of floating in the air.

"It was yellowish and the eyes definitely slanted. The mouth was in a strange grin.

"I kept closing my eyes and opening them, thinking that it would disappear. But it didn't. Eventually I started pinching myself because I had been told there were no such things as ghosts.

"In the end, I couldn't control myself any longer and I started screaming," Catherine continued.

"I ran out and told my father there was this Chinese man in my room. He went in, but there was nobody."

The next morning, Catherine said, her parents remarked to their hosts that she'd had a nightmare and thought she saw a man in her room.

"Our hosts went absolutely pale," related Catherine. She said the hosts explained that the wing of the mansion where Catherine's room was located had once burned down and that her room used to be the cook's.

"He was Chinese, and he burned to death in the fire," Catherine said the hosts told her parents.