Racing legend
Tony McCoy has revealed how the ghost of an old soldier has forced his spooked family to flee their home.
County Antrim man McCoy was at a race in Liverpool when he received a phone call from his wife Chanelle to tell him she could hear someone walking about upstairs.
“She was petrified,” he said.
“The bizarre thing was they weren’t being quiet, she could hear them walking up and down and opening and closing doors.”
Stuck miles away from home, McCoy called a friend who lived nearby to check on his wife and four-year-old daughter Eve.
When no sign of an intruder could be found, Eve’s nanny Sophie admitted she had heard similar noises.
And a woman who lived in the house before the McCoys said she had been told the building was haunted by the ghost of an old soldier who had been shot there.
Locals says two soldiers had a duel on the lawns of the house and one of them was killed.
In a further spooky development, the jockey’s little girl Eve then said she had seen a child in her bedroom. “Chanelle isn’t one to dramatise things so I knew she must have heard something, she was so scared,” he said.
“But once I heard Eve might have seen a ghost that was it, we had to go.”
The current BBC Sports Personality of the Year said the ghostly goings on have now cost him a fortune as he’s had to leave the house in Berkshire, south east England and move to another rented property while the new home he is building is completed. The star and his family had been due to stay in Berkshire for two years — but were haunted out in just three months.
This isn’t the first time AP has had trouble with paranormal visitors.
At his previous home which AP put on sale earlier this year, former
Everton and Arsenal footballer Franny Jeffers got a sleepless night staying with the McCoys when he awoke at 3am to find his duvet gone. When he tried to pull the sheets back on the bed, he was terrified to find an old woman standing staring at him.
“I don’t know what’s going on, I think the ghosts must follow me,” said AP.
But the champion sportsman is philosophical about his spooky pals.
“As my mother pointed out to me — I should be more afraid of what’s alive that what’s dead,” he said.
