Adele has been accused of sabotaging the sale of a £6 million country mansion she once lived in by hinting that it was haunted.
The Someone Like You singer, 36, rented Lock House in West Sussex for six months in 2012 and admitted she found the former convent “quite scary.”
She showed US TV host Anderson Cooper around the house during a 2012 interview with CBS’ 60 Minutes and said: “This bit's all quite scary, really. I'm not rattling around here on my own. It gives me the creeps."
While the London-born singer didn’t use the word “haunted,” the mansion’s owner Nicholas Sutton has claimed her comments have scared off future buyers.
Sutton is seeking permission to turn the Grade II listed ten-bedroom house into three houses because Adele made the property “unsellable.”
“Unfortunately, during an interview on CBS, Adele remarked that she believed the house to be haunted,” he said in a planning statement to Horsham district council.
“This comment negatively impacted future marketing efforts and continues to affect the property’s reputation to this day.”
Sutton added that he has “actively tried to sell the property for about 14 years” despite it being “consistently marketed by top agents” like Savills and Strutt & Parker.
“The only offer received over the years was in August 2020, but the prospective buyer withdrew after learning about the property’s supposed haunted status, which was publicly mentioned by Adele during her tenancy,” he said.
“The first tenant, Adele, stayed for six months and blighted the property saying it is haunted.”
Sutton explained in his planning application that the home was a convent in the ‘70s before he bought it in 2003.
He carried out “significant refurbishment” since buying the mansion, converting the chapel into a kitchen and adding a swimming pool.
The council has not yet reached a decision on Sutton’s application.
Adele relocated to the US in 2016 and owns multiple homes in Los Angeles.
She moved into a $58 million Beverly Hills mega-mansion with her sports agent partner, Rich Paul, in 2022 after buying it from Sylvester Stallone.
The Grammy winner named the British weather as the reason why she wouldn’t return to the UK.
““I get really bad seasonal depression, so the weather is good for me. It is strange sometimes, because I’m very British,” she told The Hollywood Reporter.
“Because it’s a bit harder for me to go out nowadays, what I love the most about LA is everyone goes to each other’s houses. I like that.”
