A house-hunter was left feeling as though she was in a "horror film" after stumbling across a giant statue of a religious figure inside an otherwise empty property.
Jess Hogan was looking at houses online when she spotted the bizarre find lurking in the corner of one of the rooms in the four-bed house in Poole, Dorset, and couldn't help but notice the striking resemblance between the statue and acting icon Nicolas Cage.
The life-size wooden statue actually depicts Saint Francis of Assisi wearing flowing robes and holding a cross, but Jess couldn't help but draw comparisons between the "creepy" statue and the National Treasure star.
The 26-year-old, who is from Poole, made the discovery after initially being impressed with pictures of the £375,000 property and wanting to see more in a virtual tour.
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When she opened up the tour option, the psychology student was shocked to find the 6ft unexpected house guest lurking in the otherwise empty living room.
She said: "I was looking at houses in that area and saw that one and had a look through the pictures. It looked alright and I saw it had a virtual tour so I used that to have a better look around.
"It was a bit of a shock going in and seeing a weird religious statue in one of the rooms - I just thought it was really funny. Because I was doing the virtual tour it was literally like walking into the room and there was just this thing in the corner.
"It kind of felt like the start of a horror movie - it's like a warning sign that the house is haunted or that something bad happened there. It's almost like it's the statue's house and he has to stay there - maybe if you move him something bad will happen. It probably comes to life at night."
After virtually coming face-to-face with the bizarre figure, the student tweeted about her discovery and said she felt unsettled by the religious statue.
She wrote: "So I was doing a virtual house tour on Rightmove and I 'walked' into one room and was greeted by this thing. Holy s**t."
Commenters shared in Jess' horror as they said they were convinced the statue was "haunted".
And one even drew the comparisons to Nicolas Cage, writing: "Is that Nic Cage??"
The seller of the property has insisted the statue isn't haunted and has actually had a positive impact on their lives since they picked it up in Bali, Indonesia - even if does sometimes scare their house guests.
They said: "It's a carving of St Francis - the patron saint of children and animals.
"We found it in Bali when buying furniture for our reclaimed furniture shop and shipped it back - it was so unusual compared to all the other Indonesian carvings.
"It had a time at our old house and then a time at a church in Bournemouth. We are now undecided on what to do with it so it ended up in the house. It will be the last thing we move as it weighs about 300kg.
"We bought it and it took us on a very positive journey afterwards so definitely more of a good thing in our lives. But it also definitely has a shock factor - it nearly made one of our painter contractors jump out of his skin when he saw it."
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