Love a good ghost story? Well, wait until you hear Ewan McGregor‘s.
The 48-year-old actor appeared on Wednesday’s episode of Late Night With Seth Meyers and recalled a paranormal encounter he had decades ago.
It happened on his 20th birthday. The Moulin Rouge! star was attending a drama school in London and was staying in student housing while his classmates were away for Easter and Passover.
At one point, he decided to watch Blue Velvet and then take a bath.
“I was suddenly struck with this pain on my back,” he recalled. “I ripped off my robe, and there was a big black burn mark on the back of my robe.”
McGregor thought he’d perhaps caught fire on something or that there had been a spark when he removed the tape from the VCR. However, he didn’t find anything.
“I looked at the robe again and now I see the whole back of the robe was singed dark brown and then this black burn mark on my shoulder blade,” he said. “So, I freaked out. I got out of there and went to spend my birthday with my Uncle Dennis.”
When he came back, he discovered that one of his fellow students, a neighbor downstairs, had returned. So, he told him what happened.
“His face went ashen,” McGregor recalled.
McGregor was then told about a man who used to occupy the neighbor’s apartment. Apparently, the man was “an old, reclusive guy” who “never went out.” The man’s brother would reportedly bring him hot meals two to three times a week. However, there was one weekend when the brother got sick and didn’t come.
“The gentleman was boiling kettle in his kitchen, and he was so hungry that he fainted,” McGregor said. “The kettle set fire to his kitchen and he was burned on his back, dragged out of the house and he died of his burns to his back.”
At first, McGregor thought his neighbor was just trying to scare him. To prove his point, the neighbor called the landlady, who confirmed the story.
She said, ‘But he was a very nice man. I’m sure he wouldn’t wish you any harm,'” McGregor said.
Still, the Star Wars celeb was totally freaked out. So, he decided to leave his room and spend the night in his neighbor’s apartment instead. When he walked in, he joked that the place was “as dusty as when the old man used to live here.” That’s when the “ceiling came down like in a wave.”
“There was this scream, like ‘Aaaahhhhh,’ which I realized was me,” he said.
During the rest of his stay in the student house, McGregor would have unexplainable experiences, like the phone mysteriously ringing or the door squeaking open on its own.
“I never saw him, but it was just odd,” he said
Watch the video to hear him tell the whole story.
(E! and NBC are both part of NBCUniversal).