'Hollyoaks' actress lives with ghosts

By Kris Green, Soaps Editor

Only days after the news that Cindy Beale is to 'return from the dead' in EastEnders, Hollyoaks actress Diane Langton - who played Cindy's mother in the Walford soap - has revealed that she lives with ghosts in her Hampshire home.

Speaking exclusively to DS, Diane, who now plays Chester's Nana McQueen, revealed that she shares her 15th century thatched cottage in Hollywater with several paranormal entities.

"The ghosts are friendly though," explained Diane. "When we first moved into the cottage we couldn't understand why strange things kept on happening. Everyday items would go missing for no reason whatsoever, things like the tea-pot lid, sharp knives and car keys. However, it was when we witnessed a glass vase fly off the kitchen table and smash on an opposite wall that we knew something strange was going on."

"I contacted our local priest and he explained that I needed to acknowledge the poltergeists - If I didn't, they'd carry on misbehaving and hiding stuff! He also told me I needed to be really stern and warn the poltergeist that if they didn't behave, I'd get someone in to remove them."

Deciding to take action, she continued: "I eventually stood in the kitchen and announced to whoever it was that they could live in my house as long as they behaved! And funnily enough, nothing has gone missing since. Spookily, everything that went missing turned up. Even a pair of my favourite earrings - one of which turned up outside my bedroom door and the other in my car boot. You couldn't get any more random than that!"

Of her Hollyoaks role, she said: "I love playing Nana McQueen, she's so fearless and just tells it like it is. I'd definitely be friends with someone like her."

Diane played Cindy Beale's (Michelle Collins) mother, Bev Williams, in EastEnders in 1999.