‘Girls Next Door’ Star Bridget Marquardt Reveals Paranormal Experience With Hugh Hefner

Bridget Marquardt believes she had an encounter with Hugh Hefner in her dreams. The Girls Next Door alum, who now hosts the Ghost Magnet With Bridget Marquardt podcast, opened up to E! News Wednesday about her own paranormal experience with the Playboy mogul, whom she dated from 2002 to 2008 alongside Holly Madison and Kendra Wilkinson. 

“It only happened once and it was the craziest thing,” Bridget, 48, told the outlet. “I never remember [my dreams] and this particular dream was so real. I could feel, smell, like all the senses were in play…It just felt so, so, so real.” In her dream, Marquardt was in the Playboy Mansion, where she went to the Mediterranean room and met Hefner. Hefner passed away at 91 due to natural causes in 2017.

“I was standing there and then all of a sudden, I hear him coming down the stairs and he comes running down the stairs and his arms were open wide and he gave me what we used to call his big laugh and was like, ‘Oh my darling’ and he gave me a big hug,” Marquardt recalled. “I could feel his smoke in the satin on his smoking jacket. I could smell his cologne. It was just so, so real.”

Hefner was “so happy” in her dream, Marquardt continued. But when she went to go say goodbye to him, she wasn’t able to. “And I feel like it was just sort of our goodbye and it felt like, it really did feel like closure. It really did feel like I saw him,” she explained. Waking up from her dream was like being “transported,” the reality personality remembered. While she told fiancé Nick Carpenter all about her dream, she still thinks there was something special about the encounter. “This was like real. I still feel like I was just there,” she said.

Embracing people’s stories about the paranormal for her podcast has made Marquardt “more at ease” about death and people dying. She explained, “I sort of know what’s going to happen. I mean, nobody knows till you know, but I feel like I have a good idea.”