Last updated at 12:16 19 February 2008

Arsenal goalkeeper Manuel Almunia believes his home is haunted by the ghost of a monk.

Club boss Arsene Wenger has given the 30-year-old Spaniard permission to go home at lunchtime so that his wife Ana is not alone in their house in Abbots Langley, Hertfordshire.

The home is believed to have been built on the site of Leavesden Hospital, a mental asylum that shut in the Nineties.

Almunia said Ana had seen the ghost, and on other occasions he had heard chains rattling and seen stereos turning on at full volume.

He said: "Once my wife saw this monk-like figure with a candle in his hand at the end of our bed. I didn't see him but I was s*** scared."