Real-life Scooby-Doo villain gets four months for haunting a castle

A real-life Scooby-Doo villain has been jailed in Italy for four months for pretending to be a ghost.

A real-life Scooby-Doo villain has been jailed in Italy for four months for pretending to be a ghost.

She spent weeks terrorising her husband's employer at the 15th-century Castel Coldrano near the border with Austria, slamming doors, haunting hallways and making things go bump in the night.

The Austrian owner of the castle in Laces, Belzano, became increasingly jittery from the clanging and banging and called the police, begging them to solve the mystery of the malevolent poltergeist.

In an investigation befitting the ghost-busting team of Scooby, Shaggy, Daphne and Velma, the police authorities from the Alpine province of South Tyrol decided to video the estate.

And instead of an apparition, they caught a 42-year-old Polish woman on camera. She had spent her nights masquerading as a phantom to scare the estate owner.

An unexplained grievance had provoked her campaign of ghostly disquiet. Police said she was motivated by "a personal rancour" against the manager of the cultural centre in the estate.

She was convicted on Friday of harassment and damage to the castle, Italian newspapers reported. Her name was not disclosed.