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Tony Iommi – Iron Man

After finishing the Born Again tour I rented a house in Bel Air. It was a wonderful place, but I heard these noises all the time, people talking and bumps in the night. I’d look around the house but nobody would be there.

'Blimey, where does that come from?'

Weird things happened. I came back one night from rehearsal, walked into the kitchen and found a plait of hair on the kitchen table, a couple of feet long. Like a ponytail.

'How did that get there?'

Another night I came home and found the same sort of thing wrapped around the handle of the front door. I couldn't explain it.

I could never figure out the sound of people talking in the house. I called the Bel Air police every time I heard it. At first they’d go around the house: nothing. But they never checked the loft. And after awhile they’d come around and go: 'Oh, it's him again.'

I got so concerned about it that I even stayed down at my friend's house a couple of times. He had a bloody armoury there.

He had revolvers and pump-action shotguns and, just like in the movies, a little gun in a book. He said: 'I'll come up with you and we'll have a look. I'll bring my gun.'

And so he did. He sat there in the lounge all night. Nothing happened. I thought, he thinks I am loony now. He left and the next day it started again.

I then hired a security guard. The sauna overlooked the swimming pool, so I put him in there. I said: 'If you see anything, let me know.'

After a while he got fed up and said: 'Hey, man, I can’t stay here all night!'

I whispered: 'Shhhh, we're trying to catch somebody!'

I was going to extremes to find out who these people were. After the security guy left, I had one of the crew stay with me, but he would be snoring away so loudly that he couldn’t hear anything.

Finally, Mark gave me a Magnum. I slept with this huge gun in my hand. One night I heard this horrendous noise. I grabbed Mark’s gun and I dashed to the car with no shirt on and as I drove out I looked back and I saw all these faces in the kitchen window, looking out at me. It freaked me out. I drove straight down to the police, they came up and: nothing. Gone!

Then I found out that the wires of the burglar alarm had been cut inside the house. I should have moved out really, but then I had Geoff Nicholls to stay with me. I just wanted somebody to see something, if only to prove that I was not crazy.  I really thought I was going loopy and so did everybody else.

One night Geoff and me were in the lounge at two o'clock in the morning and we saw this bloke running across the lawn.

Fucking hell, finally!

I got my gun and we opened the door slowly.  We slipped out and crawled across the grass. The house was built on a hill and we could hear talking down below. I whispered to Geoff.   All right, we've got a gun and when they come up . . .'

'We must have been lying there for about an hour waiting for these people to appear, and then the sprinklers came on. It was like a Laurel and Hardy skit, both of us going: ''Waah!'

'We were soaked and, of course, after that we never found them.