Brazilian President Michel Temer forced to move out of palace because of 'ghosts'
Brazilian President Michel Temer has revealed that he and his family were forced to leave their official residence at the Alvorada Palace because "ghosts" kept them from sleeping well at night.
"I felt something strange there. I wasn't able to sleep right from the first night. The energy wasn't good," Temer said in an interview with Portuguese-language magazine Veja, as reported by Breitbart.
The president said that his seven-year-old son Michelzinho was comfortable at the palace, but he and his wife, 33-year-old wife Marcela, could not cope with the sleepless nights.
Marcela, a former beauty queen, has reportedly called in a priest to drive out the evil spirits but without much success.
The Alvorada Palace, designed by Brazil's most famous architect Oscar Niemeyer, was built in 1958 on a peninsula jutting out into a lake.
Temer was not the first president to suggest that the palace was haunted. Former President Dilma Rousseff, who once lived in the palace, did not deny the rumors, although she rejected the idea that ghosts were to be feared.
"I am not afraid of ghosts, but a relative of mine will not go into the hallways because they are afraid of running into Figueiredo," she told the newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo in 2014, referring to the late military leader João Baptista Figueiredo, who is said to roam the halls of the palace.
Temer and his family have since returned to the Jaburu Palace, which was the official vice-presidential residence, where the family once lived while he served as Rousseff's second-in-command.
The Jaburu Palace had remained empty because no one replaced Temer when he was elevated to the presidency after Rousseff was impeached last year for breaking budget accounting laws.
The 76-year-old Temer is also facing challenges to his presidency due to accusations that he benefited from illegal donations when he and Rousseff ran together in 2014. The 2014 election results could be nullified if he is found guilty by federal judges, according to Telegraph.
Rousseff, who belongs to the far-left Workers' Party, has accused Temer of organizing a plot against her, calling him and house speaker Eduardo Cunha "chief and vice chief of a coup."
The former president relied heavily on alliances with countries like Cuba and Venezuela for support in the region. Temer, on the other hand, had vowed to open up Brazil to more business-friendly policies.