As we all know, Holly Madison and Hugh Hefter had a complicated, bitter history before the controversial media magnate’s death in 2017.
Same goes for Bridget Marquardt, who in the last few years, has been very candid about her time in the Playboy mansion and her feelings about being one of Hugh’s girls.
The friends launched a podcast in 2024 called Girls Next Level to talk about their shared history, as well as current events.
Perhaps it’s one way of getting closer. Then again, it’s hard to forget that in 2019, two years after Hugh’s passing, the pair tried a different way to find closure: a Halloween seance.
Call in the Spirits, Wherever They’re At
Together with Bridget and a medium, Holly participated in a Halloween seance with the intention of contacting the late legend. Holly explained her plans to E! News on the Wednesday before Halloween that year.
“I had this dream about him shortly after he died,” Holly revealed the day before the seance. It was a dream “where I went to the mansion and he came down the stairs with his arms wide open.”
“And he gave out his big laugh, it’s like this giant cackle that he had,” Holly described. “And he goes, ‘My darling!’ and he gave me a big hug and I could smell his cologne and I could feel the texture of his jacket.”
“It just felt so real,” she expressed. “When I woke up, It felt like that wasn’t just a dream, that was something more.”
“That’s what I would ask him,” she concluded. “If that was a dream or if he really came to say goodbye.”
Inside The Seance
And so she did, and at the time, it sounded like the seance went pretty well.
The pair livestreamed the entire thing on YouTube (if you have more than an hour’s time to watch them and this very nice witch perform the ceremony.)
Bridget says that their mission to contact Hugh’s spirit as well as various others was a success. Holly asked that the ghosts – as apparently there were several others – not damage her home.
Apparently, the women heard from Hugh’s spirit, and it did sound like the rift was mended between Holly and her departed ex.
Bridget reported that Hugh revealed to Holly that he periodically checks in on her life and her well-being from beyond the grave.
There were no weird special effects — overturned tables or flickering lights — because this was not a movie.
And it sounded like Holly was happy to hear from him, despite their complicated history.
Everyone Hates Hugh
Holly and Bridget were two of Hugh Hefner’s girlfriends featured on the reality series, Girls Next Door.
However, Holly accused Hugh of being emotionally and verbally abusive during their relationship.
She has spoken and written about her experiences at the Playboy Mansion, creating tension and a feud with fellow ex Kendra Wilkinson.
In recent years, Holly has been even more candid about her time as one of Hugh’s girls. And on the podcast with Bridget, she even went into specifics about what happened behind closed doors.
“None of the females were into it, like sorry to burst the bubble,” Holly said in the podcast’s first episode about sex with Hugh.
“We thought of it as a chore that we had to do or else we’ll get kicked out of the house,” she explained. “And everybody just wanted to make it go by as quickly as possible.”
Even more surprising is the fact that, according to Madison, Hefner would “stay still during sex” and “wouldn’t move” like a “bump on the log in the middle of the bed.”
In a later episode, Bridget reveals how watching the show back has been cringy, right from the very start.
“It was right off the bat episode two and it just showed me like being jealous of the other girls to the point of trying to sabotage their pictorials and trying to get people drunk — and that was never, ever like what I was trying to do. These were my friends, I was happy for them and it just — it really, it was very hard to watch,” Bridget said.
“It was hard at the time, but I kind of put it out of my mind and forgot all about it. But when we started rewatching, it was very hard for me to rewatch and I almost didn’t wanna do the podcast anymore because I thought, ‘How am I gonna even explain this?’”