Jenny Slate Grew Up in a Haunted House in Milton

Jenny Slate is sure she grew up in a haunted house.

During her appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show on Tuesday to promote her second Marcel the Shell book, Slate told Ellen:

I grew up in Massachusetts. I grew up in a genuine haunted house. … I knew it was haunted. [When my parents] moved in, they bought it with all the furniture in it, the people had died, and—I’m getting scared even telling the story…

… My dad went out into the hall, and he looked onto the stairs, and standing there was this sea captain, looking at him, pleading.

The Milton native has spoken about the haunted house before, claiming her father literally saw a ghost after they first moved into their Massachusetts home. She has even said that growing up with that sense of spookiness shaped her identity growing up. Slate told Shalom Life:

The fear of that ghost has basically shaped my entire personality.

Who’d have thought a girl raised in a haunted house in Milton could come up with a character as cute as Marcel the Shell?

Ellen didn’t buy any of it, of course. She astutely pointed out that Slate herself admitted her father smoked “many different kinds of pipes.”

Better watch your back, Slate. Ellen loves to prank-scare her guests, so the odds are good the talk-show host will attempt to give the comedian—who said she herself has never seen a ghost—her very first one-on-one encounter.