Mindy McCready:
Of Angels, Demons,
Ghosts, and Curses
Country music has never shied away from tragedy. And tragedy has returned the favor by never shying away from the lives of country musicians. The thread between magic and tragic is razor thin for country musicians. No one in the modern country music era seems to embody this twisted embrace between musician and misfortune, as well as the connection between inspiration and spirits, quite like Mindy McCready.
Her life and career began with as much promise as any country music superstar, but, under the blazing spotlights of fame and fortune, she burned out and imploded just as quickly—a superstar turned supernova. All along her path, though, hints of the paranormal followed along.
McCready started her country music career in her teens, graduating early from high school to pursue her dream. By eighteen years old, she had a contract and watched as her album, titled, prophetically enough, Ten Thousand Angels, sold more than two million copies. The album’s ascent up the charts was powered by the strength of hit singles that struck a chord with country’s more independent, empowered female audience, “Guys Do It All the Time” and “A Girl’s Gotta Do (What a Girl’s Gotta Do).”
In a few years, though, she would need to tap every single one of those ten thousand angels. After a few monster albums and sold-out concerts, the sales and the hit singles began to dry up. Rumors of her substance abuse and relationship troubles, on the other hand, began to increase, as did tales of her involvement with the spirit world. Her world seemingly spiraling out of control, McCready finally went public with her paranormal experiences on the television show Celebrity Ghost Stories. She spoke specifically of an event in a Scottish hotel that changed how she felt about the supernatural forever.
The singer described the hotel she stayed in during her 1999 tour as old and beautiful with a majestic staircase. The hotel, like lots of other old, beautiful Scottish buildings, was reportedly haunted. McCready felt this mysterious force when she entered the building, but she later sensed this force was trying to communicate with her—or at least reach out to her.
One thing she noticed was the windows. After a smash performance at a nearby concert hall, she was hoping to nestle into her hotel suite when she realized that the rather large windows were open. Probably not so supernatural for windows to be open, she thought, but it was curious. The evening was cold and rainy—it was Scotland after all—and it’s unlikely that anyone opened the windows on purpose. She shrugged it off, hopped up on the sofa to access the windows, and with some struggle, closed the windows before going about her nightly routine.
A little bit later, while preparing for bed, McCready heard the sound of rainfall, so she returned to the room and received a shock—the windows were open again.
Now the country star became worried. The windows were too large and heavy to open by themselves. She wondered whether she was alone. Did someone—maybe a staff member—enter the room and open the windows? A quick check around revealed no one was with her in the room—or, so she thought. Events would forever convince her that someone was with her that night, and that someone wanted to help her.
The phenomena increased during the night. The hotel room grew increasingly colder, becoming much colder than the warm and comfy space she arrived to find.
When McCready went to cover up to avoid the ever-decreasing temperatures, she accidentally kicked an empty duffel bag, one that she was sure she had left in the downstairs portion of the hotel suite.
“And then I started thinking, ‘well how did the bag get unpacked in the first place,’” she told the crew of Celebrity Ghost Stories. “I left it downstairs and who brought it up here? Did the hotel unpack my bag for me and put it at the foot of my bed? And why was the duffel bag the one that was unpacked and brought up here?”
Deep inside, McCready knew the answer to these questions. The singer knew that this string of events—that the hotel staff would select a bag, bring it to her room, and then unpack the items—was unlikely.
She checked the seemingly empty bag. But it wasn’t totally empty. Inside there was a journal or a notebook. It wasn’t her journal. Respecting the privacy, McCready went to put the journal back in the bag and left it in the downstairs section of the hotel suite.
That’s when she heard footsteps—firm, distinctive hard-soled shoes—walking across the room. McCready scanned the dark hotel room for this mysterious walker, but she saw nothing but shadows.
“I was paralyzed with fear,” McCready said.
She screamed out for the presence to identify himself or herself—or itself. The footsteps immediately stopped.
The now-terrified superstar turned her attention to the notebook. She got it and opened it up. When she did, the gently burning fire in the fireplace suddenly erupted.
“It was like breath coming from the fire,” the singer explained.
McCready felt that the fire, the footsteps, and the windows that opened by themselves were no mere coincidences. The phenomena were evidence that some spirit or force was pressing her to look at the notebook. She opened it and discovered it was her boyfriend’s diary. She said that in the book, her soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend detailed his affairs with other women. As she threw the book into the fire and watched the offending pages burn, the fire “breathed” again, just as it did a few moments before. Sounds like a great country song, doesn’t it.
But there’s a supernatural twist.
McCready went downstairs to talk to the staff. She asked one man if the hotel was haunted.
“And he said, ‘yes, ma’am, it is’ and that I should have nothing to worry about because it was haunted by nuns,” she said.
Before it was a hotel, the building served as a nunnery. The nuns were still buried under the structure; the staff member informed McCready and added, “If they visited you, it must mean that you needed a mother tonight.”
She said that sometimes powers from beyond are needed to teach those on an earthly plane the right lessons. The incident at the hotel changed how McCready faced the supernatural.
“Sometimes we need help from somewhere else, from beyond. I’m not afraid of the supernatural anymore,” she said.
But the supernatural would come calling to McCready again.
Despite this paranormal intervention, McCready struggled to get her life and career back on track. Each subsequent album was less and less successful, until the requests for concerts and the contracts for new albums dried up. Her personal life plummeted to new lows. About the only times that McCready could garner any headlines is when news of an arrest, suicide attempts, and substance abuse binges hit the entertainment news and blogs.
Then, in 2013, her life swung completely out of control. Her boyfriend, David Wilson, committed suicide. That was bad enough, but McCready was wounded even more deeply over allegations and rumors that she killed her boyfriend. She denied the accusations publicly, but the damage had been done.
As her world fell apart, McCready told a friend that she experienced one bright spot. The ghost of her departed boyfriend had visited her. She said he came to her room. The singer also reminisced about one of the last movies that the couple watched together—What Dreams May Come. It turns out, the film was prophetic. The movie deals with a man’s search in the afterlife for his wife, who committed suicide.
According to a friend, the movie sparked a conversation between McCready and Wilson. She told the friend, “And I said to him, ‘David, if I killed myself … if I ended my life and it was over, would you come find me? Would you find me? Would you go through hell to find me?’ He said he would go through anything to find me.”
We don’t know whether he did. But we do know that on February 17, 2013, McCready sat on the porch of her home, the same place where the body of her boyfriend had been found, and took her own life.
Her fans—who still remember the vibrant but tortured artist—hope she can finally rest in peace.