Rich. Famous. Glamorous. Dead.
In life, we are compelled to watch their every move, whether to judge or to envy their lifestyles, often so different from our own. Yet, the legacy of the famous lives on long after they are buried, often publicly, before crying and adoring fans or smiling and smug enemies. Whether they were once novelists with huge followings, theater actresses with voices of angels, glamourous movie queens, or romantic and iconic men of the big and small screens, the people we celebrate may leave something more behind for us than just souvenirs and signed, glossy, eight-by-ten photographs. They might leave behind their ghosts.
The most famous “famous” ghosts are those in the entertainment fields. Writers, poets, actors and actresses, movie stars and TV starlets, directors and playwrights—we are fascinated by those who entertain us.
Where there is drama, comedy and tragedy, action, thrills, and chills, there are ghosts. Just say the word “Hollywood,” and images of old mansions belonging to silent movie stars mix with busy streets filled with aspiring starlets, walking with heads held high and high heels clicking on the pavement. Just think of the City of Angels, and one sees the “Hollywood” sign and conjures up imaginings of what it might be like to be a superstar, living in a massive house in the hills, driving an exotic car, and dining at the most exclusive restaurants, all before going to the set and making entertainment magic.
The entertainment capital of the world is filled with notorious haunted locations, often linked to famous movie stars, rock stars, television icons, and other notable faces that span the history of the town itself. Many current clubs, theaters, studios, production offices, gathering places, cafes, and restaurants were once the offices or homes of celebrities who died tragically, and others are built upon land with its own haunted history—former burial grounds, churches, cemeteries, asylums, and places already ripe with ghostly activity.
Sightings and reports of famous ghosts are common, but there are also many famous celebrities who have their own ghostly encounters to tell about. Many have appeared on popular reality shows featuring movie, television, and music stars who have come in contact with something otherworldly.
The stories of celebrity haunts and hauntings read like a trip down memory lane. These are our icons, our idols, and yet, just like any other human beings, they sometimes refuse to find peace in death.
ELVIS PRESLEY
The King of Rock n’ Roll, Elvis Presley, achieved unprecedented fame and popularity during his career, and now, even after his death in 1977, people continue to report seeing his ghost in numerous places he once “haunted” in real life. His former Palm Springs home, the Las Vegas Hilton hotel he once performed at, and the old recording facility of RCA Studio B in Nashville, Tennessee … and, of course, Graceland in Memphis, where he can be seen peering out from upstairs windows at the thousands of visitors who come to the grounds. Often, people report hearing music coming from inside the house when it is empty and say the man they see is a ghostly apparition dressed just like the King of Swiveling Hips himself.
Singing legend Elvis Presley’s ghost has been reportedly spotted at several locations, including near his grave (shown here) at his Graceland home in Memphis, Tennessee.
The old RCA Studio where he recorded “Heartbreak Hotel” is an alleged haunted hot spot, with people reporting his ghost wandering through the building. If his name is mentioned, ladders fall, lights explode, and there are bangs and noises heard throughout, according to witnesses.
Just as he got around in life, he seems to get around in death! He has even reportedly been seen in local Memphis Burger Kings, leading many to speculate that he may have faked his own death to escape the public eye. It also brings up the possibility that Elvis achieved such an incredible level of fame and notoriety, people think they are seeing him everywhere, mistaking other people for the dead singer. Then again, maybe his ghost is so restless and his spirit so big he cannot be confined to just one location.
The fact that Elvis’s ghost is seen in several places, so often, by so many people brings up an interesting question. Is his ghost a big-time restless spirit racking up airline miles as it goes from one location to the next … or do many Elvises exist in another dimension and in other locations all at the very same time? Theoretical physicists tell us there may be an infinite number of other realities out there, so it’s possible at least a dozen have their own Elvis Aaron Presleys wandering about.
What is interesting about Elvis’s case was his closeness to his mother, Gladys Presley, and how distraught he was when she died in 1958, just as his career was taking off. It would then make sense that his spirit would not want to linger here in our earthly plane, unable to cross into the light, as many psychics and mediums tell us ghosts are doing when they refuse to “move on,” but would prefer to be reunited with his beloved mother, wherever she went to in death. Sadly, the only way to know for sure would be to ask his ghost, and often, spirits don’t speak to the living.
MARILYN AND THE BOMBSHELLS
The ghost of the late actress and sex symbol Marilyn Monroe is said to also haunt multiple locations, including her former Brentwood home, her tomb at the Westwood Memorial Cemetery in Los Angeles, California, and the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, a location with its own haunted reputation. Witnesses report her image can be seen fading in and out of view in the full-length mirror that once decorated her Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel suite (Room 229), and others have seen her apparition dancing in the ballroom, playing a bugle as she wanders the eighth floor, or posing on the pool diving board for admiring fans. The ghosts of fellow legends Montgomery Clift and Carole Lombard are said to also haunt the same hotel. Clift’s spirit can be heard playing the trumpet in Room 928 (as well as reported cold spots and strange noises in the room), and Lombard appears to like frequenting the twelfth floor of the hotel (Lombard is also said to haunt the Oatman Hotel in Arizona near the location of the fatal plane crash that took her life while she was married to Clark Gable, whose ghost also shows up on occasion).
Because she died so tragically, and her life was filled with scandal, many people believe that Marilyn is restless in death, trying to find the peace and acceptance she longed for in life, despite her climb to fame and adoration. Witnesses who have been on the White House tour even report seeing her ghost walking with that of John F. Kennedy, with whom she was romantically involved.
Actress Thelma Todd died at the young age of twenty-nine in 1935 from carbon monoxide poisoning. Her body, which also suffered from an apparent beating, was found in her car in the garage. Was it suicide or murder?
Another beautiful, blonde bombshell who now haunts Hollywood is Jean Harlow. She and her second husband, producer Paul Bern, are often seen roaming the mansion they once owned together. Bern took his own life in the mansions and has a creepy connection to cult leader Charles Manson. The man who purchased the mansion after Paul Bern’s death was Jay Sebring, who was later murdered with actress Sharon Tate at her home four years later. Sharon even stayed at the Bern Mansion and saw the ghost of Paul Bern herself, sitting upon her bed!
Thelma Todd was a beautiful actress of old Hollywood. Her body was found in her 1934 Lincoln Phaeton convertible, inside the garage of her Pacific Palisades mansion in 1935, and there is speculation as to whether she was murdered or committed suicide. Thelma appeared in over 120 films between 1926 and 1935, starring with such luminaries as the Marx Brothers, Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, and Jimmy Durante. She was only twenty-nine when she died of accidental carbon monoxide poisoning, and her death has been labeled suspicious ever since. According to Haunted Hollywood: Tinseltown Terror, Filmdom Phantoms and Movieland Mayhem by Tom Ogden, she had been drinking heavily when she got into the car and fell asleep. She ran the engine to warm herself up and intended to only run it for a few moments, but she dozed off and was overcome by carbon monoxide fumes in the closed garage.
But when her maid, Mae Whitehead, found the body in the car on Monday morning, Thelma Todd was covered in blood, and there was blood on the seat behind her as well as on the running boards and the floor of the garage. The coroner quickly ruled the death an accidental suicide, but many people at the time wondered if she had been murdered, maybe by a spurned lover, her exhusband, or even by the Mob. There were even people who claimed to have seen her driving down Vine Street after the alleged time of her death!
Her ghost is said to haunt the old café she last visited before her death, appearing as a diaphanous form that floats down the stairs and glides into an open courtyard, as well as reports of a car engine starting in the garage her body was found in … despite no cars being inside at the time.
The famous and beloved redhead Lucille Ball died at the age of seventy-seven in her home in Beverly Hills. The owners of the home claim it is haunted and that furniture moves around on its own, objects appear and disappear, and there are a spate of loud noises and broken windows to contend with. Could the home be haunted by the comedic queen herself, who appeared so happy and successful in life and chooses to be playful even in death?
Another Hollywood hottie has a different kind of ghost story to tell. Elke Sommer was the German daughter of a Lutheran minister before she became a Hollywood star. She began her career as a model, then a beauty queen, before landing roles in German and Italian films that would make her an international star and sex symbol. She married a man named Joe Hyams, a journalist who covered the top Hollywood stars, and they moved into a Beverly Hills house that happened to be secluded, located on the popular Benedict Canyon Drive. It also happened to be haunted.
The ghostly shenanigans began the night they moved in with bangs, noises, and sounds coming from the first floor, below their master bedroom. It seemed to be coming from the dining room area, and because they never found any signs of break-ins, they assumed it might be the wildlife common to the area. But the sounds continued, and even got louder and more ominous, with tables and chairs moving and glass breaking. Yet, when they went downstairs to investigate, they saw nothing out of place.
This was followed by the sound of voices, and soon, there were telltale marks on the floor and objects moving on their own. As the activity escalated, they both saw the ghost of a man in the dining room. Many of their guests saw the ghost, too! Elke was so scared she got in touch with a local parapsychologist named Thelma Moss. Moss spent the next couple of years visiting the home time and time again. Life magazine even got wind and covered the story of the house. One psychic predicted that the house would burn in a fire within a year, starting in the dining room, and causing the occupants to jump out of the second-story window.
Eight months later, it happened. The house’s first story was on fire, but Joe managed to get the flames out. They were informed the fire did indeed start in the dining room. The couple moved out soon after, and the home sold over and over to new buyers over a dozen times. The ghosts that lived there just didn’t want the company and were determined to drive out anyone who moved in. Sommer went on to tell her full story to the Saturday Evening Post and in a 1986 documentary called Hollywood Ghost Stories.
Another legendary lady of the silver screen, Joan Crawford, had her own experiences that pushed her to call in an exorcist. It started when her daughter, Christina, claimed to hear the voices of little kids inside the walls of the house they lived in on Bristol Avenue in the ritzy Brentwood area of Los Angeles. The children’s ghosts were said to walk the halls, and when Joan heard them, too, she contacted a priest to perform an exorcism on the home.
Joan died in 1977, and fires would often spontaneously erupt in her bedroom. No cause for them was ever found. Future owners of the house, including performers Anthony Newley and Donald O’Connor, never reported an actual ghost but did claim to sense a presence of something sinister.
PRINCESS LEIA AND THE GHOST
Carrie Fisher will forever be known as Princess Leia in the iconic Star Wars movie franchise. Her death caused global mourning to the millions who loved her. But when she was alive, she had her own ghostly encounter in 2005 when her friend, Republican strategist R. Gregory Stevens’s fell asleep next to her in bed after a party at her home. He woke up, and the two chatted into the night. She woke up the next morning to find him dead of an overdose.
From then on, she and other guests in the house would hear strange noises, and Fisher insisted she felt Stevens’ presence often. Lights would turn on and off, and a toy talking machine would go on and off at night by itself in the closet where her friend’s clothing still hung. A psychic later informed her that because Stevens died so young and tragically at the age of forty-two, his spirit was unwilling to accept death and move on.
Actress and author Carrie Fisher (who was best known for playing Princess Leia in the Star Wars films) had ghostly encounters with a friend who died in her home.
THE MEN OF HOLLYWOOD LEGENDS
Orson Welles is one of those multitalented legends of the big screen, noted for his skills at acting, writing, and directing. His name has become as classic and iconic as his work. Every film student studies the themes behind Citizen Kane, and his radio broadcast of H. G. Wells’s War of the Worlds is itself legendary. Welles loved to hang out at a French restaurant called Ma Maison, which later became Sweet Lady Jane’s Bakery, located on Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Employees of the new bakery report seeing his ghost sitting at a corner table he frequented while alive, dressed to the nines in a black suit and wearing a wide-brimmed hat. Witnesses say that his visible ghost only sticks around for a few seconds, but the distinct smell of cigars and brandy linger on. And no, cigars and brandy are not on the bakery’s menu.
Known as an embattled director with a penchant for drink, Welles was the epitome of a restless spirit in life and now in death.
Lon Chaney’s face is not as notorious as the many monsters he played on the silver screen during his amazing career. He was a stage and film actor, director, and makeup artist and became known as the “Man of a Thousand Faces.” He was a master of pantomime during the silent film era and today is most noted for the 1923 Hunchback of Notre Dame, in which he wore a fifty-pound prosthetic hump to play Quasimodo, and as the lead in the 1925 silent film version of Phantom of the Opera. After his death in 1973, people began reporting his ghost at the famous Stage 28 at Universal Studios, which in another chapter we will see has a long history of hauntings. The ghost of Chaney has been seen running and walking along the stage, throughout the studio building, and on the catwalks above the stage where Phantom was shot. He is even said to be dressed in his full costume! Interestingly, the part of the stage used to film the great “falling chandelier” scene survived several mysterious accidents.
Chaney’s ghost has also been spotted sitting on a bench near the corner of Hollywood and Vine streets, a frequent haunt of his.
He made Superman the legendary and iconic comic book figure that it is, yet George Reeves is not as widely known to today’s younger movie audiences. In June 1959, Reeves was found dead with a bullet through his head. It was ruled a suicide, but many people believe Reeves was the victim of murder. His Benedict Canyon home was sold, and the new owners reported his ghost roaming the house in the very room where his body was found. Visitors to the home also report hearing gunshots, screams, and even seeing the full-bodied apparition of Reeves wearing his famous Superman costume.
Rudolph Valentino died young, adding to the legendary quality of this famous and romantic actor, who often bears the title of the world’s first Hollywood silver screen heartthrob. His real name was a mouthful—Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Pierre Filibert Guglielmi di Valentina d’Antonguella.
The Italian silent film actor changed his name, for obvious reasons, and was considered the great swoon-worthy “lover” figure of the screen, causing women to allegedly faint in the aisles while viewing The Sheik in 1921. Valentino died tragically in 1926, at the age of thirty-one, from an infection he contracted during an operation, and people say that his home, named Falcon’s Lair, has been haunted since that fateful day. The house in Hollywood was bought later by another actor, Harry Carey, who said he saw Valentino’s handsome ghost on many occasions. Millicent Rogers, a noted fashion figure of the era, refused to set foot in the mansion after she, too, spotted the ghost of Valentino. Valentino’s ghost also appears to witnesses at the Santa Maria Inn, which was his beach home in Ventura County, California, as well as at Paramount Studios famed Studio 5.
The world-renowned escape artist Harry Houdini (shown here in 1905) also believed in the afterlife and promised to contact his wife with a message after his death.
Jack Carter was a popular comedian who, along with his wife, was friends with the Sheltons and visited their home often. Turns out the Shelton home was once owned by Conrad Hilton Jr., the son of the Hilton Hotel founder. Hilton Jr. was married to Elizabeth Taylor at one point, who divorced him for being an abusive drinker and gambler, and he was himself a popular socialite and businessman. He once had an affair with his stepmother, actress Zsa Zsa Gabor. He died at the young age of forty-two, in 1949, of an alcohol-related heart attack. The Sheltons had the Carters over one night, and Jack saw the ghost of Conrad Hilton Jr. in the study. Another time, the Carters saw blood appear spontaneously on the clean carpet and the liquor cabinet shake violently. Even later owners of the home reported spectral activity.
HOUDINI
Harry Houdini was not only an escape artist and magician. Between the years 1919 and 1923, he made silent films and even directed one. Though they were not major successes, it did add to his growing reputation as a star. Houdini also was passionate about debunking séances, reports of ghosts, and communications with the dead. He surely benefited from the publicity as he set about trying to disprove life after death and reveal mediums and psychics as frauds.
But that didn’t mean he wasn’t personally a believer in the occult and the paranormal. He was and spent a lot of time studying alleged ghost photographs and did hands-on research into the work of psychic photographer Alexander Martin, who he believed was authentic.
He tried to contact the dead himself on many occasions and even made a pact with his wife, Bess, that upon his own death, he would come back and contact her from the “other side.” He gave her a private message, and Bess later offered up $10,000 to anyone who could bring the message out. She withdrew the offer after being bombarded with false claims. In January 1928, a psychic named Arthur Ford came forward and said he received the message “Forgive” from Houdini’s mother. Bess was thrilled, as Houdini had often wanted a message from his dead mother himself. There was controversy suggesting Bess had revealed the word to a newspaper called the Brooklyn Eagle a year before, but later séances revealed a second word, “Rosabelle,” and then a third, “Believe.” Bess confirmed these as the actual message she and her husband had agreed on, but many would later suggest that Bess and Ford were working together to fool the public.
Message aside, those who have been in his former home claim he has, indeed, returned from the dead in the form of a ghostly apparition.
PICKFAIR
One of the most well-known celebrity hauntings involved a legend of silent films, Mary Pickford, who cofounded United Artists with Charlie Chaplin and her husband, Douglas Fairbanks. Pickford not only was an actress but also wrote and produced silent films. She was deeply involved in the industry and wasn’t one to just sit back and act. She liked the hands-on experience of producing. She and Fairbanks lived on the eighteen-acre Beverly Hills, California, estate that became known as Pickfair. It was designed by the famous architect Wallace Neff and was one of the most famous homes in the world to the elite and wealthy, who often partied there.
During its heyday, the mansion was filled with expensive and often rare furniture, art, and antiques, including a collection of art Pickford and Fairbanks brought back from their many trips to China and the Far East. The interior was designed and redesigned by the best designers in the world, and the home became the social hot spot and place to be for the likes of Charlie Chaplin, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Thomas Edison, Amelia Earhart, F. Scott Fitzgerald, H. G. Wells, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Charles Lindbergh, Gloria Swanson, Albert Einstein, and many other notables.
When Pickford and Fairbanks divorced in 1936, Pickford remained in the mansion with her eventual new husband, musician Buddy Rogers. She died in 1979. In her later years, Pickford rarely entertained and usually only for charitable organizations. Pickfair was no more.
Enter the ghosts in 1988, when actress Pia Zadora purchased the home from Los Angeles Lakers owner Jerry Buss. Zadora bought the home with her husband, Meshulam Riklis, and demolished the original structure to build a Venetian-style palazzo to suit her tastes. She was vilified by the public for doing something so awful to such a beloved Hollywood landmark. But there was more to this story than meets the eye.
In 2012, Zadora revealed on an episode of the Bio Channel’s Celebrity Ghost Stories that she did so because the place was haunted by the laughing ghost of a woman dressed in 1920s attire and not the termite infestation she had originally told the public. She spoke on the show about moving into the home, which was wonderful at first, but then experiencing strange things that terrified her children at night and, eventually, after trying an exorcist who failed to rid the home of the female ghost drove her and her husband to the decision of razing the house. She claimed she would NEVER have torn down the iconic house just because of termites or bad plumbing because those were things you could deal with.
Not so much for the supernatural!
A FOXXY GHOST
Comedian and actor Redd Foxx, who is most known for his role as the cranky Fred Sanford on television’s hugely successful series Sanford and Son, which ran from 1972 to 1977, haunts Paramount Studios, most notably the notorious Stage 31. It was here Foxx died of a heart attack, and witnesses report hearing his distinct laugh echoing across the stage. Foxx is also said to haunt his former Vegas home, which he lost after a long battle with the IRS over unpaid taxes.
Director Peter Jackson once had a scary encounter with the ghost of a dead actress who had killed herself in London.
The new owners have reported seeing Foxx’s ghost walking around in a bathrobe, as well as lights turning on and off and a sliding door opening and closing by itself. The home was purchased by Nevada Aqua Air Systems, and even after employees replaced the sliding door with a wood door that swings, they continue to report the door has a mind of its own.
LORD OF THE RINGS
Famed New Zealand film director Peter Jackson, best known for the Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit, had a ghostly encounter in 2009, when he and his wife stayed in an apartment located across from the St. James Theatre in London, England. In an interview with British Channel 4 television, he stated, “I woke up one morning and there was a figure in the room. She was very scary; she had a screaming face, very accusatory. She was a lady about fifty years old.” He was terrified as she glided from the foot of the bed, across the room, and vanished into the wall.
When he told his wife, she responded, “Was it the woman with the screaming face?” They had never spoken before about the ghost. They did some research and discovered the screaming woman was known around the theater by others who had seen her. She was once an actress who had taken her own life after she got a terrible review of her vaudeville show. Seems bad reviews and rejection in the entertainment world took their fair share of lives of those with big dreams of lasting success. At least Jackson went on to find great success as a director.
THE SHAPE OF GHOSTS
Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro, who is known for his science fiction and fantasy films, including The Shape of Water, told The Hollywood Reporter’s Stephen Galloway in the December 21, 2017, issue that he not only saw what he believed was a UFO as a young man, but he witnessed a ghostly apparition while on a trip to a haunted hotel with famous composer Danny Elfman and writer Mike Mignola. He described the ghost as having a “really sad sigh,” but that was about the extent of the encounter.
The UFO, on the other hand, was a superfast, classic saucer shape with blinking lights. He felt a primal fear during the sighting, which occurred at the Cerro del Cuatro (“Mountain of the Four”) outside of Guadalajara, Mexico, an area well known for its UFO activity.
GHOSTS OF THE MUSIC WORLD
John Lennon’s death rocked the world. Whether you loved his music or not, he was one of the most influential figures of the peace movement, and the records he made with the Beatles and as a solo artist have remained iconic and without comparison. He made global headlines when he was shot outside the Dakota Apartments in New York City, where he lived in December 1980. The killer was a young man named Mark David Chapman, who had been stalking Lennon for months and later told police he shot Lennon to become famous.
After Lennon’s death, his ghost was said to roam the Dakota building, appearing to bandmates and family. The Dakota building was the setting of the spooky horror film Rosemary’s Baby, but his ghost also showed up in the recording studio, according to fellow Beatle alumnus Paul McCartney in numerous interviews, including during the recording of “Free as a Bird” in 1995, which was written by Lennon. McCartney, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison felt his playful presence in the form of unexplained noises and equipment acting strangely. The musicians stated they felt Lennon’s presence all around them.
Oasis lead singer Liam Gallagher also experienced John Lennon’s ghost while recording an unfinished symphony of Lennon’s with McCartney. According to Arthur Myers, author of Ghosts of the Rich and Famous, a woman named Barbara Garwell, who lived in England and worked with a parapsychologist, claimed Lennon appeared at the foot of her bed at the moment he was shot in New York. Photographer Bob Freeman, who had shot many of the Beatles’s album covers, was in Hong Kong at the time and said that a framed picture of John dropped from the wall at the time of his death.
But it doesn’t end there. Lennon, while he was alive, saw a spectral ghost called “The Crying Lady” wandering down the hallways of the Dakota building. He believed in the paranormal enough to tell his first wife, Cynthia, that he would send her a sign when he died, one that would involve a feather. In 1986, she found a dead jackdaw bird wrapped in newspaper tucked behind the fireplace of her home.
Speaking of feathers, during a photo shoot for “Free as a Bird,” McCartney reported that a white peacock came over from a nearby farm and visited. The other members of the Beatles agreed it was John making his presence known.
According to “John Lennon’s Ghost” in the Seeks Ghosts blog post of February 14, 2012, John’s ghost was spotted by musician Joey Harrow and his friend Amanda Moores, standing near the door of the Dakota entrance. He was surrounded by an eerie light. Lennon’s beloved wife, Yoko Ono, reported seeing John’s ghost playing a white piano in the home they shared. Lennon turned to her and said, “Don’t be afraid, I am still with you.”
Those who loved John Lennon have his music to live on forever, but just maybe, his spirit is also alive and well.
Rock music icon Janis Joplin died of a heroin overdose on October 4, 1970, in Room 105 of the Landmark Hotel in Hollywood. Her ghost has been spotted in the room and other parts of the building, which is now called the Highland Gardens. If you speak her name out loud in the lobby, pictures on the wall will move and doors will slam shut.
Crooner and actor Frank Sinatra loved spending time at the Cal Neva Resort and Casino on the shore of Lake Tahoe, where he owned Lakeview Cabin #5 from 1960 to 1963, when authorities shut down the casino after finding mobster Sam Giancana on the premises. After Sinatra’s death, his ghost has been spotted at the cabin, and just two doors down, at Cabin #3, visitors have also reported seeing the ghost of another famous guest who often spent time there: Marilyn Monroe. Her ghost has also been reported in the resort swimming pool she loved to frequent.
Sinatra’s ghost may have been haunting his former home in Los Angeles as well, at least according to an encounter country music star Tim McGraw and his four-year-old daughter, Gracie, had. The Nash Country Daily reported on March 28, 2017, that Tim and his wife, country music star Faith Hill, had been looking for a home to rent. McGraw visited the former Sinatra home with his young daughter. Sinatra’s furniture was still in the house, including his piano. Gracie went to sit down at the piano, choosing to sit at the very end of the piano bench.
There was a photo of Frank Sinatra at the top of the stairs, and when Gracie went upstairs and saw the image, she stopped and said, “Dad, that’s the guy.” Tim asked her what she meant, and Gracie responded, “That’s the guy that was at the piano with me.” Then she told her dad that Frank’s ghost went into the kitchen and vanished behind a hidden door.
The family was spooked and surprised! But they still ended up renting the house.
THE FLAMBOYANT LIBERACE
The flamboyant pianist and entertainer known to the world as Liberace died from complications of AIDS after a forty-year career in music, movies, television, and stage shows. His real name was Władziu Valentino Liberace, and he was a child prodigy, which few people know about. The son of Polish and Italian immigrants, he was a huge star in Las Vegas, and his ghost is said to haunt the very restaurant he designed, Carluccio’s Tivoli Gardens. Few people know that he loved to cook and loved to cook in his restaurant, which was originally called Liberace’s Tivoli Gardens. Many who visited after his death have reported hearing a piano playing, experiencing cold spots at the piano, lights going on and off, faucets turning on and off, and bottles falling from shelves.
1950s rock sensation Buddy Holly died in a plane crash with fellow musicians Ritchie Valens and J. P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson Jr. in 1959, an event immortalized in the song “American Pie” by Don McLean.
BUDDY HOLLY
On February 3, 1959, the world lost three true rock legends when a plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa, took the lives of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson Jr. The pilot, Roger Peterson, also died. Fans would flock to the crash site for years, many reporting seeing a phantom plane flying overhead and ghostly lights in the field where the plane crashed. Others report hearing Buddy’s music near where he is buried at the City of Lubbock Cemetery in Texas and even in his former high school classroom at Lubbock High in the dead of night.
That tragic day would go down in history in one of the biggest hit songs ever written, the 1971 “American Pie” by Don McLean, which was a tribute to the fallen stars and “the day the music died.” Yet, the music lives on in the form of recordings and the ghosts of those who died in the crash, like Buddy Holly, who continues to play his songs for anyone alive who will listen.
JIM MORRISON
Rock star, poet, idol, enigma. The lead singer of The Doors died of an alleged drug overdose in his apartment in Paris in 1971. His ghost has been spotted around the Paris cemetery where he is buried, and Rhonda Baron, a female fan, stated in Haunted Rock and Roll: Ghostly Tales of Musical Legends that his ghost climbed into bed with her on numerous occasions and had sex with her.
Morrison’s ghost is also said to haunt the Sunset Sound recording studio. Many dead musicians seem to like hanging out at the studios where they made the music they loved, including Warren Zevon, a singer–songwriter who haunts The Cave, where he spent time making records.
The ghost of rocker Jim Morrison has itself become a legend in the form of a photograph circulating the Internet of Morrison haunting the Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, France, where he was buried. The image shows a man dressed quite like Morrison did when alive. Taken in 1977, it shows rock historian Brett Meisner standing beside Morrison’s headstone, where the image is alleged to show up. According to Rolling Stone magazine’s “Unexplainable Photo Snapped at Jim Morrison’s Grave” in the October 16, 2009, issue, the photo is authentic and has not been tampered with, although newer paranormal researchers have attempted to debunk it. Photo experts at the time stated it was not tampered with, and Meisner himself has reported that since that fateful visit, he has been plagued by strange events ever since, including the death of a close friend, the end of his marriage, and strangers approaching him and claiming now they, too, are haunted by Morrison’s ghost.
Meisner has claimed the vibe around the photograph turned from positive to negative, and since then, many witnesses have reported seeing the icon’s spirit hovering about the gravesite. As for the photo, it is still up for debate, but those who knew Morrison well said his past tragic encounter seeing a Native American ghost after a car accident may have shaped his own beliefs in the existence of the paranormal.
Gram Parsons, who played with the Flying Burrito Brothers and often collaborated with Emmylou Harris, his lover, was interested in UFOs and spent a lot of time out in Joshua Tree National Park, California, a desert area known for sightings of aliens. He even ended his life with an overdose of drugs at the Joshua Tree Inn, where witnesses report his spirit haunts Room 8. His best friend, Phil Kaufman, drove to Los Angeles International Airport and stole Parsons’s ashes from his family after he was cremated and made sure to fulfill Parsons’s last wish of having them spread over the desert landscape. Tourists spending the night at the inn can rent Room 8 in hopes of seeing his ghost. There is even an ad for the inn that states, “Room 8 is haunted—bring your guitar and write songs.”
JOHNNY HORTON
One of country music’s legends was Johnny Horton, who sang such classics as “The Battle of New Orleans,” “North to Alaska,” and “Johnny Reb.” From the start, Horton was interested in the spirit world and often met with a medium named Bernard Ricks. According to “Growing Up Kilgore: The Johnny Horton Story” for the Nashville Music Guide’s August 21, 2012, edition, Horton had a secret code he made with singer/songwriter and good friend Merle Kilgore, like the one Harry Houdini had with his wife. Johnny had a strange feeling he would die and wanted a way to communicate with Merle afterward.
One week later, Johnny was killed by a drunk driver while on his way to a show in College Station, Texas. Years after that, Merle Kilgore was visiting an old friend, radio announcer Bob Lockwood, who introduced Kilgore on the air. Lockwood then went on to play the song “Ring of Fire,” which Kilgore had written for Johnny Cash (he cowrote it with Cash’s wife, June Carter). During the song, a woman called in to the show saying she was part of a group of psychics that had been together the night before and received an unusual name on their Ouija board. The name? Merle Kilgore.
But that wasn’t the whole message. On the Ouija board, the same force or spirit had written the strange message, “The drummer is a rummer and he can’t hold the beat.” Kilgore heard this and freaked. That was the exact secret code he had created with Horton before his death!
SID VICIOUS
Punk rocker and bassist for the legendary Sex Pistols lived in Room 100 of the Chelsea Hotel in New York City with girlfriend Nancy Spungen. In 1978, he was accused of murdering Nancy and died of a drug overdose while out on bail before a verdict was ever reached in the case. People at the hotel report seeing Sid’s ghost hanging around the hotel’s elevators. Welsh poet Dylan Thomas’s ghost has also been seen roaming the halls of the hotel, where he fell into a coma before his death.
Eddie was the troubled guitarist for the Mussel Shoals Sound Rhythm Section. He died in 1995 and was buried in a blue suit. Later, when the Black Keys were recording at the Mussel Shoals Sound Studio, a famous studio in Alabama where big names made their records, including Hinton’s band, the members reported seeing an apparition in a blue suit. They also experienced many malfunctions of studio equipment that may have been the ghost of Hinton interfering.
HANK WILLIAMS
Country music icon Hank Williams is a busy ghost! He is regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the twentieth century and keeps busy even after his death in 1953 by haunting Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, the former home of the famed Grand Ole Opry. Williams performed there many times, and employees have claimed they’ve run into his ghost backstage or onstage after the venue has closed. Perhaps he is waiting for his cue to take the stage and perform as he loved to in life.
JIMI HENDRIX
Another legend and icon, rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix, died in 1970 at the height of his career as one of the greatest musicians of the twentieth century. His death was considered mysterious because he was staying in London with a woman named Monika Dannemann, who found him in her apartment one morning unconscious and unresponsive. He was taken to the hospital and pronounced dead shortly after, and the cause of death was listed as an overdose of barbiturates and aspiration from his own vomit. His ghost is said to be heard playing guitar around a bronze statue of him that was erected on the Isle of Wight, where he played his final concert.
The ghost of guitarist Jimi Hendrix is said to haunt the Isle of Wight, where he had his final concert.
Hendrix was more than just one of the most celebrated musicians of his time. He was also someone who experienced paranormal phenomena, including UFO sightings. His music and lyrics reflected his beliefs in other worlds and other beings that existed there, and he often spoke in interviews of his interest in UFOs and aliens. According to “Jimi Hendrix’s Ghost and His UFO and Alien Encounters” by Paul Seaburn for the April 6, 2017, Mysterious Universe, Jimi performed at an extinct volcano in Maui, and those present saw UFOs while Hendrix chilled out between sets in a Hopi tent.
Jimi was once a member of the group Curtis Knight and the Squires. Curtis Knight says the band had an encounter with a landed UFO while near Woodstock, New York, in 1965. Their car got stuck there in a snowstorm, and they all witnessed the UFO land in front of the car, melt the ice, and warm the car enough to get it back on the road. Some people suggest Jimi’s out-of-this-world lyrics were the result of too many drugs, but perhaps they were more about his real-life experiences than they could ever have imagined.
MILEY SEES A GHOST
Miley Cyrus, the pop singer turned iconic performer, had her own terrifying ghostly encounters during her 2009 London tour. She rented a flat in London and was staying with her family, including her kid sister, Noah, when she heard Noah scream from the bathroom shower. The hot water knob had turned on by itself, burning Noah. Miley later saw a little boy sitting on the sink while she tried to shower. He showed up the next night, too, and, when she did some research into the flat, learned that it was once owned by a family of three. The parents had died, leaving behind a little boy, the same boy she claimed to have seen on the sink.
The Cyrus family left the flat immediately after!
DEMI LOVATO SEES A GHOST
Pop starlet Demi Lovato claims her home in Texas, where she grew up, is haunted by a little girl named Emily. The ghostly presence and her name were confirmed by a psychic and ghost hunters who came to the home to investigate. Lovato claims she saw Emily many times as a child. The ghost was often seen in the closet, and Lovato would sometimes be talking to the ghost when her mother came into the room. When her mom asked who she was conversing with, Lovato would say quite matter-of-factly, “My best friend, Emily.” Imaginary friend or real ghost? Maybe both?
ARIANA GRANDE SEES A GHOST, TOO!
Another pop starlet, Ariana Grande, told Complex magazine in 2013 about her own encounter in a Kansas City haunted castle and the infamous “Skull Cemetery,” said to be the gateway to the Seven Gates of Hell. She reported feeling sick and smelling sulfur, a scent often associated with the dead and ghosts, and felt such a sense of negativity, she rolled down the windows and apologized to the dead buried in the cemetery for disturbing their peaceful slumber.
She took a photo which later showed three faces that were not there, looking just like demons, but when she sent the photo to her manager, the file showed that it couldn’t be opened and that it was 666 megabytes in size. She continued to experience weird sounds and sensations afterward and eventually was able to put an end to the strange goings-on by relaxing and not giving in to her fears.
CELEBRITIES WHO HAVE GHOST ENCOUNTERS OF THEIR OWN
Lady Gaga is famous for her music and acting chops and often dresses in bizarre and eye-catching costumes as part of her onstage persona. In May 2010, England’s Mirror news outlet reported that she had spent a few thousand dollars on an electromagnetic field sweeper and other equipment to remove what she called “bad energy” in the form of dark spirits before her Monster’ Ball London concert. Her aide told the Mirror they were taking the equipment on the road with them to make sure each location was clear of any spirits and, several months later, held a séance to rid a spirit, whose name was Ryan. Gaga was allegedly annoyed and afraid of the ghost enough to take such measures. No word on whether she still uses the equipment now that her acting career is taking off.
Sting, the singer and former frontman for The Police, claimed he once saw a ghost in the bedroom of an old house he lived in along with his wife, Trudie Styler. In an interview with The Telegraph, he claimed they saw a figure standing in the corner with a child one night when they were in bed. Sting woke up and thought his wife was standing with a child. He thought it strange she would be standing there, even more so with a child, but then realized she was right next to him in bed. He got a terrible chill when Trudi then woke up and asked who the woman and child were, standing in the corner. Sting said the figures just vanished into thin air. He also claimed objects would fly around the home, and they would often hear disembodied voices. Yet, he ended the interview with the strange comment, “When you live in old houses you get this energy there. Intellectually, no I don’t believe in them (ghosts), but I’ve experienced them on an emotional level.” Pretty sure objects flying around a house on their own goes way beyond the emotional level!
Actress Laura Linney was interviewed by James Corden on The Late Late Show and told the story of how she went from ghost skeptic to believer. She was inside The Belasco Theater on Broadway, which had a reputation of being haunted by those who performed and worked there. A chorus girl died at the Theater during a dress rehearsal, and Laura was shocked to see the ghost while she was doing a play with Jane Alexander. She pointed out a woman in the front row of an upper balcony that was supposedly closed off to Jane. The woman had blonde hair and wore a blue dress. Jane saw the woman, too, but when they looked again, the ghost had vanished. Laura later told the house manager she saw a ghost. He replied, “Male or female?” Laura said, “Female.” He then said, “Blue dress, blonde hair?” The resident chorus girl ghost was watching the actors from above, wishing she had gotten to the stage before her own tragic death.
Former first lady and U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton reportedly hired spiritual adviser Jean Houston to channel Eleanor Roosevelt.
Hillary Clinton may not be a movie star, but according to the book The Choice, Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward wrote that in 1995 the first lady was visited in the White House by her spiritual adviser, Jean Houston, who came to channel Hillary’s idol, Eleanor Roosevelt. The ceremony was similar to a séance and allowed Hillary to communicate with Eleanor. At one point, Hillary responded in Eleanor’s voice, saying, “I was misunderstood.… You have to do what you think is right … it was crucial to set a course and hold to it.” One has to wonder if Eleanor came back at a later date to give Hillary some advice on how to recover from her loss to Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.
Keanu Reeves is handsome and known for both comedic and dramatic movies such as The Matrix and Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. As a child growing up in New Jersey, he felt the presence of a ghost and saw a man dressed in a white, double-breasted suit with no torso or legs in it. The ghost entered his bedroom, then vanished. Keanu said his nanny also witnessed the strange apparition, and he claims to sometimes still see the man in his dreams.
Actress Alyson Hannigan was no stranger to bizarre and evil entities, having played Willow, the popular character on the Buffy, the Vampire Slayer television series for years. She and her husband apparently encountered a ghost in a Los Angeles house they moved into in 2003. A friend saw the ghost first, claiming the ghost followed them out of the house. Alyson stated in an interview the ghost was not intrusive and seemed friendly.
Singer Robbie Williams moved into the house once owned by Beatles drummer Ringo Starr in Los Angeles, according to the Sunday Post. The moving men claimed there was a woman sitting in the chair in the house, and they refused to go in! The house was haunted not just by the strange, old woman but by several children, who could be seen and heard playing outside in the garden. Ringo’s son, Zak Starkey, once asked Robbie if he had met the children in the garden and the old lady, so clearly, the house had been haunted when Ringo lived in it, too.
Telly Savalas, the bald actor who gained fame playing a lollipop-sucking New York detective named Kojak in the 1970s, had an especially intriguing ghostly encounter years ago, when his car ran out of gas. He had to start walking and wanted a lift to a gas station. A black Cadillac pulled up, and he heard a man’s voice ask if he needed a lift, so he said yes. He even loaned Telly a dollar to get gas (this was a long time ago, folks!), and Telly made the man write down his name and phone number so he could pay him back and return the favor. Later, Telly looked up the man’s name in the phone book (this was before cell phones, folks!) and found the number. When he called, a woman answered and said she was the man’s wife. She told Telly the man had been dead for three years. Telly met her and showed her the handwriting, and she confirmed it was her husband’s. She also confirmed her husband owned the clothes Telly said the man was wearing at the time. Telly’s catchphrase as Kojak was “Who loves ya, baby?” In this case, it was a nice ghost with a dollar to spare.
It’s nice to know that there are Good Samaritans out there that will help in times of need, whether they are dead or alive.
Racing legend Dale Earnhardt Jr. recounted an encounter with a ghost on his The Dale Jr. Download podcast. He crashed a Corvette in 2004 in Sonoma, California, and the car caught on fire. He felt someone pulling him out of the burning car and thought it was a corner worker by the way the person pulled him from under the armpits. He had no recollection of ever getting out of the car on his own. Everything was moving in slow motion, common during an emergency, and he distinctly felt himself being pulled over the door bars, then being let go. He fell to the ground, and there were many photographs taken of him on the ground but none of him coming out of the car. He asked at the hospital later over and over who helped him so he could thank the person later, but there was no one there. Ghost or angel?
THE BLUES BROTHERS
When famous actor and comedian John Belushi, famous for his hilarious movies and stints on Saturday Night Live, died in 1982 from a drug overdose, his best friend, Dan Aykroyd, who costarred with Belushi in The Blues Brothers, claimed he saw Belushi’s ghost haunting the studio they had worked in together—Studio 8H. Aykroyd, also an avid UFO enthusiast, believed Belushi’s spirit was trapped in some kind of limbo in the studio.
Aykroyd grew up with a grandfather who was not only a Canadian Mountie but the son of a mystic who was adept at the writings of spiritualists and occultists. Growing up in the old family farmhouse in Ontario, Canada, he was exposed to these things from an early age and went on to have a strong interest in, and appreciation of, the paranormal. In addition to the ghost of Belushi, he also claims he once lived in the house that was once owned by Cass Elliot of the Mamas and the Papas and that the Hollywood house was said to be haunted, according to an interview with him in Esquire.com’s October 30, 2013, edition. He reports seeing things moving on their own and doors opening and closing and states even the staff had their own paranormal experiences.
Aykroyd even reports having photographs of himself at the famous Myrtles Plantation, a haunted bed-and-breakfast in South Carolina. In the background of the photos are orb like heads with hair and other swirling images he cannot explain. His avid belief in both ghosts and extraterrestrials have gotten him on television shows and radio shows discussing the spooky subjects with authority. And remember, he did star in Ghostbusters!
MICHAEL JACKSON’S HAUNTED CABINET
Did the late Michael Jackson own a haunted cabinet? According to Dan Aykroyd during an interview with Esquire magazine in October 2013, mega-superstar Jackson owned a wardrobe that he believed was possessed by spirits. According to Craig and Jane Hamilton-Parker, two mediums and mystic teachers, Jackson also claimed he could communicate with another famous dead musician—Liberace, the flamboyant pianist who died in 1987. In an article titled “Ghosts: Dead Celebrities Make a Comeback!” for a British blog, the couple also report that Michael Jackson had a secret room with moving walls and mirrors, and it was in that room he had his communications with Liberace. Jackson claimed to feel the older man’s presence and likened Liberace to a guardian angel.
The “King of Pop,” Michael Jackson was often characterized as a bit quirky. One example might be that he believed he owned a wardrobe that was possessed by spirits.
Ironically, Liberace had his own paranormal experiences, claiming he once owned a piano that belonged to Franz Liszt, the famed classical composer. Liberace felt that he was inspired by the spirit of Liszt to write music on his piano.
GHOSTS OF THE POP WORLD
That same psychic couple also reported on their blog that Roger Daltrey of the British rock band The Who spoke to the spirit of the dead drummer, Keith Moon. Moon died of a drug overdose in 1978, and the band was never the same without his iconic sound and personality. Another pop star, Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys, claimed he communicated with dead spirits and even saw the future while using a Ouija board. He was told, at the age of fifteen during a séance, that he would be famous one day. And the spirit who told him that? None other than the ghost of Oscar Wilde!
Sting, the singer for the rock band The Police, once dealt with a chaotic ghost that haunted his home and flung sharp knives across the kitchen. He also claimed the hanging mobiles in his daughter’s bedroom would spin, even when there was no one in the room and the window was closed. Many celebrities see the ghosts of other celebrities, as did Jane Fonda, famed actress, who saw the spirit of her equally famous father, Henry Fonda, who passed away in 1982.
So, Sting’s case is a bit more unique, as the alleged poltergeist was not someone identifiable.
THE CURSED CAR OF JAMES DEAN
One of the most iconic individuals in entertainment history was James Dean, born James Byron Dean in the town of Marion, Indiana, in 1931. This young and handsome man would soon become one of the greatest movie stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood as well as a sex symbol, and his legend lives on long after his death in a car crash in 1955.
This replica of James Dean’s 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder was on display at a 2013 car show at the Los Angeles Arboretum. The young actor died while driving this car on California’s Route 41. Some believed the car to be cursed.
This star of Rebel without a Cause doesn’t necessarily haunt anyone in ghostly form, but he does have his own urban legend. The car he died in a head-on collision in was a Porsche Spyder he had hoped to one day race. Dean loved living in the fast lane, so he naturally fell in love with the silver-gray 1955 Porsche Spyder, even naming it “Little Bastard.” He painted the number 130 on its side and replaced the windshield with a smaller racing shield.
The legend begins when, on September 23, 1955, Dean showed the car to actor Alec Guinness outside a restaurant. Guinness commented that the car had a sinister look to it and told Dean he would die in the car by the same time the next week. In fact, Dean was killed in the car a week later, when he tried to avoid a car making a left turn onto Route 41 heading toward Fresno. The other driver, a Cal Poly student named Donald Turnupseed, crossed over the center line and was slammed into by Dean’s car, which was doing upward of 85 miles per hour. Dean was killed instantly from a broken neck and internal injuries. His passenger, mechanic Rolf Wutherich, was injured but survived. Turnupseed suffered minor injuries.
But it was what would come afterward that turned the whole situation into a notorious urban legend that lives on to this day. The wrecked car was taken to the garage of car customizer George Barris, who bought it for $2,500. The Porsche fell on a mechanic during the unloading and broke both his legs. Then, two physicians purchased parts from the car for their own racing cars. One of them died shortly after during a race, and the other was injured in a car rollover.
Fans would break into the garage to try to steal pieces of the wreckage, injuring themselves as a result, which forced Barris to store it away at a garage in Fresno. The garage caught fire, and everything inside was destroyed except for Little Bastard. The car would later be a part of exhibits, including one at a high school, when it fell and broke a student’s hip. Then, on a flatbed truck heading toward Salinas, George Barkulus lost control of the truck and was thrown out onto the ground. What killed him, though, was Little Bastard falling off and crushing him to death.
The car would fall off another flatbed truck two years later and cause an accident, and in 1958, a truck carrying wreckage pieces slipped from its hillside parking spot and crashed into a car.
In 1959, the car was on display in New Orleans when it mysteriously broke into eleven pieces. No one knew why. A year later, when the car was heading back to Barris’s garage from a trip to Florida, it vanished and hasn’t been found since.
Rumors spread that Dean’s car was cursed because of his alleged involvement with Satanism and the occult, thanks to his association with a Los Angeles coven and an actress named Maila Nurmi, who starred in Vampira and may or may not have cursed Dean. Regardless, his legend as an icon lives on, and as for his car, it may turn up again someday to continue the curse.
There are those who say Dean’s ghost haunts the Park Cemetery in Fairmount, Indiana, where his grave sits on a small hill. Because Dean was an avid smoker, there is a legend that says if you leave an unlit cigarette at his grave and walk away, when you return, the cigarette will be lit, and there will be the smell of smoke in the air. Other witnesses report seeing Dean sitting on his gravestone being eternally cool.
SERIAL KILLER GHOSTS
Serial killers are notorious in life, and also in death, according to numerous reports. While we might expect their many victims, who died under the most tragic and violent of circumstances, to become ghosts, it isn’t often the killers themselves are witnessed. Ted Bundy is one of the worst, having grown up in Tacoma, Washington, as a child. He was nine years old when his family moved to the area, and his bedroom was located on the second floor of the house, where he lived with his mother, stepfather, and four siblings. Bundy may have been fourteen when he killed his first victim, fueled by an obsession with pornography, according to his final interview with a psychologist before his execution in 1989 in the Florida State Prison.
His killing spree, which included rape, torture, and necrophilia, was linked to at least thirty deaths but possibly dozens more and began in 1974, lasting for years and spanning eleven states.
Now his childhood home is haunted, according to those who have experienced the bizarre activity. Cell phones and electronics would die or get unplugged from sockets, and the word “leave” was found in the bedroom on the floor with no footprints nearby. Another time, the words “help me” appeared on a basement window. Furniture has been known to fall over or move on its own.
Two pastors were called in to help cleanse the house, reciting Bible verses as they went from room to room. Christian music was played as they blessed the home. Even real estate agents trying to sell the house were aware of the bizarre activity, which probably sent some buyers running for the hills.
Another haunted serial killer’s home is a farm located in La Porte, Indiana, where the bodies of over a dozen victims were buried beneath the farm owned by a notorious killer, Belle Guinness. It is her ghost, and not the ghosts of the victims, locals report seeing wandering about the farm.
The same thing happens at the Fox Hollow Farm in Indiana, where another serial killer’s ghost is reportedly on the property. Herb Baumeister burned and buried eleven male victims on the farm, discovered in 1996 when his wife led police to investigate the land. The investigation turned up over 5,500 bones and bone fragments from a large burn spot and the compost area. Baumeister fled to Canada, intending to take his own life. His sadistic tendencies began at a young age, when he enjoyed torturing animals and playing with their dead bodies. He was antisocial and, in his teens, was admitted for psychiatric evaluation. He was diagnosed as a schizophrenic and was again institutionalized as an adult for two months in the 1970s. Yet, on the outside, he looked like a normal person, marrying and having three children. He was also the founder of Sav-A-Lot thrift stores. Just goes to show that you never really know your neighbors.
Baumeister never confessed to the crimes he was charged with, but enough evidence existed pointing directly to him. One day after being stopped by a Canadian trooper and eventually let go, he went to Pinery Provincial Park and shot himself with a .357 Magnum, leaving behind a three-page suicide note about family and financial woes being the reason for his suicide. He didn’t mention any of the murders he was charged with.
His property was purchased in 2009 by a couple, Rob and Vicky Graves, who knew of the gruesome history of the farm and rented one of the property’s apartments to a friend with a dog. Soon after, the man started having horrendous nightmares and began experiencing problems with electrical appliances, which would unplug or malfunction.
The man and his dog were subject to phantom knocks on walls, floors, and doors all through the night, and one knock was so strong it busted the door of its hinges. Others who lived at the estate also reported paranormal activity, including the ghost of Baumeister roaming around the house and the grounds and the feeling of being pushed, prodded, and pulled by unseen hands. One particular apparition wore a red T-shirt and was only visible from the torso up, and dogs on the property would bark wildly at unseen objects or people. The red T-shirt phantom would appear to other witnesses, usually wandering into the woods before vanishing.
Paranormal groups investigating Fox Hollow Farm claim to get active EVP of talkative ghosts, including what may have been Baumeister himself as well as the voices of victims saying things like “Hurry up, he’s coming!”
DAHMER AND THE TOWER
No known stories exist of notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer haunting his childhood home, but apparently, the man known as the Milwaukee Monster may be haunting Morrill Tower at Ohio State University. Dahmer is known for raping, murdering, and dismembering seventeen boys and men between 1978 and 1991. He also committed acts of necrophilia and cannibalism. He appeared to have had a normal childhood but as an adolescent began displaying antisocial behavior and an obsession with examining the dead bodies of animals. He committed his first murder in 1978, three weeks after graduating high school, when he picked up a hitchhiker named Steven Hicks and took him back to his father’s house to have some beers. Hicks wanted to leave, so Dahmer hit him in the back of the head with a ten-pound dumbbell, then dissected, pulverized, and scattered the man’s remains through the backyard. It would be nine years before he killed again.
A high school yearbook photo of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer makes it difficult to believe he was a ruthless murderer. His spirit is said to haunt Morrill Tower at Ohio State University.
In 1985, he would go to gay bath-houses to drug and rape men. He was arrested twice for indecent exposure but only given probation. He killed his second victim, Steven Tuomi, in September 1987 in a hotel room. He killed two more victims in 1988, one in 1989, and four in 1990, luring unsuspecting men from bars or soliciting prostitutes, whom he then drugged, raped, and strangled. He also began having sex with the dead bodies and photographing their dismemberments. He kept their perfectly preserved skulls and genitals for display and ate other parts. Eventually, he was arrested for fondling a thirteen-year-old boy, then released, and he then killed four more people and another eight in 1991, claiming later to have drilled holes into their skulls and injected hydrochloric acid or boiling water into their brains to make them like zombies. Eventually, his crimes caught up to him, and he was arrested. His home was filled with the skulls and parts of his victims. Dahmer confessed and told the horrific details of his crimes to the authorities. Dahmer served his time at the Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, Wisconsin. He was attacked twice by fellow inmates, with the second attempt on November 28, 1994, in the prison showers. Dahmer died on the way to the hospital from severe head trauma.
Dahmer, while in college, lived in Room 541 of Morrill Tower before he dropped out of school and joined the army. Students who now reside there have reported seeing an apparition at the foot of their bed and feeling a strong sense of dread or fear in the room. The university registrar confirms Dahmer was at the college but won’t divulge exactly where.
Hollywood isn’t just known for the ghosts of the once famous stars who lived and worked there. Hollywood pop culture is filled with ghosts we have all come to know and sometimes even love. There are hundreds to choose from in movies, television shows, cartoons, and comics, but a few of the most well known are:
•Casper the Friendly Ghost—The sweetly innocent, iconic, cartoon ghost who was very, very friendly and had a lot of friends to boot.
•Slimer—The gross, green ghost of Ghostbusters fame who was always hungry and always burping.
•The Ghosts of Christmases Past, Present, and Future—Jacob Marley and the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future all haunted Ebenezer Scrooge until he changed his hostile ways in the 1843 Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol.
Comic actor Don Knotts once played a cowardly reporter staying in a haunted house in the 1966 film The Ghost and Mr. Chicken.
•Captain Daniel Gregg—Actress Jean Tierney plays a young widow named Mrs. Muir, who seeks peace at a secluded, seaside getaway with her daughter when she discovers it’s haunted by the dashing, deceased sea captain played by Rex Harrison in the delightful 1947 romantic fantasy The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.
•Hamlet’s Father, the King of Denmark—More of a Broadway ghost, the father of Hamlet played an integral role in the Shakespeare classic. He appears three times in the play, all during the night.
•Sam Wheat in Ghost—Who can forget the heart-wrenchingly romantic scene of Patrick Swayze’s dead character, Sam, creating a clay vase with his despairing wife, played by Demi Moore, in this 1990 film?
•The Creepy Hallway Twins—Stephen King’s The Shining (1977 horror novel, which was adapted as a 1980 film directed by Stanley Kubrick) is full of ghosts, but none are creepier than two little twin girls who appear at the end of a long hallway and ask little Danny if he wants to play.
•Malcolm Crowe in The Sixth Sense—Apparently, Hayley Joel Osment sees dead people, one of which is murdered psychologist Bruce Willis in the 1999 blockbuster thriller directed by M. Night Shyamalan.
•The Others—Nicole Kidman starred in this 2001 horror film in which she played a mom trying desperately to protect her children from ghostly entities.
•The Innocents—Screen legend Deborah Kerr played a governess dealing with two children and a creepy house full of ghosts and major plot twists in this 1961 British, black-and-white, classic film.
•Beetlejuice—Don’t say his name three times, or you will pay the price! That’s what Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin discover as two ghosts who enlist the help of the demon/spirit (played by Michael Keaton) to rid their home of the unwanted new owners.
•Mr. Chicken’s Ghost—Don Knotts played a reporter challenged to spend a night in an allegedly haunted house that turns out to be, well … haunted in the 1966 comedy classic The Ghost and Mr. Chicken.
THE KILLER WRITER
Imagine being a journalist and writing about your own heinous crimes. Jack Unterweger covered his own murders in the early 1990s while in Austria and in the state of California. In Austria, he wrote about murders he committed in seven different cities in the country and then in California documented his own murders of three prostitutes. He gained notoriety for his writing, and when he was arrested and jailed, his fans and influential supporters petitioned for his parole on the basis of his journalistic achievements. So much for the deaths and suffering he caused. He killed himself in prison, and his fiancé claimed to have seen his ghost at the foot of her bed the night he died.
Just as ghosts appear to millions of normal folks around the world at any given time, celebrities and stars have their fair share of experiences. These paranormal events level the playing field and make us all quite human when faced with evidence of life after death, or at least ghosts after death, because they don’t discriminate based on fame, income, or how many followers you have on social networking. Ghosts seem to be equal-opportunity haunters. Whether the ghosts are of stars themselves or it’s the stars seeing the ghosts, we love to read these stories and hear these tales on popular television series such as A Haunting, Celebrity Ghost Stories, Celebrity Paranormal Project, and a host of others that have come and gone or read of their encounters in books and magazines because it makes us feel like the stars we often put up on pedestals are really just like us.
