The title of this piece might be a bit misleading as, no, this is not about a ghost or multiple apparitions that have gained celebrity status, but rather is is about the encounters with ghosts, that celebrities have had.
Recently a story turned up on our radar at Saint Michael’s Journal written by a John Popham titled; Paris Hilton Accidentally Summons A Ghost [1]
Mr. Popham begins his essay with this statement: “They say you should never mess with a Ouija board because you never know what you might summon.” Most Exorcists, ministers in general as well as yours truly, all agree that Ouija boards are a good thing to avoid. Actually anything of an occult nature is a good thing to avoid, especially those devices or rituals that supposedly enable you to converse with the spirit realm. More on that subject later.
The author follows up on his opening line with this; “This is a warning that Paris Hilton can get behind. As she explained on a recent episode of her podcast, This is Paris, a sleepover at her grandmother’s house quickly became a scene out of paranormal activity when a Ouija board was used.”
Ms. Hilton, and others who she does not name but refers to as “we,” were apparently in a room at her Grandmother’s house playing with an Ouija board, when a crayon was observed floating in mid air. She also reports that she believes that the ghost is that of a 17-year-old girl who lived in the house 50 years before Hilton’s grandmother and was hit by a car driveway and died. Paris also claims that when people in the house look into mirrors, they sometimes catch glimpses of the girl walking behind them in the mirror’s reflection.
Paris Hilton is not the only celebrity to complain of being terrified by spirits. Paranormal experiences and brushes with the world beyond our understanding seem to happen to people from all walks of life, all levels of education, and all ages. There is no real certain group of people who are more or less likely to have such experiences, and accounts run the gamut across the board, often coming from very reliable people. Of course the reports we most pay attention to are those that come from our favorite actors, musicians, and other celebrities, and some of these are just about as strange as you’re likely to find.
Star Wars actress Carrie Fisher had some bizarre experiences in the time after her close friend R. Gregory Stevens died of a drug overdose at her Beverly Hills home. She claims that in the days after his death she heavily felt his presence lurking everywhere, as well as had the sensation of being watched and even touched by an unseen presence. Even spookier was that lights and electronic equipment would turn on and off for no reason, and she would describe her experiences with Vanity Fair in 2006, saying: “Lights would go on and off and I had this toy machine that when you touched it, it would say, ‘F–k you! Eat s–! You’re an a–hole!’ And it would go off in the night by itself, in my closet. I was a nut for a year.” [2]
Actor Matthew McConaughey found that a new home he had purchased was haunted shortly after moving in. The spirit is described as a middle-aged woman dressed in blue, which he calls Madame Blu.
One evening, he claims that he heard anomalous noises downstairs in the middle of the night and no one was there, and she was apparently glimpsed or heard rummaging about the home on several occasions. On another occasion, he got so sick of her antics after hearing her making a ruckus in another room that he actually confronted the spirit. McConaughey claims to have been sober and or not high when he encountered the spirit. Being fed up with the ruckus caused by the entity he told it that it could do what ever it wanted to but he wasn’t going anywhere. Apparently all guests to his home were instructed to make the same proclamation upon entering the structure.
Keanu Reeves claims that as a child when his family moved into a new apartment in New York he was home alone with his nanny when a jacket, sans body, began to fly around through the room. The now mega-star explains, “There was a doorway, and all of a sudden, we’re looking over there and this jacket comes waving through the doorway, just empty — there’s no head, there’s no body, there’s no legs. It’s just there, and then it disappears. I was a little a kid, so I thought, ‘That’s interesting.’ And then I looked over at the nanny. It was her shocked face that made me realize what we had just seen was real.”
Now we know why Mr. Reeves did the movie Constantine, he had real life experience in dealing with demons.
Jean Luc Picard, Captain of the Star-ship enterprise had a close encounter, well actually it was the actor who played Jean Luc, Patrick Stewart. Mr. Stewart alleges that while performing Waiting for Godot with Sir Ian McKellen at the notoriously haunted Theatre Royal Haymarket, he witnessed a man appear off in one of the wings and then vanish into thin air. Apparently Stewart was so flustered that he missed a line and when McKellen asked Stewart what happened, he replied; “I just saw a ghost. On stage, during Act One.”
According to local legend, a man named Baldwin Buckstone, who had been an actor himself, as well as a playwright and eventually the manager of the establishment back in the 19th century, died, and continues to haunt the theater to this day. Reportedly the entity thought to be Buckstone has appeared to numerous actors and employees of the establishment.
In addition to film actors, some movie directors have had inexplicable brushes with the paranormal as well. Acclaimed director Peter Jackson, well known for his Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies of fantasy films, has apparently had his own odd experience. At the time, the director had been staying with his wife in an apartment across from the St. James Theatre, in London, when one night he woke to find an apparition of a woman at the end of his bed, with a face that seemed to be frozen into a scream. The frightening entity then allegedly hovered across the room to disappear through a wall. [2]
When Jackson told his wife about seeing a spirit, she asked if it was the woman with a screaming face, apparently she had seen the same entity.
The very well-known pop singer Miley Cyrus apparently had a rather frightening experience with some sort of paranormal entity while staying in an apartment in London in 2009 during a concert tour. Things started with a scary encounter relayed by Cyrus’s sister within the flat’s bathroom, and Miley would also see the spirit, which seemed to take the form of a little boy.
Cyrus relates that one night her little sister was in the shower and began to scream. Reportedly the entity had turned the hot water knob all the way on and the water was burning the girl. Miley said, “She was really red.” The singer added; “ I thought I had seen a little boy sitting on the sink watching me take a shower so I felt really freaked out. I was sitting there the next night and maybe I’m crazy, but I could have sworn I could see this little boy sitting there on the sink, kicking his feet.”
While visiting an old castle and cemetery in Kansas, Ariana Grande, had an even scarier experience.
Stull is an unincorporated community in Douglas County Kansas according to Wikipedia. Founded in 1857, the settlement was initially known as Deer Creek until it was renamed after its only postmaster, Sylvester Stull. As of 2018, only a handful of structures remain in the area.
Since the 1970s, the town has become infamous due to an apocryphal legend that claims the nearby Stull Cemetery is possessed by demonic forces. This legend has become a facet of American popular culture and has been referenced in numerous forms of media. The Stull Cemetery has gained an ominous reputation as some believe it to be one of the seven gates to hell.
Academics, historians, and local residents are in agreement that the various legends surrounding Stull have no basis in historical fact; wild and imaginative tales created and spread by students. One such tall tale has it that an old tree in the graveyard once served as gallows for condemned witches who return from the dead each year as Satan’s army. Another legend has it that in the basement of the abandoned church in Stull, Kansas, there is a staircase. And if you follow that staircase, down, down, down, you will reach the entrance to hell, itself.
This legend has spread so far and wide that it even made it into a major television series. The cemetery is also the site of the final confrontation between Lucifer and Michael in “Swan Song”, the season five finale of the television series Supernatural. In a 2006 interview, Eric Kripke (the creator of Supernatural) revealed that he decided to have the two brothers, Sam and Dean Winchester the protagonists of the series that ran for fifteen seasons, be from Lawrence because of its closeness to Stull.
While at the notoriously haunted Stull Cemetery, Ariana Grande and friends came across what seems to have been perhaps an actual demon.
They were driving through the cemetery when according to Ariana, she felt overwhelmed by an intense, unshakable feeling of pure dread and anguish. It was then that she smelled the unmistakable odor of sulfur and observed a fly buzzing around inside the vehicle. Ariana and friends decided to leave, but, not before taking taking some pictures. The singer and popular celebrity explains; “Then I took a picture, and there are three super-distinct faces in the picture — they’re faces of textbook demons. The next day I tried to send [the picture] to my manager, and it said, ‘This file can’t be sent, it’s 666 megabytes.’ I’m not kidding. I used to have a folder called ‘demons’ that had pictures with all the screencaps in it, but then weird things started happening to me, so I deleted it.”
Ms. Grande spoke of a fly in the car, on face value this doesn’t seem to be an important facet of this case, but it is. The sudden inexplicable appearance of a fly or flies has been sensationalized in movies and books of the horror/gothic genre, for a reason. Flies will appear when evil is present, speaking as an Exorcist, take my word for it hope you never experience the phenomena.
Uri Geller, the Israeli-British illusionist, magician, television personality, and self-proclaimed psychic best known for his trademark television performances of spoon bending and other illusions; is said to have been a friend of none other than the legendary John Lennon, of The Beatles fame. Geller claims that the artist once relayed to him a very surreal and outlandish encounter that he had had.
According to Geller, Lennon told him that one day in the early 1970s he had looked outside of his apartment after seeing an anomalous bright light, and that he had seen strange, bug-like creatures milling about outside, which repelled him with some invisible force when he tried to get closer. Lennon would reportedly explain this event as: “They did something. But I don’t know what it was. I tried to throw them out, but, when I took a step towards them, they kind of pushed me back. I mean, they didn’t touch me. It was like they just willed me. Pushed me with willpower and telepathy.” The next thing Lennon knew, he lost consciousness and woke up in his own bed. It might have all been written off as a weird dream if there hadn’t been an alien mechanical metal egg sitting there in his hands. Lennon would purportedly pass it to Geller and say, “It’s too weird for me. If it’s my ticket to another planet, I don’t want to go there.”
Other celebrities have reported similar bizarre incidents, some have even had their homes exorcised. The rich and famous as well as the ordinary person often ask how they can avoid such encounters with the paranormal. The best we can tell them is to stay away from that which might invite evil into your home.
In the case of Ouija boards, we often hear reports that a user of the device was able to communicate with a dead relative. The user or victim as the case may be, claims that the disembodied entity they made contact with, knew personal information that only the dead person could have been privy to. The victim believes that this uncanny coincidence is proof that they were indeed communicating with their dear departed relative.
Those who believe that God The Father created heaven and Earth, also believe that at the time of creation, God had everything planned out, even down to the day and hour of your birth. We know that when God did this, his angels were with him and were privy to his stupendous design. We are told that later on, a certain number of Angels rebelled and were cast out, falling to Earth. The principle being among that group, the one we commonly think of as Satan, had knowledge of all things. Therefore, when you use an Ouija board or a psychic contacts your long lost relative, how do you know that beyond the shadow of a doubt, the entity communicating events that only your relative would know is in fact your relative, and not the devil who would also be aware of everything that you or your relative would have known?
Admittedly some can use a Ouija board and never have any ill effects, but we humbly ask, why take that chance?
The paranormal is nothing to play with, it is not a game.
A very long time ago, a 17 year old kid, who thought he knew everything as 17 year old kids are prone to do, met with some friends for a fun evening that included a séance. Weird things happened that night, an obvious understatement, as no one that was there—to this day—can give a logical explanation as to what happened. Over the years most of those there that night have had troubled lives, including the 17 year old in question. He finally gave up, he grew tired of all the weird things that was happening to him, and he answered the proverbial calling and became an Exorcist.
[1] Paris Hilton Accidentally Summons A Ghost By John Popham 23 January, 2023 https://z100.iheart.com/content/2023-01-23-paris-hilton-accidentally-summons-a-ghost/
[2] https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/08/bizarre-celebrity-encounters-with-the-paranormal/
Saint Michael's Journal 