1.
We all remember Brittany Murphy’s tragic death in 2009, just before Christmas. The official cause was pneumonia, but iron deficiency anemia and multiple drug intoxication (OTC medication and her prescribed medications) also contributed. But then, less than six months later, her husband, Simon Monjack, died of pneumonia and anemia in the same house.
According to Monjack, Murphy hated the house and thought it was “unlucky.” Britney Spears had previously owned the home and reportedly left the house due to bad spirits, according to her former makeup artist. Monjack’s mother later claimed there was severe mold in the house that caused Monjack to hallucinate, and Murphy’s mother later also came to believe the mold theory. However, the coroners did not find evidence of mold in either autopsy.
2.
James Dean famously died at age 24 after crashing his Porsche into a Sedan at an intersection. Dean was actually on his way to a car race at the time in his new $7000 Porsche — and here’s where it gets creepy. Dean had dined with acting legend Alec Guinness one week before, and Dean had shown Guinness the convertible, telling him it could do 150mph. Guinness asked if he’d driven it yet, and Dean said no. “Some strange thing came over me. Some almost different voice,” Guinness recalled. He says he told Dean not to ever get into the car, then looked at his watch. “I said, ‘If you get into that car at all, it’s now Thursday (Friday, actually), 10 o’clock at night and by 10 o’clock at night next Thursday, you’ll be dead if you get into that car.'”
Dean did not listen and died on Thursday. “It was one of those odd things. It was a very, very odd, spooky experience,” Guinness said. In a set of further creepy coincidences, there were rumors that Dean’s car was haunted. First, it crushed the legs of a nearby mechanic after rolling off the back of a truck following the accident. Next, after the car’s parts were unassembled and placed in other cars, many of those cars were a part of deadly crashes. And a truck transporting the car’s base frame skidded into a deadly crash. To top it all off, the rest of the car’s remains apparently disappeared from the crash scene.
3.
And of course, Paul Walker’s death in a vehicle accident — in which he was going over 100mph — felt especially eerie in the light of the franchise he was best known for: the street-racing series Fast and Furious.
4.
It’s difficult to find the original source, but John Lennon apparently told a reporter in 1965 that “We’ll either go in a plane crash or we’ll be popped off by some loony.” In 1980, Lennon was shot and killed by a fan “seeking fame” (though he later said it was due to jealousy), Mark David Chapman. Eerily, Lennon also whispered the “shoot me” parts of The Beatles’ “Come Together.”
5.
Princess Diana was reportedly afraid she would be killed in a car accident. Her butler, Paul Burrell, said she wrote him a note claiming someone had a plot to cause “an accident in my car, brake failure and serious head injury in order to make the path clear for Charles to marry.” This concern was corroborated by Majesty magazine’s editor-in-chief, the Royal watcher Ingrid Seward. King Charles III was actually questioned over the letter, but investigators found no other evidence to suggest Charles could’ve done such a thing. The famous 1997 accident that killed Diana (along with two other occupants of the car) was officially caused by the driver’s speed and the fact that he was driving under the influence.
6.
This is a much older example, but Mark Twain actually predicted his own death…and he was right. After being born around the time of Haley’s Comet’s perihelion, he claimed he’d die when Haley’s Comet next came back. “I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it,” he said in 1909. “The Almighty has said, no doubt: ‘Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.'” His death came a day after Haley’s Comet’s next perihelion, on April 21, 1910 (however, it would not have been visible — at its closest point to Earth — for about a month).
7.
It was originally believed that Bruce Lee’s death from brain swelling was caused by an allergic reaction to the painkiller Equagesic, which he took after a headache; however, several months earlier, he’d actually almost died from brain swelling. In that incident, the brain swelling seemed to have been caused by heat stroke — Lee had a reduced ability to deal with heat because he’d had his sweat glands removed from his armpits so that he wouldn’t have sweaty pits onscreen. So, essentially, his later death may have been caused by pressure to appear perfect onscreen.
8.
Lee’s death is made creepier because his son also died under tragic and strange circumstances. While shooting The Crow (1994), Brandon Lee was killed when co-star Michael Massee shot him with an improperly loaded prop gun. He was almost done filming the movie, and it was apparently the last scene he had to film involving weapons. In a creepy coincidence, Bruce Lee’s last film, Game of Death, involved an actor being shot on set. Also, in The Crow, Lee’s character is killed before he can marry his fiancé; the same happened with Brandon, who meant to get married to her fiancé when filming ended.
9.
Another actor who died on set was comedian Redd Foxx, who was best known for Sanford and Son. In the show, his character, Fred, often faked heart attacks. Then, while rehearsing a scene in The Royal Family, he began to experience a real heart attack — and due to his past role, everyone thought he was joking. Unfortunately, this was real, and Foxx died.
10.
Tyrone Power is another example of an actor who suffered a heart attack on set. He was on the set of Solomon and Sheba and died before making it to the hospital, still in his costume. What’s creepy about it? Well, his father (also named Tyrone Power) also died during an on-set heart attack while he was shooting The Miracle Man…in the arms of his son.
11.
We can’t make this post without mentioning the connections between Tupac and Biggie’s deaths. Both were killed in drive-by shootings by cars that pulled up next to them after attending events, and neither shooting has been completely solved.* It’s long been speculated that the deaths were related, even by detectives. A lead investigator in the LAPD believed former Death Row CEO Suge Knight planned Biggie’s murder as revenge for Tupac, and that men in the LAPD were involved — he was told to stop investigating, and many years later died of a heart attack while speaking with detectives about the case.
Both Tupac and Biggie had music that appeared to predict their deaths. “If I Die 2Nite,” released a year before Tupac’s death, tells of his fears of being murdered by various adversaries, including cops and rivals. Creepier was his music video for the song “I Ain’t Mad At Cha,” which wasn’t released until after his death. In the video, Tupac leaves a fight with a friend, then is shot and killed, before going to Heaven. He also once reportedly said, “I have a very short window to live, I’ve got to create a body of work.”
As for Biggie — the last album he was working on and promoting just before his death was called Life After Death, which was released two weeks after he died. The album contains lyrics about being shot and killed, with his mom “crouched up over the casket,” knowing his friends are lying and are aware who killed him. He also refers to going out with his enemies, which could be interpreted as going out not long after Tupac.
12.
OJ Simpson is best known today for the murder trial of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ron Goldman. But I find many people don’t know that just a month before the murders, he completed filming the pilot for Frogmen. After the murders, the series was obviously not picked up, and the pilot never aired. But footage from the pilot was actually submitted as evidence in OJ’s murder trial (though it didn’t end up being used). The reason? OJ’s character showed proficiency in knife combat, and Simpson reportedly received military training for the role.
Also, Simpson’s costar Todd Allen had once accompanied OJ to Ross Cutlery between shooting. Ross Cutlery is the suspected source of the murder weapon, which was never discovered. All just a coincidence? Maybe, but it’s still unsettling.
And then there are some eerie coincidences in the show itself. Not only is OJ’s character’s ex-wife dead, but there’s a scene where he almost kills his daughter by holding a knife to her throat, believing she’s a home intruder.
13.
Let’s talk about some actors whose fate was predicted in their projects. Judith Eva Barsi, the child actor who most famously voiced Ducky in The Land Before Time, was murdered by her father at the age of 10. He also murdered his wife, Judith’s mother, before killing himself. Judith had previously played a child murdered by her father — who also killed the character’s mother — in Fatal Vision.
14.
Tara Correa-McMullen, an up-and-coming actor who appeared on shows like Zoey 101, died in a gang-related potential drive-by shooting at age 16 in 2005. Friends said that she had recently been hanging out with a “bad crowd” but had been trying to get her life back on track. At the time, Correa-McMullen was best known for playing a former gang member on Judging Amy. Her character was trying to turn her life around after involvement in a drive-by shooting, but she ultimately failed and was killed in jail.
15.
Two of the actors from Heathers later had untimely deaths that seemed predicted by their characters. Peter (Jeremy Applegate) prays he won’t kill himself — the actor later died by suicide. Kim Walker — who had the famous line, “Did you have a brain tumor for breakfast?” — died of a brain tumor.
16.
Josh Ryan Evans’s character Timmy became a fan favorite on the soap opera Passions. After he’d appeared on the show for three years, his character was killed off — and the same day the episode aired, Evans tragically died in real life. Timmy was actually supposed to be resurrected; Evans was only meant to take a few weeks off. However, while seeking treatment for a congenital heart condition during the break, he died. He was only 20 years old.
17.
This doesn’t involve a celebrity or an actor, but you’ll remember that one of the most disturbing scenes from The Omen involved a decapitation. The makeup was done by special effects artist John Richardson. A year later, Richardson was in a car crash that decapitated his assistant. The crash occurred on Friday the 13th, and Richardson (who survived the crash) reportedly noticed a sign reading “Ommen, 66.6 km” (Ommen was the name of a nearby Dutch town) at the site after it occurred.
18.
Multiple people had bad feelings leading up to Travis Barker’s plane crash, which killed four people. Before the crash, Barker’s then-wife decided to stay home at the last minute “in case something happens.” Their daughter also hysterically begged him not to go, telling him the roof was going to come off. Barker himself had a bad omen about the flight but got onto it anyway. The plane crashed shortly after takeoff, killing both pilots, Barker’s assistant, and his security guard. Barker and his friend DJ AM escaped the crash, but Barker jumped into the jet fuel in his hurry, causing him to catch fire. He spent 11 weeks in the hospital and almost lost one of his feet.
19.
No one died in this example, but another celebrity who was in a plane crash was Sandra Bullock. The plane skidded off the runway, severely damaging the plane but luckily leaving Bullock unhurt. In yet another creepy coincidence, Bullock had recently starred in the film Forces of Nature, which is about a plane that skids off the runway.
20.
Maybe this is less creepy and more flat-out weird, but Jack Nicholson’s real life was seemingly mirrored in the plot of his first major film, Chinatown, before Nicholson was even aware of his true parentage. Basically, Jack was raised by his grandmother, who he believed to be his mother — it turns out that the much older “sister” he’d had was his real mother. His mother was only 18 when she had him, as a result of a relationship with a married man. To avoid scandal, Nicholson’s grandmother claimed him as her own.
He didn’t find out the truth until after his mother died when Time magazine did a profile on him in 1974 (directly before the release of Chinatown) and discovered the truth in their research. The most eerie part? Nicholson’s character finds out the truth about another character — namely, that her “sister” is actually her daughter — in Chinatown.
21.
This also doesn’t feature a celeb, but The Simpsons has predicted a lot over the years, which the creators feel is mostly just educated guessing. However, they have no real explanation for this creepy brochure Lisa holds that seems to be a reference to 9/11…in an episode that aired in 1997.
22.
Another show, The Lone Gunmen, also predicted not only 9/11 but also conspiracy theories about its cause. The pilot of the show, which was a spinoff of The X-Files, featured a government plot to hijack a plane, fly it into the World Trade Center, and blame foreign dictators in an effort to start a new war to make money through increased weapons sales. It aired six months before 9/11.
23.
Finally, we’ll end on a happier but nevertheless odd coincidence: Ronald Reagan indirectly saved his own life when he appeared as a Secret Service agent years before he ever became president in the film Code of the Secret Service. Nine-year-old Jerry Parr saw the film and was inspired to go into the Secret Service himself. Decades later, he was with Reagan during the assassination attempt against him — and helped save his life.
What do you think…are these just coincidences, or are you freaked out? Let us know — along with your own examples — in the comments!
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