Digital Cover celebrities

Celebrity ghosts and where they’ve been seen

These sightings might send chills down your spine


Jovita Trujillo - Los Angeles
Senior WriterLos Angeles
OCTOBER 31, 2023 3:26 PM EDT

Some celebrities love the spotlight- even after death. Not everyone believes in ghosts, but there have been plenty of celebrity ghost sightings over the years. In honor of spooky season take a look at some famous ghosts and the places they love to visit.

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Anna Nicole Smith

Anna Nicole Smith spent her final hours at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood Florida before her death in 2007. Since then people have claimed to see her spirit wandering around the hotel lobby.

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Lucille Ball

Everyone loved Lucille Ball and her ghost has been reported in more than one place. She passed away in her Beverly Hills Mansion and subsequent owners have reported mysteriously broken windows, voices heard from the attic, and furniture moving around the house per The Hollywood Home. But Lucy’s ghost apparently loves to travel because her ghost has also been reported at the Hart building on the Paramount Studios backlot where “I Love Lucy” was produced and the Jamestown Cemetery in New York where she was buried.

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Amy Winehouse

When it comes to Amy Winehouse, her ghost has to find you. In 2011, The Sun reported that Pete Doherty had fled to Paris after her ghost showed up at his London flat “three or four” times. And in 2018 her father said his daughter‘s spirit visited her families home in Kent. “Her spirit comes and sits on the end of my bed. She just sits there and it looks just like her with her beautiful face and she looks at me. I say to her, ’Are you all right?‘ because I get ­nervous with her being there,“ Mitch Winehouse said during an interview with The Sun, adding that soon after she died she began to visit in the form of a blackbird.

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Walt Disney

While there are several ghosts believed to haunt Disneyland, one of them is Walt Disney himself. There is even photographic and video “evidence” floating around the internet. Walt died in 1966 and loved trains and one former cast member named Darrold Wagner said of the Disneyland Railroad that circles the park, “The train command center has a board that shows where the trains are on the track. Late at night, in the far corner, a train would show on the board, and the whistle would blow, even though there was no train out there. The old guys used to say ‘That’s Walt’s train.’” He shared another story, “Lillian Disney [his wife] made sure that Walt wasn’t seen smoking in public areas around kids, so he used to go out to the staircase behind his apartment to smoke,” Wagner says. “After Walt died, my security supervisor used to smell cigarette smoke back there almost every night. He used to hide to try to catch the smoker. He never did, and never found cigarette butts, but he always smelled fresh smoke. He finally concluded it was Walt sneaking a last smoke,” per SF Gate. He’s been spotted all around the park at Fantasyland the haunted mansion and in his old apartment above the fire station.

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Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe is said to haunt the Brentwood home she was found dead in on August 4, 1962, from an overdose. Along with her beloved poodle Maf. The ghost dog’s cry is said to be heard from the outdoor courtyard and pool area and Marilyn has been spotted all over the property. She doesn’t like to stay at home though because people have also reported sightings of Monroe’s spirit in room 1200 of The Roosevelt Hotel. The Hippodrome on the Santa Monica Pier is another rumored spot. There are reports of Marilyn showing up in mirrors with legend saying if you visit the hippodrome late at night and watch the mirrors on the carousel, you can catch a glimpse of Monroe sitting on her favorite bench near the gift stand, per Experience First. Others have visited her crypt at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park hoping for a ghostly experience.

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Harry Houdini

Harrowed as the greatest magician of all time, Harry Houdini died on Halloween night in 1926. But he planned to come back after death and promised his wife he would contact her in the afterlife. After he died she organized a seance in their house in Laurel Canyon for the next 10 years before finally giving up and moving. But once she left the house got weird and was eventually burnt down in a brushfire. It was restored and the Houdini Estate is now rented out for private events and many have claimed they’ve caught a glimpse of Houdini wandering around the grounds in the restored home.

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Al Capone

Al Capone served a total of 4 ½ years at the maximum federal penitentiary Alcatraz but if the stories are true he really enjoyed his time there and likes to return in the afterlife. “Scarface” passed away in 1947 in Miami Beach, Florida but there are stories that banjo music sometimes plays from his old jail cell at Alcatraz. That’s not the only place though. He allegedly used the Congress Plaza Hotel in Chicago Illinois as the headquarters for his organization and there have been multiple sightings of Capone.

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Elvis Presley

Elvis Presley performed regularly at the Las Vegas Hilton from 1969 through 1976 before his death in 1977. Legend has it he still hangs around backstage at his former performance space.

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Joan Crawford

American actress Joan Crawford has a warped legacy and after her death, her adopted daughter Christina Crawford shocked the world with her heartbreaking story in the book, “Mommy Dearest.” Years later in 1989, Christina explained the house she grew up in Brentwood was haunted and she saw things in the house. Joan went on to die in the home and things got weirder with, “spontaneous fires, primarily in the wall behind where Joan Crawford‘s bed used to be,” per Joan Crawford Best. “Once the Beverly Hills Fire Department spent four days there attempting to solve the mystery of the spontaneous fires that would break out on the walls,” she said. The owners decided to have the house exorcised numerous times and Christina later said, “Every single family that has lived in that house has had horrible things happen . . . illnesses, alcoholism, addictions, relationship problems, and now, evidently with the current owner, the walls are breaking out in flames!” “It would not surprise me in the least if the ‘haunting’ spirit that is in the house is Crawford! She was capable of real evil,” Christina said.