Haunted Hollywood and Its Haunted Actors

Mena Suvari is best known for the movie “American Beauty,” but this American beauty grew up and was raised in a home in Rhode Island the family believed was haunted. Her family reported seeing apparitions and hearing sounds.

Neve Campbell is an American actress of Scottish ancestry who believes in the paranormal. Her home in the Hollywood Hills was the scene of a murder back in the Eighties where a young maid was brutally murdered by a man who came to the house. That maid is still carrying out her job…

Jennifer Love-Hewitt is known for working with ghosts, but she doesn’t want them in her home. She believes she has two ghosts in her Hollywood home. One is a previous resident, but the other could be one of the Ghost Whisperer’s old childhood friends looking over her.

Actress Kate Winslet became best known for playing the raven-haired Rose DeWitt-Bukater in “Titanic.” What is not so well known is that her country home in England is rumored as haunted by a phantom staff of servants.

Another British actor, Anthony Head from “Buffy The Vampire Slayer,” shares his Nineteenth Century home in Bristol, England with the gentle spirit of a young girl.

The apparition of a woman in a flowing skirt haunts actress Jane Seymour in her English castle.

Claudia Schiffer is haunted by the ghost of a 16th Century nun who has been seen haunting her country mansion in Suffolk.

Comedian Blake Clark played Harry the Hardware Guy through several seasons of “Home Improvement,” but when he was a struggling comic, he was also scared by ghosts at the Comedy Store nightspot built on the location of the former Ciro’s Restaurant.

One would think Jack Nicholson is afraid of nothing, but days after he and Rebecca Broussard moved into their Victorian mansion in Aspen, Colorado, she ended up seeing a ghostly figure in black robes wandering the hallway. Jack’s “Witches of Eastwick” co-star, Cher, recommended a Native American shaman to exorcise the ghost. She had called upon the same man to rid the property of her Malibu mansion of evil spirits.

Leggy beauty Morgan Fairchild has starred in such TV series as “Falcon Crest” and “Dallas.” When she was just starting out, she was living in a Dallas, Texas home haunted by a flustered spirit who fumbled with the doorknobs and walked the halls.

In July 1915, the steamship, Eastland, capsized on the Chicago River and more than eight hundred passengers lost their lives. Several nearby structures were used as morgues to identify the victims, and one of them is the modern Harpo Studios where Oprah Winfrey tapes her series. She and her staff have heard whispering, strange noises and unseen people loitering through the shadows at night.

Stephanie Kramer once starred in the Eighties TV series “Hunter” with Fred Dryer. When she was eight years old, she was startled and noticed an ethereal man standing by her bed. Years later as an actress, she shared her Hollywood home with a female ghost who moved things around.

Back in the Seventies, the series “Fantasy Island” was taped at a Victorian mansion known today as the Los Angeles County Arboretum, but actors, Richard Montalban, John Anderson, director Aaron Spelling and the crew all saw and felt the presence of Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance, a Hollywood actor and writer, who was a African American posing as a Native American. He committed suicide in the house.

Dick Clark was greeted at a TV station by a figure just a few hours after the man had died at the hospital.

In New York City, director Francis Ford Coppola was staying in Manhattan’s Astoria Studio to work on the script for “The Cotton Club.” Gloria Swanson had made many movies here in her heyday, and in the years after her death, she returned here to relive her favorite memories. Coppola believes he saw her apparition at the end of a long hallway.

“X-Files” beauty Gillian Anderson believes her house in Vancouver was haunted. She was later told the house was on a Native American burial ground.

Leggy Rebecca Romijn-Stamos owns the former Hollywood home of screen legend Cary Grant, and if stories are to be believes, Cary’s ghost still returns there.

Actress and TV hostess Joan Rivers was once startled by a figure in period clothes in her swanky New York duplex.

Susan Richardson of the Seventies series, “Eight Is Enough,” believes her house in the San Fernando Valley was once haunted. She named him “Blue Ice” on account of the cold spots she felt.

Gordon Jump of “WKRP in Cincinnati” described seeing a ghost in civil defense attire in his Glendale, California home.

Actor Peter MacNichol is possibly best known for playing the puckish lawyer John Cage on the Fox 90s TV series, “Ally McBeal.” The series was taped in what is believed to have been the former Desilu studio where Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball once filmed “I Love Lucy.” In an interview, he commented he believed that the set where he taped the show was haunted. There’s also an unconfirmed rumor that the soundstage where the Disney Channel series “Sonny With A Chance” is also haunted. (But just how credible are Disney’s Tween stars when they’re known for taking turns dating each other?)

“Happy Days” father Tom Bosley once heard footsteps from an empty hall in Illinois’s haunted Woodstock Opera House.

Soap star Ruth Warrick shares her Cape Cod home with the ghost of a dead sea captain. Both Marlon Brando and Candace Bergen once lived in and sold the same haunted house near Los Angeles.

Actor Dick Christie is forever known as the father of the short-lived Eighties series “Small Wonder” who pretended to adopt an android built to resemble a young girl. In the real world, he lives in the former home of Silent Film star Buster Keaton where the film legend plays with the lights, unplugs the phones and does other pranks.

William Collins

William C. Uchtman has spent much of life listing haunted locales from across the world. He is the author of “Volunteer Ghosts,” a book dedicated to listing obscure haunted houses in Tennessee. He is also the creator of the Collinsport Ghost Society website (The Collinsport Ghost Society http://www.angelfire.com/tv2/collinwood/collinsport_ghost_society2.html), a fictional ghost society for fictional haunted locations from television and the movies.

He also maintains or is affiliated with the following websites:

* The Nitpicker Society for Dark Shadows http://collinwood.zoomshare.com

* The Official Guide to the Mythological Universe http://www.angelfire.com/planet/mythguide/mythguide.html

* Unsolved Mysteries Wikia http://unsolvedmysteries.wikia.com

* The Our Gang Wikia http://ourgang.wikia.com

* The Marvel Appendix http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix