Unexplained Mysteries – Haunted Hollywood

The American film industry has retained its popularity through world wars and other global catastrophes with no signs of losing its attraction in the near future. Through the years, many Hollywood film stars have become like eternal gods with fans regarding them as cherished living legends and larger than life personalities. However, there are many deceased stars, who, after dominating the silver screen for decades, are finding it difficult to give up their old physical lives and let their ghostly spirits linger around old Tinseltown keeping their memory alive.

The Paramount Studio site has reported numerous sightings of spirits over the years and perhaps the frequency of the incidents was due to the location of the studios, lying alongside an old cemetery. Some people have seen visions of famous stars including Douglas Fairbanks and Rudolph Valentino who don’t seem content in visiting the film sets of their past films during the day when filming in is progress, but will wait until after dark, when the sound stages are quiet, to haunt the film crews preparing for the next day’s shoot. However, not all the spiritual sightings are disturbing, and one timely visit by a ghost was very welcomed. In one unexplained paranormal event, while the film crew was tidying up after filming, a technician fell from a twenty-foot high lighting gantry, and as he came crashing down he was saved from certain death when a good Spectral Samaritan broke his fall. The man seemed to hover in the air just inches above the studio floor for an instant, before dropping to the floor unharmed and, as there were no cables near him at the time, the incident remains a mystery.

At the Culver City Studios, a group of carpenters sighted a greyish coloured figure dressed in a jacket, tie and fedora hat walk across the studio floor and pass right through them before vanishing into the walls. Some people identified the man as the spirit of the studio boss Thomas Ince, who established the studio methods of producing films years ago. It was reported that he died in suspicious circumstances in 1924, aboard a yacht owned by William Hearst, who was trying to shoot Charlie Chaplin but killed Ince by mistake.

There are some very active ghosts of stars from the old silent movie days, and one of them is Valentino, the Latin lover, who died at the age of thirty-one years, and his spirit has often been seen gliding through his former mansion, the Falcon’s Lair. There is another popular ghost, who frequents the Universal Studios dressed in the costume of the original star from the 1925 version of the Phantom of the Opera. The people who have seen him are convinced that it is Lon Chaney Senior, who died in 1930. In those times, Chaney was known as the man of a thousand faces, because he had the uncanny ability to transform his appearance, with the help of make-up, into some of the most deformed characters ever seen on film.