One of the things that a lot of people find interesting is what I term, “Haunted Hollywood”. It just seems to hold some sort of fascination for us. My personal opinion is that when we look at movies and seen the same stars in them a few times, we form some sort of bond and some of us begin to form an association with them. This leads those people to become very interested in the lives of these movie actors. When it comes to bonding with people we don't really know, I think that movie actors and actresses must be either at or near the top of the list. Maybe one of the reasons is that we read about their personal lives all the time in the papers and hear about them constantly on news reports and we begin to actually feel that we know these people, when in fact they are really just strangers who interest us. People have always had an intense interest in actors and actresses, long before there were such things as movies and with the advent of movies actors got exposure to far more people. The more people that see you, the higher the amount of people that become interested in you. A tiny example of this is when you put on a play, which is how actors worked before the movies, you might have a couple of hundred people in the audience. If one percent decide to follow your career, you have two fans. It is different with movies. A movie might easily reach millions of people. Even if it only reached one million and that same one percent became interested in you, you would have ten thousand people following your career. That is why so many people are still interested in deceased actors and actresses.

I have no way to verify what I am about to tell you, but these are stories making the rounds, take them for what you feel they are worth. If anyone who the stories are about wants to make a correction, just let me know because I always strive for accuracy.

Nicholas Cage is one of the most popular actors in Hollywood and with good cause, he is a great actor. Some people don't know that he is the nephew of Francis Ford Coppola, the great director. There is a story about him that states that he will no longer sleep over at his uncle's house. Why would this be, they seem to have a good relationship? You have to blame it on the ghost folks. It is said that he went into the attic one day and unfortunately for him, there was a ghost up there watching him. I guess this might convince many people to stay away from there. I wonder why you hear about so many ghosts populating attics? What is wrong with the rest of the house? The story goes on to say that he was sleeping in the attic and he could hear noises between the walls, which turned out to be bats. Somehow they got in between the outer and inner walls and made a racket. I guess that I wouldn't care for this much myself. The story goes on to state that one day, when he was in bed, he saw the silhouette of a woman. She had big hair and he thought that it was his aunt and said goodnight. He realized that it wasn't her, but an apparition when it didn't answer and floated toward him. He screamed and threw his pillow at it. It disappeared, but by that time he was freaked out. Hey who can blame him.

I am not a big believer in ghosts and spirits personally, but I do admit that there are a lot of things in this world that just can't be explained. I know of one case that turned out to be very mysterious. I call it the case of the unknown unplugger. Sounds crazy doesn't it, but it is true? There was a person who lived in a basement apartment with his wife and no one else ever went down there. How do I know this? That is an easy question to answer since he was my son and it was my basement. After he and his wife lived there for about six months, they would come home and all of their electrical appliances would be unplugged. This went on for weeks and the strange part of this is that no one else went down there, I know this for a fact. He was getting quite concerned and came to me, so I set up a tv camera in one room and observed it for several weeks. The unplugging stopped and I never saw anything. To this day, these events remains a mystery. There is just no explaining this one, my wife and I certainly didn't unplug the stuff.

There is some pretty questionable stuff out there when we talk of haunted hollywood. One story making the rounds has to do with Elvis. No it is not about Elvis's ghost, but about what he was supposed to have seen. Quite frankly it sounds a little crazy to me, but I will repeat it for those that would like to know what the heck I am talking about. I don't like to just say things, so I want to make it abundantly clear that I am reciting a tale and do not necessarily believe that it is true. It is said that Elvis and his mother accepted and believed in the supernatural. The story goes on to say that one day he was driving along in a car with a friend of his and they were crossing the dessert and were about twenty five miles from the Grand Canyon when a white cloud formed over them. This in itself doesn't seem very note worthy and wouldn't have been, except for the fact that the cloud was in the shape of Joseph Stalin the infamous dictator of the former Soviet Union. It is said that Elvis felt that God was sending him a sign and showing him the anti Christ and that this changed his life.

Lucille Ball was so popular in her time, that even some of the young people today know who she was thanks to reruns. There is a saying that sometimes people don't realize that they are dead and this is caused by the kind of death that they have. For example some people die in their sleep or under anesthesia while being operated upon.This is exactly what happened in her case. She was seventy seven years old and on the operating table, but she just didn't make it. This in itself is not that unusual of an event, except in her case it is said that her spirit is still in her home. There are some that believe that if we die under certain circumstances, we might not realize that we are dead and continue with our former lives as best as we can. I find this a little hard to swallow, but this is what some feel about Lucy. They think that she doesn't realize she is dead and that her spirit is still living in her home. The new owners of the house have reported all sorts of strange goings on. They hear voices coming from an empty attic, find broken windows and furniture is constantly being moved around. I wonder if they ever see Fred?

One of Hollywood's most famous haunted sites is Mann's Chinese Theatre, formerly Grauman's Chinese Theatre. The story goes that there are a couple of spirits living there. One of the ghosts is said to be Victor Killian, a former actor. So why would he be wandering the streets around this place? It is said that he is looking for the person that beat him to death. Yeah, I know, this sounds like something you would hear around Halloween and the funny thing is that I am writing this at a time when Halloween is not that far away. The people that work in the theatre are the ones that said that they see him wandering around. They also claim that they hear strange sounds coming from behind the curtain on the stage, when the building is empty. When the employees go behind the curtain, yes you guessed it, there is no one there.

One of my favorite ghost stories concerns Lon Chaney of horror movie fame. For those of you who are too young to know, he was a very big star in horror movies many years ago. Anyway, his ghost had been reported sitting on a bench at a bus stop many times over the years. The bus stop was at Hollywood and Vine, one of the most famous intersections in the world. Several years ago the bench was removed and there have been no more reports of the ghost since. Do you think that maybe his ghost is still out there waiting for a bus, but trying to find somewhere to sit? If there are such things as ghosts, it would be interesting to see how they cope with the changing world, wouldn't it?

Well so much for haunted Hollywood until the next time.