50 Terrifying Ghost Stories Told by Famous People

Miley Cyrus

In an interview with Elle UK (opens in new tab), Cyrus revealed the London flat she was staying in during her 2009 European tour was haunted. "It was seriously so terrifying. It used to be an old bakery and they turned it into an apartment building, and I was having really crazy dreams and really scary things, and one night my little sister–it sounds crazy to tell you–but she was standing in the shower and all of a sudden I hear her scream. I run in there and the water had somehow flipped to hot but it was still...It wasn’t like the water had just changed, the knob had turned but she hadn’t turned it and it was burning her. She was really red."

"Before I felt this, I thought I had seen a little boy sitting on the sink watching me take a shower so I felt really freaked out. I was sitting there the next night and maybe I’m crazy, but I could have sworn I could see this little boy sitting there on the sink, kicking his feet."

"My mom was getting mad that we were looking into it because she thought it was going to scare Noah, so then my aunt–who we hadn’t told about this–comes in and she starts freaking out. She’s like, 'I had no idea what happened but I left the apartment and I came back and all the doors and windows were open. I locked the apartment.' I’m like, 'Tell my mom, she doesn’t believe that anything is happening in the apartment.'"

"So she told her and I’m like, 'Mom, see–I’m not making this up.’ Three or four more things happened after that. I will never stay there ever again...When we started looking into it, we found out that this guy and his son–this guy who owned the bakery, it was one of these where the dad owns it and the dad owns it–and there was this older man that owned it and his son lived with him there, and I guess the wife died or something, she had gotten sick. So it was just the son and the dad that lived there in the bakery, and then the dad died and the son took over the bakery, and I thought I was seeing the son. I’m not even kidding."

Kate Hudson

Hudson has seen ghosts "plenty of times," the actress revealed (opens in new tab) in an extra DVD clip from her 2005 horror movie, The Skeleton Key. "I've seen a ghost of a woman with no face and that was really creepy. Another time, my grandmother came to me and I woke up and felt amazing that she was around me."

Taylor Momsen

Momsen has photographic proof (!) that ghosts are real. "My mom grew up in Devil's Lake, North Dakota and her next-door neighbor died. She was wealthy, and her belongings got put in a museum," she told (opens in new tab) People. "So I went ghost hunting and took pictures and talked to her and all this stuff. And there are actually two images that I took, one of a hand on a typewriter and one of her entire body in a window." 😱

Cher

Cher thinks her late husband Sonny, who died in 1998, is haunting her 'till this day. "I love ghosts. I actually think that Sonny makes a light go on," she said (opens in new tab). "I have a beautiful chandelier that he makes the light go on when it is impossible, there is no power on. I love ghosts, I prefer ghosts to some people.’" Same Cher, same.

Cynthia Rowley

There was actually a show called Celebrity Ghost Stories (opens in new tab) and yes, they were real. Rowley recalled a terrifying incident related to her Greenwich, Connecticut estate on the show. "The feeling in the house was much more ghostlike," the designer said (opens in new tab). She would see "this sort of apparition in the corner of a room" of a lady wearing a scarf over her face. One time, Rowley escaped a fire in the home and the local fire chief told her that the woman who once owned the mansion was called the "Diamond Match heiress who was badly burned in a blaze."

Anna Nicole Smith

The late Anna Nicole Smith reportedly (opens in new tab) hooked up with a ghost in 2004. "A ghost would crawl up my leg and have sex with me at an apartment a long time ago in Texas. I used to think it was my boyfriend, and one day I woke up and it wasn’t. It was, like, a spirit and it—woo! [miming a ghost flying from her her bedsheets]—went up! I was freaked out about it, but then I was, like, 'Well, you know what? He’s never hurt me and he just gave me some amazing sex so I have no problem.'"

After the interviewer claimed it could have just been a dream, Smith denied the allegation saying, "It was not a dream because it was happening every night...I told my boyfriend and he didn’t believe me. Of course...MEN!"

Laura Prepon

Laura Prepon AKA Donna from That '70's Show apparently had some ghost encounters of her own...and the story is terrifying. Watch her recount the events on an episode of Celebrity Ghost Stories here (opens in new tab).

Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke

Thurman and Hawke reportedly (opens in new tab) sold their upstate New York home because it was haunted. "All the houses in Sneden's Landing are haunted," a neighbor told The New York Daily News (opens in new tab). The couple, however, still refuses this was the *main* reason they moved.

Lisa Rinna

"I did not grow up in a house where there were spirits or I felt spirits, but I've always believed in the paranormal of the spirit world," the actress and Real Housewife of Beverly Hills recounts in an episode of Celebrity Ghost Stories (opens in new tab). But whenever she went into her bathroom, she felt a breeze go around like someone walked by "and there was never anybody there."

"One night it was about 3 o'clock in the morning and we had the baby monitor on and we hear giggling...then it went silent. I open the door and..." (We have to watch the full episode to get the ending.)

Emma Stone

Okay this isn't terrifying, but it's terrifyingly sweet. During an appearance on the Late Show With David Letterman in July 2014, Stone revealed (opens in new tab) the ghost of her late granddad often leaves pocket change for her. "There's a long family history with quarters," she said. "My grandfather leaves quarters. It's just amazing."

Ke$ha

During an appearance on Conan in 2012, Ke$ha confessed to host Conan O'Brien that she's been intimate with a dead spirit. "I did go to the bone zone with a ghost!" she said. "I don't know his name. He just started caressing me. It was a sexy time, it wasn't, like, sex." Watch her recount the, uh, interesting ghost encounter here (opens in new tab) (starting at 3:00).

Haylie Duff

In case you forgot, Duff's sister Hilary played Casper's sister Wendy in the 1998 film Casper Meets Wendy, and it looks like she's been having her own encounters on an episode of Celebrity Ghost Stories. We wonder what Hilary thinks?! Watch it here. (opens in new tab)

Audrina Patridge

Patridge's story also gives us goosebumps...watch it here (opens in new tab).

La Toya Jackson

La Toya often feels her late brother Michael Jackson's presence in their childhood home in Encino. "It's the strangest thing because you feel something like thick around you or behind you and you're wondering—you don't see anything, but you feel a presence," she said (opens in new tab).

She also claimed (opens in new tab) that a security guard had heard tap dancing coming from Michael's old room. "When he told me I said, 'You're kidding!' That made me want to know even more about hearing someone tap dance over a certain part of the house and I go, 'Well, Michael used to do that every Sunday for two hours.' We go up there and no one's up there—just tap dancing. And the dog barks at his room, the window, every single night at the same time. The dog doesn't even know that that's Michael's room, and the security guard didn't know."

Coco Austin

“I believe in ghosts because I had a perverted ghost at one time,” Coco said (opens in new tab) on the set of the HDNet talk show Naughty But Nice. “It’s true! During the day when you think of ghosts, you think of it being dark and foggy and misty outside but every time I saw or felt anything it was in the daytime and there was no fog out there.”

“I was watching TV, I was sitting on the couch at 11 a.m. and I was wearing a nightie and I felt my dress move up my leg,” Coco recalls. “I looked down and got freaked out. I pushed it down, watched TV, felt it again and I could see it being pulled up. And then I felt a guy breathing in my ear.”

Susan Boyle

Boyle claimed (opens in new tab) in a 2011 interview that she's seen her late mother's spirit. "Her energy is still there. I've actually seen my mother in the house," she said. "I think she was letting me know she was all right. There was a lovely smell."

"I used to think [my mum] abandoned me when she died. Maybe she was telling me she hadn't," Boyle commented. "My biggest problem is I feel lonely, especially at night. I always had a fear of being alone and now I am."

She continues, "Everybody died and left me by myself. There was one period within a few years, where my dad, my uncle, my sister, then my mum died. It's as if I was working with a few building blocks and those blocks were scattered and I had to find them one by one." Alright now we're just sad. 😓

Eric Bana

The Deliver Us From Evil actor told Us Weekly (opens in new tab) that the crew of his 2014 horror film experienced a haunting on set. "I know for a fact the makeup, special effects team had some truly scary things occurring," Bana said. "They had a ghost in their workshop—there's absolutely no doubt...it got to the point where some of them would slip on the floor, they could no longer sleep there, there was no chance."

Bella Thorne

"I was lying in bed when I saw a shadowy, silvery figure of an old woman creeping across my room, then it slipped into my closet," she said (opens in new tab). "I panicked and ran out of bed and swung open my closet door only to see she was in there. But she was gone. I was sure I had seen her ghost! It was really freaky."

Lucy Liu

Add Lucy Liu to the list of celebs who have reportedly (opens in new tab) had sex with ghosts. "It was sheer bliss,” she told US Weekly in 1999. “I felt everything. I climaxed. And then he floated away.” ...😶...

Megan Fox

"I believe in everything," Fox admitted to MTV News (opens in new tab) in 2014. "I was just in Mexico at my hotel and it was a bedroom, living room, bedroom...I had pre-ordered breakfast for 7:30, and at 7 a.m. I hear them come in with the table, I hear them pouring the coffee...30 minutes later, at 7:30 I went in there, no table, no coffee, no food, no nothing, no one there. Door bell rings, I open the door, it's room service with my food...Brandy the nanny comes out later and says, 'Why did room service come at 7 when we told them to come at 7:30?' So you can't tell me I'm crazy, because two people heard it."

James Valentine

The Maroon 5 guitarist claimed (opens in new tab) he saw a ghost in the L.A. country home of Harry Houdini. "I was the only one who ever stayed there the entire time," Valentine revealed on A&E's Private Sessions in 2008. "One night, I was there with my girlfriend at the time and we were about to go to bed. She went upstairs...there was a hallway that went up to the second and third floors and I saw somebody walk up. No one was there."

Ariana Grande

In a 2013 interview with Complex (opens in new tab), Grande was asked if she had ever seen an alien. She replied, "Not an alien, but I’ve had a ghost/demon experience. We were in Kansas City a few weeks ago and went to this haunted castle and were so excited. The next night we wanted to go to Stull Cemetery, which is known as one of the seven gates to hell on Earth. The Pope won’t fly over it...I felt this sick, overwhelming feeling of negativity over the whole car and we smelled sulfur, which is the sign of a demon, and there was a fly in the car randomly, which is another sign of a demon."

"I was like, 'This is scary, let’s leave.' I rolled down the window before we left and said, 'We apologize. We didn’t mean to disrupt your peace.' Then I took a picture and there are three super distinct faces in the picture—they’re faces of textbook demons."

"I deleted it. The next day I tried to send the picture to my manager and it said, 'This file can’t be sent, it’s 666 megabytes.' I’m not kidding. I used to have a folder called 'Demons' that had pictures with all the screencaps in it, but then weird things started happening to me so I deleted it." She then goes on to explain (opens in new tab) more terrifying things that started happened to her.

Joan Rivers

The late comedian and television host revealed on Celebrity Ghost Stories that her Manhattan apartment was haunted. Watch Rivers recount the chilling story here (opens in new tab).

Hillary Clinton

So Clinton didn't actually admit this herself, but she would reportedly (opens in new tab) talk to the ghosts of Eleanor Roosevelt and Mahatma Gandhi while holding the position of first lady to ask the leaders for advice. The events were recounted in the 1996 book written by Bob Woodward The Choice: How Bill Clinton Won. (Honestly, if we had that power we totally would too.)

Dan Aykroyd

The creator and star of Ghostbusters revealed to Esquire (opens in new tab) he has actually had "several experiences" with ghosts. "I saw things moving around on our counter, and doors opening and closing. The staff also had experiences, direct contact in terms of tactile touching, and then turning around and there's no one there. Somebody crawled in bed with me once," he said.

"I was alone in the house and decided to take a nap. I closed the door to the bedroom, but didn't lock it. I woke up in this kind of trance, where you don't know whether you're sleeping or not. It's what the abductee feels when he's being taken. I saw the door open, and I rolled over and looked at the bed, and I saw the depression in the mattress, like somebody was getting in there and I thought, I'm just going to roll over and snuggle up next to it."

Marilyn Manson

On an episode of Celebrity Ghost Stories, Manson claims he had some "scary, frightening experiences." Watch it here. (opens in new tab)

Jenna Bush Hager

The former first daughter thinks the White House is haunted. "I heard a ghost," she revealed (opens in new tab) on The Tonight Show in 2009. "I was asleep, there was a fireplace in my room and all of a sudden I heard 1920s music coming out. I could feel it. I freaked out and ran into my sister's room. She was like, 'Please go back to sleep, this is ridiculous.'"

Alyson Hannigan

The Buffy the Vampire Slayer star clearly has her own ghost slayin' to do. In 2003, Hannigan claimed she lived in a haunted house, but she "didn't mind." Hannigan explained (opens in new tab), "I have a ghost in my house. I saw him a couple of months ago. I don't think he died there because there's a law in L.A. that when you buy a house, if somebody's died there they have to disclose that. And nobody did. So I don't know why he's there. But he's very friendly."

"My friend saw him first one night. She said, 'I don't mean to alarm you, but I just saw a man follow us out of the house.' And I said, 'Well, at least he's gentlemanly, he let us go first.'"

However, that was not the last Alyson saw of the spirit. She continues, "Later that night I saw this silhouette of a man standing in the bathroom doorway. I was like, 'Sweetie, what are you doing?' I thought it was [fiance] Alexis [Denisof]. But then I looked and Alexis was asleep next to me. I'd love to get his name. I'm thinking of putting a little chalk board where I think he lives to see if he will write his name down."

Nicolas Cage

Cage certainly believes in ghosts, and even bought a serial killer’s home as inspiration for a book. "I once lived in the most haunted house in America," he told Vanity Fair (opens in new tab). "The LaLaurie Mansion in New Orleans used to belong to Madame LaLaurie, a well-known 19th century socialite and serial killer. I bought it in 2007, figuring it would be a good place in which to write the great American horror novel. I didn’t get too far with the novel."

Demi Lovato

Lovato saw her first ghost when she was only eight years old. "I totally believe in ghosts," she revealed on the Mack at Nite (opens in new tab) radio show in 2011. "When I shut it, I saw a little girl. She was dressed like she was from the 1800s and was standing in my closet."

She also told Buzzfeed (opens in new tab) in 2013, "I go ghost hunting. My house in Texas is so ridiculously haunted. Not by a bad spirit, but a little girl. I think her name is Emily. I've had a medium come over and ghost hunters, and they both told me the same name, Emily. There were so many times that I saw her when I was growing up. I saw her in my closet one time. When I was three years old my mom caught me talking to something by myself. She asked, 'Who are you talking to?' and I said, 'My best friend Emily." She's playful. She'd probably be around 11 or 12 years old, maybe younger."

"One of my friends, Tucker, came over one time and he asked, 'So your house is haunted?' I said, 'Yeah, just watch. Something will happen. Something always happens.' We started to watch a movie when all of a sudden a laptop in my kitchen started to play a movie also. It was a black screen before, so it was a question of who turned it on and hit play. And after that Tucker texted a friend saying, 'I think this house is haunted, a movie just turned on by itself,' and there was a 'glitch' in his phone that kept texting him back the word 'definitely' over and over again. That happened about 30 times."

"There was another time when my uncle was in the living room watching TV and a balloon came down the stairs and turned around on the bannister. I have crazy footage of just orbs flying through the air...It's crazy stuff."

Peter Jackson

The Lord of the Rings director had a creepy encounter with a ghost in New Zealand about 20 years ago “in an apartment that Fran, my wife, had," he told The Telegraph (opens in new tab) in 2010.

"One night I woke up and there was a figure in the room. She was really scary—her face was like a silent scream. She glided across the room and disappeared into the wall." He told Fran in the morning and she said, "'Was it the woman with a screaming face?’ We had never spoken about it. She had seen the same ghost two years earlier. So I do believe in some energy, a spirit or a soul..."

Kendrick Lamar

According to Rolling Stone (opens in new tab), Kendrick Lamar has been visited in his sleep by the ghost of the legendary Tupac Shakur. "Lamar spoke of the incident to Home Grown Radio, recalling how Shakur's silhouette came to him and said, 'Keep doing what you doing, don’t let my music die.'" Iconic.

Keanu Reeves

Reeves claims he saw a ghost when he was a child after moving to New York City. "I'm probably like six, seven years old, we'd come from Australia. Renata, [our] nanny, in the bedroom, my sister is asleep, she's sitting over there, I'm hanging out. There was a doorway and all of a sudden this jacket comes waving through the doorway, this empty jacket — there's no body, there's no legs, it's just there. And then it disappears," he explained (opens in new tab) on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in 2014.

"I was a little kid and I thought, 'Okay, that's interesting,' and I looked over at the nanny and she [was making this terrified face]. And I'm like 'Oh wow, so that was real.'"

Jaime King

The actress and model has her own paranormal experiences she recounts on Celebrity Ghost Stories. Watch the full episode here (opens in new tab).

Adele

Ghosts to Adele: "Hello, it's me." In 2012, the Grammy award-winning singer moved into a 10-bedroom, $6 million home in Sussex, England. However, Adele reportedly (opens in new tab) told a friend her home—which used to be a convent—gave her "the creeps" after she heard strange noises and proceed to hire around-the-clock security personnel.

Jessica Alba

According to US Weekly (opens in new tab), in 2008 Alba revealed she had a terrifying experience with a ghost during her childhood. “I felt this pressure and I couldn’t get up, I couldn’t scream, I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t do anything,” she said.

“Something definitely took the covers off me and I definitely couldn’t get off the bed, and then, once I did, I screamed, ran to my parents’ room and I don’t think I spent many nights in that house ever again.”

Melissa McCarthy

In 2016 McCarthy admitted (opens in new tab) she believes in ghosts and used to talk to them when she was a child."I grew up on a farm and I didn't have any real friends," she said. "I have a very strong belief that people are out there, because I was certainly talking to someone in those barns. Otherwise I'm just crazy. I really strongly believe in ghosts."

Jenny Slate

During an episode (opens in new tab) of Ellen in 2014, Slate revealed she grew up in a haunted house. "I grew up in Massachusetts. I grew up in a genuine haunted house...I knew it was haunted. When my parents moved in, they bought it with all the furniture in it, the people had died, and—I’m getting scared even telling the story," she said.

"My dad went out into the hall, and he looked onto the stairs, and standing there was this sea captain, looking at him, pleading. The fear of that ghost has basically shaped my entire personality."

Gillian Anderson

The actress participated in a Reddit AMA (opens in new tab) (Ask Me Anything), where she said she believes in an alternate universe and has even felt spirits' presence. "I've definitely felt other spirits," she said (opens in new tab). "I'm quite sensitive to it. And yes. But it's not something you can really talk about with too many people, especially not me."

Matthew McConaughey

While on a press tour in 2009 for his movie, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (how fitting), McConaughey revealed (opens in new tab) his Hollywood home was haunted by a spirit named Madame Blu. "I was not even under the influence and she was there. She wasn't that happy, it didn't seem like she was going to be much fun to hang around or have in my house, so I went ahead and stood my ground. I opened the door and said 'You can move around all you want but I'm not going anywhere.'"

"For weeks everyone that came to the house said the same thing: 'There's someone down in that hall, there's somebody down in that hall.'"

Lady Gaga

Gaga told Harper's Bazaar UK (opens in new tab) that the ghost of fashion designer Alexander McQueen inspired her to write one of her smash singles. "Right after he died, I wrote 'Born This Way.' I think he's up in heaven with fashion strings in his hands, marionetting away, planning this whole thing," she said. "I didn't even write the f*king song. He did!" She could be kidding...or she could be not. 👻

Halle Berry

During the filming of Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, Berry reveals (opens in new tab),"I'd come home and the housekeeper would say she'd heard my vanity chair moving upstairs in the bathroom. When the film was over, I desperately wanted to keep her dress, but it had to go. And then everything was fine."

Ryan Gosling

Gosling reportedly (opens in new tab) said his family moved out of their childhood home because it was haunted. "He just sat. And I knew from a very young age that he was a ghost, too. He scared me. I told my mother, but she couldn't see him. Nobody could. And I learned to live with that. I had to," he said. "Then, a few years later, [my mother] thought she saw him, then almost right away my cousin saw him, and then my uncle. And we were outta there in fairly short order."

Selena Gomez

Selena believes in ghosts too...so much she has a ghost app on her phone. During a visit to The Tonight Show in 2015 she revealed (opens in new tab), "I believe in ghosts, so I have a ghost app...I believe that spirits can tap into technology. Why not, right?" According to Gomez, the app has detected paranormal presence in the past. “Look, I was in a venue and it actually said people in my life by name."

Carrie Fisher

A friend of Fisher's overdosed while sleeping next to her in her mansion. Following the events, Fisher revealed to Vanity Fair (opens in new tab) in 2006 that she felt the presence of his ghost in her Beverly Hills mansion. "Lights would go on and off, and I had this toy machine, that when you touched it would say, 'F*ck you! Eat sh*t! You’re an asshole!' And it would go off in the night, by itself, in my closet. I was a nut for a year, and in that year I took drugs again." She then had an exorcist come and clear the air. 😱

Lily Collins

In 2013 Collins claimed she was visited by a ghost while on tour in Ireland. "I open my eyes and I hear a giggle,” she said (opens in new tab). “And then I felt a rush of air across my body and I heard all these doors slamming, like fire doors—the ones you don’t hear opening, but then the air—it closes. Three of them—and there were three doors outside my room.”

Katy Perry

It's been reported (opens in new tab) Perry was "alone in the master suite and saw a mustachioed man staring back at her in a mirror."

Laura Linney

Linney became a believer in ghosts after meeting one of the famed ghosts of Broadway's Belasco Theater. "It's absolutely haunted," she told James Corden on The Late Late Show (opens in new tab). "I was not a believer. I had been told about the ghosts at the Belasco...There was a mysterious death of a chorus girl [at the theater]. Legend is that final dress rehearsals, that's when the ghosts come out."

"I had forgotten this, and I was doing a play with Jane Alexander, and I turned to Jane Alexander, and I looked up to the upper balcony—there are two balconies there—and the upper balcony you can only get in from the outside, and those doors were locked; and I looked up, and there was a woman standing in the front row looking over with a blue dress and blonde hair. I just thought, 'Well, hello!' I looked back at Jane, and I looked back up, and she was gone. I went to the house manager and I said, 'Joe, I think I saw a ghost.' And he went, 'male or female?' I said, 'female.' And he went, 'blue dress, blonde hair?'"

Lorde

This isn't terrifying, but we figured your heart needs a break from all of the palpitations. Just know even the queen Lorde believes in ghosts, and apparently had some encounters in the recording studio. "Ghosts in the studio don't want us to record tonight, they leaving their ghost hum on everything. buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz," she tweeted (opens in new tab) in 2014.

Rihanna

On the other hand, Rihanna is trying to avoid ghosts altogether, and will not visit the infamous Hollywood hotel Chateau Marmont because she thinks it's haunted (and there has in fact been supernatural sightings (opens in new tab)). "You can feel it, man," she said. (opens in new tab) "It's borrowed space."