Supposed To Be Ghosts
Some famous people gain extra notoriety after death -- as ghosts. Naturally there's no proof that any of these spooky sightings are true, but that hasn't stopped certain figures from becoming well known as post-mortem personalities. Among the best-known alleged ghosts:
ANNE BOLEYN: The second wife of King Henry VIII is rumored to haunt the Tower of London, where she was imprisoned before being beheaded. According to a story from the Tower's own Yeoman Warders, Boleyn's ghost "has frequently been seen both on the Green and more spectacularly in the Chapel Royal situated in the White Tower."
Another of Henry's wives, LADY JANE SEYMOUR, is reported to haunt Hampton Court Palace in England. Seymour died after giving birth to the king's only son, and is the only wife buried with Henry VIII himself. (Boleyn also has been sighted in Hampton Court, allegedly carrying her head under her arm.)
In 1952 actor MONTGOMERY CLIFT stayed in suite 928 of the Hollywood Roosevelt hotel while preparing for his role in the film From Here To Eternity. His ghost now is alleged to haunt the same room and the hallway outside, mumbling his lines to himself and even practicing his bugle.
In the lobby of the same hotel is a mirror in which the image of MARILYN MONROE is sometimes said to appear. (This legend seems a bit less famous than Clift's.) Monroe is also famous for the roses which, for two decades, were sent daily to her grave by her former husband Joe DiMaggio.
BRIDEY MURPHY wasn't exactly a ghost, but she was spooky. Murphy was the spirit of a 19th-century Irish lass allegedly housed in the body of a 20th-century Colorado housewife. Virginia Tighe was guided into a trance by amateur hypnotist Morey Bernstein in 1952, after which she began to speak and sing in a thick brogue and told elaborate tales of her life in Ireland in the 1800s. Bernstein tape-recorded the sessions and his 1956 book The Search for Bridey Murphy (with Tighe identified as 'Ruth Simmons') sparked a public mania for Murphy, hypnotism and reincarnation.
Revolutionary EMILIANO ZAPATA remains a hero with the poor in Mexico. A stubborn rebel against a series of government leaders, he was lured into a trap and assassinated by Mexican troops in 1919. According to legend his ghost rides through the hills near where he was killed, mounted on a white horse and shouting Tierra Y Libertad! ("Land and freedom!")
Former First Lady ELEANOR ROOSEVELT became a famous ghost of sorts in 1996, after Hillary Clinton said she had often felt Roosevelt's "presence" in the White House. Clinton reported that she held imaginary conversations with Roosevelt under the guidance of Jean Houston, a specialist in myth and spirituality. Both Clinton and Houston insisted the conversations were brainstorming exercises rather than seances, but the reports got heavy coverage and the image of Clinton "talking to Eleanor's ghost" seemed to stick in the public's mind. During a 1996 visit to Val-Kill, Roosevelt's New York cottage, Clinton told an audience: "I meant it as a metaphor, but it became, yet again, one of those things people all talked about... I guess sort of suggesting I really had gone off the deep end."
The ghost of ABRAHAM LINCOLN is firmly established in White House lore. Calvin Coolidge's wife Grace was the first to spot the spectre; she claimed to have seen Lincoln peering out of an Oval Office window. Since then various guests and residents have claimed to see the assassinated president's ghost in the Lincoln bedroom or the upstairs halls of the White House. Even Ronald Reagan's dog Rex would bark when passing the Lincoln bedroom (according to Reagan) and refused to enter the room.
Lincoln's tale has a kicker: the president seemed to have a premonition of his own demise. In 1865 he told a friend, Ward Hill Lamon, about a dream in which he wandered through the White House into the East Room, where he found a casket lying in state. When Lincoln asked a guard who had died, the chilling reply was: "The president." Lincoln joked about the dream with Lamon, but days later he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth.
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