Todd’s and Monroe’s deaths are still cloaked in mystery – accidental or intentional suicide or murder. Harlow died of kidney failure; Lombard in an airplane crash. Crawford died from an acute coronary occlusion and Ball, from a ruptured aorta. All of these actresses remain planet Earth as ghosts.
Actress Thelma Todd’s Ghost and Mysterious Death
Todd was featured in hit comedies in the 1930’s. During the height of her career, film director and her lover Roland West and she opened a restaurant, Thelma Todd’s Sidewalk Café. She lived in a sumptuous apartment above it, while she had an affair with mobster Charles “Lucky” Luciano. On December 16, 1935, her body was found in her garaged car. She died from carbon monoxide poisoning.
After Todd’s death, there were rumors that, days before her death, Luciano approached her with his idea to use the café as a front for a gambling hall, which she refused.
It’s alleged that, on the night of Todd’s death, she had a fight with West, who lived next door to her apartment above the restaurant. She left him and went to a party. When she returned home, she found that West had locked her out. She kicked the door and yelled for him to open it; he ignored her. She went to the garage behind the café, entered her car, started it and passed out. The official report was that she died in the early morning hours of December 15, 1935 from “accidental suicide;” however people claimed to have seen her until late that night.
Today, the building that housed the café on Roosevelt Highway is owned by Paulist Productions. Employees have reported seeing Todd’s ghost walking down its stairs.
Actress Jean Harlow’s Ghost and her Haunted House
In 1932, Harlow, the original blonde bombshell, married MGM studio executive Paul Bern, who allegedly beat her brutally. He committed suicide in her bedroom that year. She died from kidney failure on June 7, 1937.
Harlow’s and Bern’s ghosts have been seen numerous times in their former mansion. One witness was actress Sharon Tate who encountered Harlow House ghost Paul, Bern. Celebrity hairstylist Jay Sebring bought Harlow’s house in 1963. He had a romantic relationship with Tate until she fell in love with and married Roman Polanski; however Sebring and Tate remained close friends. In 1966, Tate was staying alone in Sebring’s house overnight when she saw Bern’s ghost enter the bedroom as she was trying to sleep. He ignored her and roamed around as if he was searching for something.
Actress Carole Lombard’s Ghost
Lombard was one of Hollywood's top comedy film stars during the 1930s. She and screen icon actor Clark Gable married in 1939. The couple was said to have one of Hollywood's ideal marriages. Their union ended on January 16, 1942 when she was killed in an airplane crash while she was returning from a defense bond campaign trip to Indiana.
Lombard’s ghost has been sighted near the suite she shared with Gable at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. The specters of Gable and hers are said to haunt the Oatman Hotel in Oatman, Arizona, where they spent their honeymoon.
Ghost of Actress Marilyn Monroe
On August 5, 1962, the body of the “Love Goddess,” movie star of the 1950s and early ‘60s was found in the bedroom of her Brentwood home. Her official cause of death was "probable suicide."
Like Todd’s death, Monroe’s is surrounded with mystery. She had affairs with US President John F. Kennedy and his brother, US Attorney General, Robert F. Kennedy. There were rumors about the brothers’ and/or the Mafia’s involvement with her demise. Some psychics claimed that Monroe’s spirit told them her death was not suicide; but was accidental.
Her wrath has been sighted in the lobby’s mirror at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, where she often stayed, by her tomb in Westwood Memorial Cemetery, Los Angeles, California and in her Brentwood home.
Actress Joan Crawford’s Ghost and Haunted House
In her forty plus year career, Crawford was a silent film star and dramatic actress until her May 10, 1977 death. Her former home, the Crawford House, is said to be haunted by her ghost and others. It’s claimed that the house was exorcised many times, but the ghosts refuse to leave.
The Reverend Rosalyn Bruyere of the Healing Light Center said inexplicable spontaneous fires happened. She opined the house was “poisoned” before Crawford moved into it. Apparently, the house was built onto a pre-existing cottage, with additions of rooms and halls.
Paranormal authors Brad and Sherry Steiger visited the Crawford House in the early 1990s. The current owners permitted them to film a segment for an HBO special about hauntings in Hollywood. The couple experienced mysterious fires and witnessed a variety of entities in various parts of the house. They said that the small cottage adjoining the swimming pool often seemed to be center of the hauntings.
Lucille Ball: Psychic Background and her Ghost
Allegedly, she didn’t want to be the crowned Queen of Comedy or continue doing her I Love Lucy TVshows, until her idol, the late Carole Lombard, visited her in dreams and told her to keep on going. Ball is a distant member the Sprague family who lived in the Haunted Rhode Island Sprague Mansion. One of the haunters is believed to be a family member.
Ball died on April 26, 1989. It’s alleged that she haunts her former home on 100 North Roxbury Drive in Beverly Hills, California and the Haunted Paramount Studio’s Hart Building where DesiLu Studios was located during the filming of I Love Lucy. Her former home’s owners have experienced inexplicable broken windows, hearing loud voices emanating from the empty attic and furniture and other objects moving in the house.
Sources:
- Anthony Summers, Goddess: The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe, MalcMillan Publishing Co., 1985.
- Dennis William Hauck, Haunted Places, Penguin Books, 2002.
- Sherry Hansen-Steiger and Brad Steiger, Hollywood and the Supernatural, St Martin's Press, 1990.
Jill Stefko - I'd rather deal with the paranormal than human abnormal - having dealt extensively with both.
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