Freaky Facts & Experiences of the Famous

The famous are not shielded from paranormal experiences, you can read about those who believe in the paranormal here, but these accounts are not necessarily what they believe... rather, what happened to them.

GAME GONE WRONG
The scandals of William S. Burroughs came to a morbid peak while he was fleeing the United States for 5 years to escape drug charges. His common-law wife, Joan Vollmer and their children fled with William to Mexico. It was here his life of addiction, alcoholism and questionable acts reached an all-time high. Joan had placed a glass on her head and William vowed to shot it off in a drunken game of William-Tell, however when the bullet left the gun it struck Joan in the forehead killing her instantly and William was arrested on murder charges. His attorney representing his case bribed ballistics experts and witnesses to say the gun had accidentally gone off while William was checking to see if the gun was loaded, but his efforts failed to make any headway and the Mexican government pursued the charges. William's lawyer delayed the trial date over and over with various stalls and eventually the trial was indefinitely suspended when William's lawyer was involved in a car accident and an altercation with the son of a government official and fled to the USA. Seeing his lawyer flee inspired William to do the same, and he returned to the USA, the country he had initially fled from. He spend the rest of his life in search of Yage, a South American drug that puportedly gave the person who takes it the power of telepathy.

DREAMING IN RED
Charles Dickens is documented in having a dream where he enters a room where everyone is dressed in scarlet red. He bumped into a lady who had her back to him and when Charles apologized she turned and said "My name is Napier". After the dream he could not remember anyone he knew named Napier and in discussion of the dream with friends none of them knew anyone named Napier. Two days later he was to give a reading and a friend approached him with a stranger dressed in a scarlet opera-cloak. His friend said the stranger was eager to be introduced to which Charles replied "Not Miss Napier?" and his friend said, "Yes, Miss Napier.". The woman's face looked nothing like the woman in the dream but the sheer coincidence and scarlet cloak were enough to confirm a psychic experience indeed.

GOODNIGHT FEET
The American authoress Margaret Wise Brown who wrote the classic Goodnight Moon loved to participate in beagaling (popular in Long Island at that time) and collected the severed feet of rabbits and other fleet-footed creatures as trophies of the kills.

CURSE OF HALEY
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) was born in 1835, the year Haley's comet was in plain view on Earth. He died in 1910, the same year Haley's comet could be seen in plain view on Earth... exactly 76 years apart.

THE REAL DA VINCI CODE
Leonardo Da Vinci was undoubtedly a man whose mind was too great for one lifetime. However, when it came to taking precautions to safeguard the notes to himself he wasn't too inventive... he used mirror-writing, meaning he wrote from right to left and held the notes to mirrors to read the contents. It didn't take long for those who found his notes to uncover the code.

SLEEP TIGHT
The noteable poet Percy Shelley was plagued by chronic nightmares that terrified him and at least on one documented case caused him to act out in his sleep. He dreamt of a naked child coming out of the ocean water and clapping his hands. He dreamt of encountering his own doppelganger on the terrace who asked him "How long do you mean to be content?". The documented case of Shelley acting out in a nightmare was a dream he had of his good friends Jane and Edward Williams coming to him bloody and beaten to tell him that his house was falling down, when he woke his was choking his wife Mary.

LIFE-ALTERING MEMBERS ONLY
The members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn all left a giant footprint on the face of the world for eternity. The movement was one of the greatest around the time of the late 19th and early 20th century. Some of its more recognizable members included: Aleister Crowley, Algernon Blackwood, Bram Stoker and William Butler Yeats. Wouldn't you have loved to sit at that table?

FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLED
On the day of John F. Kennedy's assassination famous authors Aldous Huxley and C.S. Lewis shared his day of death as it became the last day all three men would spend on Earth.

REST IN ???
Because of Voltaire's writings he was denied a Christian burial when he died in 1778; though it should be noted no one knows for sure Francois-Marie Arouet's (Voltaire) religious subscription as he was proclaimed atheist but worshipped in a Catholic-inspired chapel he built. This decision was overturned by the abbey in Champagne where his ashes were taken and his embalmed heart given to Madame Denis. The National Assembly ordered Voltaire's remains be moved to the Pantheon in Paris and in 1814 the Pantheon was robbed of Voltaire's remains and it was not discovered until 1864 when they went to return Voltaire's heart to his ashes. No one knows Voltaire's final resting place.