16 Celebs Who Have Had Actual Ghost Encounters

In an episode of The Dale Jr. Download, his podcast, Earnhardt Jr. opened up about a strange encounter when the conversation shifted to ghosts and spirits.

Earnhardt Jr. recounted, “When I wrecked in the Corvette in 2004 in Sonoma and it caught fire, somebody pulled me out of that car.”

“And I thought that it was a corner worker because I felt somebody put their hands under my armpits and pull me out of the car,” continued Earnhardt Jr. “I didn’t get out. I don’t have any memory of myself climbing out of the car.”

“And I remember sort of moving like in motion, like going to lean forward and try to climb out of the car, and then something grabbed me under the armpits, pulled me up over the door bars and then let go of me. And I fell to the ground, and there’s pictures of me laying on the ground next to the car. I know that when I got to the hospital, I was like, ‘Who pulled me out of the car? I gotta say thanks to this person,’ because it was a hand! It was physical hands grabbing me! I felt it.”

“And there was nobody there,” he said. The moment, he said, “would be probably the closest thing” to a paranormal encounter that Earnhardt Jr. has experienced — “if it’s real.”

While appearing on Chatty Man in 2014, Hudson revealed that she and her mom, Goldie Hawn, “see dead people.” “It is not really seeing, it is feeling a spirit,” she clarified. “A fifth energy. I believe in energy. I believe our brains can manifest into visual things.” The actress added that she once saw “a ghost of a woman with no face,” and shared some tips for dealing with a ghostly situation. “When you see something, you are supposed to tell the energy what year it is and that they don’t belong there,” she said.

Alba had a terrifying experience with an unseen force as a child. “I had no idea what it was. I felt this pressure and I couldn’t get up, I couldn’t scream, I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t do anything,” she recalled, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. “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 … There was definitely something in my parents’ old house —  I don’t know what it was. I can’t really explain it. But they got it blessed and they burned sage and stuff since then.”

“I have a ghost in my house,” the Pretty Little Liars star revealed to Hollywood Teen’Zine, explaining that her coffee maker once came on by itself at 1 a.m. “Doors close, not slam, but they close. And I have a motion sensor that lights up in my apartment  and I swear it lights up sometimes when there’s nothing under it. And my dog barks a lot. I don’t feel threatened, that threatened, but it definitely freak me out.”

Initially a skeptic, the actress became a believer 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 of her former workplace. “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.” Linney was further convinced that it had been a paranormal experience when she confronted the theater’s house manager. “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?’ “

While giving Architectural Digest a tour of her Tudor mansion in England, the supermodel revealed her family shares the home with residents from beyond the grave. “We had a medium go around, and she told us that actually all the ghosts in the house are lovely. No one needs to be scared,” she said. “We welcome all the ghosts, basically.” According to Schiffer, the ghosts’ haunting habits are creepy, but pretty harmless. “We hear creaking noises and strange things happen sometimes, like the music comes on.” Casper, is that you?

During a 2014 appearance on Late Night With David Letterman, Stone revealed that she’d had ongoing beyond-the-grave interactions with her late grandfather. “There’s a long family history with quarters. My grandfather leaves quarters. It’s him. It’s absolutely him,” she explained. Although Stone never met her grandfather, she insisted that she simply knows he is the cause of the phantom coins. “It’s not a logical thing, it’s magical,” she said. 

“Of course,” the singer told Complex when asked if she believed in ghosts and aliens in 2013. “I’ve had a ghost/demon experience,” she continued. “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 … 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.”

During an interview with Elle UK, Cyrus detailed her frightening experience with a haunted rental apartment in London. “It was seriously so terrifying … 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,” the star said. “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.” Cyrus added that her mom, aunt, and fiancé Liam Hemsworth all had “crazy experiences” in the flat after the shower incident, and that she ultimately decided to find other housing for her time in Europe. 

The “Hands to Myself” singer confessed to her paranormal believer status during a 2015 visit to The Tonight Show.  “I believe in ghosts, so I have a ghost app … I believe that spirits can tap into technology. Why not, right?” she told host Jimmy Fallon. According to Gomez, the app has detected otherworldly presences around her in the past: “Look, I was in a venue and it actually said people in my life by name.” 

In 2003, Hannigan told San Francisco Gate that she shared her California home with an unexpected resident. “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,” she said. “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.’ 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 [then-fiancé] Alexis [Denisof]. But then I looked and Alexis was asleep next to me.”

Reeves claims that he saw a ghost as a child living in New York City. “I’m probably like 6, 7 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 on Jimmy Kimmel Live!. “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.'”

Lovato shared that her childhood home in Texas housed a ghost in a 2013 article she wrote for Buzzfeed. “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,” she wrote. “I believe that everyone can tune into that part of their mind. I think I have a really strong connection to the afterlife … When I walk into a room, I can tell if something has happened there or not, or if a hotel is haunted.”

The former first daughter believes that the White House is home to some mysterious spirits. “I heard a ghost,” she claimed on The Tonight Show in 2009. “I was asleep, there was a fireplace in my room and all of a sudden I heard 1920’s 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.'”

“I believe in everything,” Fox told MTV News in 2014, going on to say that although she has never seen a ghost, she has heard them. “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 … Thirty 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.”  

While doing press for his 2009 movie Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, McConaughey shared that 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.'” The actor went on to say that eventually he stopped getting visits from Madame Blu and his guests fell in love with her former favorite room.