Friends costars Jennifer Aniston and Courteney Cox, Jenna Bush Hager and George Lopez have all spoken about their homes being haunted.
Some celebrity haunting tales can be unsettling and spooky – like Matthew McConaughey’s experience with a ghost called Madam Blu lingering in one hallway to freak out his visitors. Jessica Alba relayed her own terrifying incident where the sheets were yanked off her bed in the middle of the night without any logical explanation.
However, Octavia Spencer actually formed a bond with the unexplained presence in her Los Angeles home. Spencer told Ellen DeGeneres that the ghost of an old Western movie actor served as a “protector” on her property.
“My ghost can haunt me, but he doesn’t haunt me. We have boundaries,” she joked.
Keep scrolling for stories of celebrities opening up about supernatural encounters in their homes:
Jennifer Aniston
The former Friends star revealed during an appearance on The Late Late Show with James Corden in 2018 that her unfriendly roommate wasn’t the only unwanted resident in her very first Los Angeles home.
“I had just moved from New York City to California, and someone said to me, ‘Oh, you have a spirit in your house. You should have someone [come by] and clear the house,’” Aniston remembered. “And I was like, ‘Oh man. I’ve landed in Los Angeles.’ We’re talking about ghosts, spirits and a ghost whisperer?”
Aniston had some unexplainable experiences at the time, such as the dishwasher and coffee maker suddenly switching on. She confirmed to host James Corden that she resorted to hiring a ghost whisperer to try to cleanse her home.
“They had frankincense, and they put it in a little dish and started saying all these things and, the corner that she went to, a dish cracked,” she said.
Aniston decided it was best to simply move out – though she left without warning her roommate about the ghost.
“I moved out. I feel terrible, but I couldn’t say, ‘[The ghost] doesn’t like you.’ I mean, that would be terrible,’” she admitted.
Courteney Cox
Aniston wasn’t the only Friends cast member to experience an apparent haunting. Cox shared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in 2022 that she sold her Laurel Canyon home after being tipped off by legendary singer-songwriter Carole King that it was haunted.
Cox explained that King previously owned the home and told her about the property’s supernatural backstory.
“Carole King came over to my house, and she said there had been a divorce that was really ugly, and there was a ghost in the house. And I was like, ‘Yeah, whatever,’” Cox relayed to host Jimmy Kimmel. “But other people who had stayed there with me — friends of mine — said they had an encounter with a woman who was sitting on the edge of the bed.”
Cox brushed off the warnings until she had a disconcerting experience of her own with a delivery driver.
“I was at the house one day, not being a believer, and the doorbell rang. It was a UPS guy or something, and I opened the door and he said, ‘Do you know this house is haunted?’” she said. “[I told him], ‘Yeah, why? Why do you think that?’ to which the delivery driver responded, ‘Because there is someone standing behind you’ … and I was like, ‘Let’s sell!’”
The Scream actress admitted to Kimmel that she “couldn’t sleep there alone ever again,” so she really did sell the home.
“You just don’t think of it the same way,” Cox pointed out.
Octavia Spencer
Not all spectral encounters are scary or disconcerting! Spencer explained on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in 2021 that she grew up as a huge fan of Western movies, so she was excited to discover the ghost of “a guy who did Westerns” in her Toluca Lake home.
“I must have been a fan of his,” she said.
Spencer came to think of her ghost as a “protector” from anyone who entered her home with ill intentions.
“I love him because he kind of sorts out the bad people that shouldn’t be there. He runs them out,” the Oscar winner quipped. “If they stay at my place, they don’t wanna come back. And that’s how I know that they don’t belong here. If you’re a person that belongs there, everybody is like, ‘Oh, your place is so welcoming. It’s so great.’ And that’s how I feel about it.”
One downside of living in a haunted house, according to Spencer, is when others bring their own ghosts over for a visit.
“Well, when I leave for a long time, he’s a little shady. The doors close, the lights go off when I turn them on,” she recalled. “The only problem — I love my ghost, I just don’t want you bringing your ghost to my house. I don’t want anybody’s ghost thinking they can be friends with my ghost.”
Spencer added, “My ghost can haunt me, but he doesn’t haunt me. We have boundaries.”
Jenna Bush Hager
The Today host got the scoop on the spiritual residents of the White House when her father, George W. Bush, was president from 2001 to 2009. She insisted on The Kelly Clarkson Show that rumors about White House hauntings are “true.”
“Listen, Kelly, you would have liked these ghosts because they were very musical,” Bush Hager assured host Kelly Clarkson. “They were musical, and they came with no harm. They were kind and friendly and passionate ghosts.”
Bush Hager shared one particular instance when she was staying over with her twin sister, Barbara Bush, at the White House while on a break from college.
“The phone rang, and I woke up, and all of a sudden we heard, like, 1920s piano music coming out of our fireplace,” she said. “I was like, ‘Surely, it’s the cat’ or something, we had to pretend, but it was the middle of the night!”
She continued, “You could feel the music out of the fireplace. I know, we tried to talk ourselves out of it too. … We jumped into each other’s beds. We were terrified. But, I’m telling you, the ghosts were musical, and they came with no harm! They weren’t evil!”
Clarkson joked that the scene Bush Hager described sounded more like a “horror film” than a comforting experience.
“You can’t imagine what’s happened there, so I think [the music] was from another era,” Bush Hager clarified. “It was definitely terrifying.”
The Jenner Family
During a Vogue interview in 2018, Kendall Jenner said she had “experienced some pretty ghostly situations.” Kendall went so far as to suggest there were spirits living in her mom Kris Jenner’s Hidden Hills mansion.
“In the house my mom lives in, [Kylie Jenner] and I would always hear footsteps on the roof while no one was home,” she said.
According to Kendall, her sister Kylie also had a number of unexplainable occurrences while they were living in the Hidden Hills dwelling.
“Kylie’s shower used to turn on all the time, and we never knew why,” she said. “So yeah, I’m convinced it was a ghost.”
Matthew McConaughey
McConaughey lightheartedly joked during a 2009 press junket for Ghosts of Girlfriends Past that the movie hit close to home because he’d lived with a spirit called Madam Blu.
“I was not even under the influence, and she was there,” he teased.
The Oscar-winning actor admitted the ghost “didn’t seem like she was going to be that much fun to hang around with,” so he decided to confront her.
“I stood my ground, opened the door and said, ‘You move around all you want, but I’m not going anywhere,’” he insisted. “For weeks, everyone who came over to the house said the same thing, ‘There’s someone down that hall.’”
After numerous encounters, McConaughey felt that he simply “outlasted” Madam Blu since she eventually stopped bothering his guests.
“She got cool, and everything was fine. Everyone quit hearing things, and everyone fell in love with that room [where her presence was felt],” he said. “For a while, no one liked that room, and all of a sudden people loved that room!”
Alyson Hannigan
Hannigan battled demonic forces every week on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so she wasn’t worried when she discovered a ghost living in her house.
“I have a ghost in my house,” she told SFGate in 2003. “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.”
The How I Met Your Mother actress confessed that some guests were unnerved by the ghost, yet she was intrigued by the unexplainable presence.
“I’d love to get his name,” she said. “I’m thinking of putting a little chalkboard where I think he lives to see if he will write his name down.”
Lucy Hale
A 2010 interview took an unusual turn when the Pretty Little Liars star swore that there was a ghost lurking in her residence.
“I have a ghost in my house,” she declared.
Hale described “the latest instance” of encountering a ghost when her mother dropped by for a visit. At around 1 a.m., Hale said her mom called out to ask if she was making coffee because the coffee maker had suddenly turned on in the kitchen.
“Doors close, not slam, but they close, and I have a motion sensor that lights up in my apartment, and I swear, it will light up sometimes when there’s nothing under it,” she said.
She added, “I don’t feel that threatened though, so that’s good! But it freaks me out.”
Jessica Alba
The Honest Company cofounder relayed a terrifying story about seemingly being attacked by a ghost while in bed at age 17.
“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 told The Sydney Morning Herald in 2008. “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!”
Alba confessed that she was still completely baffled by her experience since she never got any closure on what may have happened.
“There was definitely something in my parents’ old house – I don’t know what it was,” she said. “I can’t really explain it. But they got it blessed and they burned sage and stuff since then.”
George Lopez
The Lopez vs Lopez actor exclusively told Us Weekly in December 2024 that he was convinced his “house is haunted.”
“There used to be banging in the attic, and I’ve heard [the spirit] say, ‘Ma,’ ‘good afternoon’ and my name,” he eerily recounted.
Despite the unnerving encounters, Lopez insisted he wasn’t ready to move out of his house simply because there was an unexpected roommate.
“Until it actually touches me, I’m going to stay,” he said.
Read the full article here
