Mary Whitfill
Features Editor
As public interest with celebrity lives has increased over recent years, so have celebrity death rumors. With everything from Adam Sandler dying in a snowboarding accident, to old favorites such as Paul McCartney dying in the 60’s being rekindled, false accounts of celebrity deaths are spreading around the Internet like wildfire.
Although older celebrity rumors were often more in-depth than recent blurbs, online sources have made it possible for these ideas to latch on and take hold very quickly. Most recently, twitter updates have included the deaths of Adam Sandler, Aretha Franklin, Aaron Carter, Charlie Sheen, Avril Lavigne. Owen Wilson, Eddie Murphy and Morgan Freeman. As expected, these rumors are completely false.
Despite this unaccredited and sometimes even uncreative stream of rumors (a snowboarding accident? How boring!), there have been some creative and convincing rumors circulating over the years. For your reading pleasure, I have generated a list of the best celebrity death rumors. Be it for how outrageous they are or how many people they actually had convinced, these rumors will echo.
In 1969, rumors began to circulate that Beatles’ front man had died in a car crash and was replaced by a look alike. When a college paper began to report on the rumors, they spread. Quickly. People even began to speculate that confirmation was found on album covers and song lyrics, but as we all know now, Paul is not dead.
2. Justin Bieber – Suicide
What makes this account particularly humorous, when dealing with a very serious subject, is the reason for which the rumor was started. When Bieber failed to update his Twitter page for 14 full hours, Bieber fans defaulted to the only possible explanation: he was dead.
3. Will Ferrell – Paragliding Accident
After a small amount of time spent in Canada shooting a movie, rumors began to circulate on the web that 38-year-old Will Ferrell had died in a tragic Paragliding Accident. The accounts went as far as to give a place and date, along with the name of his ‘professional’ tour guide. Apparently, he hit a tree while traveling 60-miles-per-hour.
4. Jeff Goldblum – Fall From a Cliff
In 2008, the world threatened to take away Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett and Jeff Goldblum away from me. All in one day. Luckily, the accounts that Goldblum had fallen from a cliff on the set of his most recent movie were false, saving me a few more tears. The third celebrity to be rumored dead in New Zealand in recent years, (first Tom Hanks, then Tom Cruise) I’m beginning to wonder why it’s being given such a bad reputation.
5. William Hung – Heroin Overdose
Because all rock stars die of heroin overdoses, right?
Now Michael Jackson, he’s dead. Elvis… that I can’t confirm.
