It's always sad when a celebrity dies, and some deaths are depressing at face value because
they come too early or involve tragic accidents.
But what's really creepy and bizarre is when different celebrities die in really similar
ways.
When two relatively young people died only months apart in the same house, people naturally
assumed something weird must be going on.
But no one has ever been able to prove that the deaths of actress Brittany Murphy at 32
and her husband Simon Monjack five months later at 40 were anything other than common
illnesses.
When Murphy died suddenly in her house in 2009, rumors swirled that it was because of
anorexia or illegal drugs.
But when the autopsy came back, it showed she died of acute pneumonia and severe anemia,
and while there were drugs in her body, they were all over-the-counter meds.
Monjack said she had been suffering flu-like symptoms and was tired before she died, but
that was all.
Monjack had a heart condition and was overweight, but when he suddenly died five months after
Murphy in the same house, it was also to pneumonia and anemia, just like his wife.
But some don't believe this was a simple coincidence.
There have been theories that their house was full of toxic mold, or that metal present
in Murphy's hair meant she was poisoned, or that her mother killed them both.
As it stands now, though, there is no conclusive evidence for any of this.
The similarities between the deaths of Edward Kennedy and John McCain, two political heavyweights,
were impossible to ignore.
When McCain announced he was ill, the New York Times even ran an article titled "Eerie
Parallels Between John McCain and Edward Kennedy."
Both were diagnosed with the same relatively rare and aggressive form of brain cancer while
in the middle of major health care debates in the Senate.
Both lived just over a year after being diagnosed.
And both died on the same day, August 25th, nine years apart.
Kennedy announced he had glioblastoma in 2008.
He disappeared from the Senate while he had treatment but returned for a key Medicare
vote.
When he died 15 months later at age 77, McCain gave a eulogy at his memorial service.
Even though they sat on different sides of the aisle in Congress, they were good friends.
McCain received his own diagnosis of glioblastoma in 2017.
He voted against repealing Obamacare days after he announced his diagnosis.
He also left the Senate for a while to receive treatment, but he still died 13 months after
being diagnosed in 2018 at age 81.
"Ted and I shared the sentiment that a fight not joined was a fight not enjoyed."
Natalie Wood's passing is one of the most infamous unexplained deaths in Hollywood history.
That's why it's absolutely bizarre that just over four years later, another beautiful actress
met an eerily similar fate.
Both Wood and Carol Wayne, famous for appearing in sketches on The Tonight Show with Johnny
Carson, mysteriously drowned in the Pacific Ocean after arguments with their significant
others.
Over Thanksgiving weekend in 1981, Wood was on a yacht off the coast of California with
her husband Robert Wagner, as well as Christopher Walken and the boat's captain.
She was found dead at age 43 in the water on November 29th, which was odd since she
was famously afraid of the ocean.
The captain swore he saw a fight between Wood and Wagner the night before she was found.
Despite this, and the bruises on Wood's body, her death was ruled accidental.
In January 1985, Carol Wayne was vacationing with friends and her boyfriend, Edward Durston,
on the Pacific coast of Mexico.
She was later found floating dead in the ocean.
Like Wood, she was afraid of water and couldn't swim.
It was reported that the last time Wayne was seen alive, she and Durston were having a
massive argument.
Suspicions were raised, but her death was also ruled accidental.
She was just 42.
Comedians metaphorically die onstage all the time, but it's rare that their lives literally
end there, which makes the deaths of Tommy Cooper and Ian Cognito all the weirder.
Both British funnymen suffered heart attacks in front of live audiences, almost 35 years
to the day apart.
And since comedians often do strange things in their acts, neither audience thought anything
was wrong at the time.
Cooper was performing on the hit TV program Live From Her Majesty's on April 15th, 1984.
Millions tuned in to watch.
Cooper was in the middle of his routine when he suddenly dropped to his knees.
Since he was known for slapstick and improv, no one, not even the people backstage, thought
anything bad had happened.
The audience kept laughing.
Eventually, the presenter figured out it wasn't a joke and called for a commercial break.
Cooper was taken to the hospital, where he was declared dead.
On April 11th, 2019, Ian Cognito was performing a stand-up set in England.
He was also known for his flamboyant performances, and he had made a joke about having a heart
attack or stroke only minutes earlier.
When he sat down, put his head back, and started twitching, it seemed like just a funny callback.
Once again, the audience laughed as the comedian died of a heart attack.
After a few minutes, someone finally called an ambulance, but Cognito was gone.
On December 31st, 1997, Michael L. Kennedy, the son of political giant Robert F. Kennedy,
died after colliding with a tree while skiing with his family.
Less than a week later, almost the exact same thing happened to politician and musician
Sonny Bono.
Both men had crazy youths of excess and fame, and both became more serious once they got
older, and then they both met their end the same way.
Kennedy was in Aspen, Colorado with his extended family when the tragedy happened.
In hindsight, it seems obvious someone was going to get hurt.
The Kennedy family had apparently been playing football on skis for generations.
While Michael was an extremely talented skier, that afternoon he lost control and crashed
into a tree, resulting in major head injuries.
Attempts to stabilize him failed, and he was pronounced dead at a hospital about 90 minutes
later.
Six days later, Congressman Bono was skiing with his own family in California.
He left in the afternoon to go ski alone and when he didn't come back that evening, his
family reported him missing.
The ski patrol found Bono in a wooded area.
He, too, had collided into a tree sometime in the afternoon, resulting in massive head
injuries that killed him.
Actors Teresa Graves, Dennis Patrick, and Royce Applegate might not be household names,
but they all found a decent amount of fame around the same era.
Their careers even overlapped, with Graves and Patrick both appearing in episodes of
The Rookies, while Patrick and Applegate both showed up on Dallas, The Streets of San Francisco,
and The Mod Squad.
Unfortunately, their deaths in house fires in Los Angeles also overlapped over the same
12-week period.
On October 10th, 2002, Teresa Graves, who starred on the '70s show Get Christie Love!,
was alone in her house when a faulty space heater started a fire that caused major damage.
She was found unconscious but couldn't be revived at the hospital.
She was 54.
Just three days later, 84-year-old Dennis Patrick was home with his dog when a fire
started.
Sadly, both he and the dog died and were found next to each other after firefighters doused
the flames.
Royce Applegate appeared in dozens of TV shows and films over his career.
But on January 1st, 2003, less than three months after Graves and Patrick passed, his
L.A. home caught fire.
He was found dead at the age of 63.
While heroin overdoses are not unheard of in celebrity circles, the similarities in
the deaths of comedian Lenny Bruce, and actors Robert Pastorelli and Philip Seymour Hoffman
make them even more depressing.
All three men died in their 40s, but Bruce was the youngest.
The counterculture comedian was arrested numerous times, including for drug possession.
In 1966, he was found dead on his bathroom floor of a heroin overdose, the needle still
sticking out of his arm.
He was just 40.
Pastorelli was most famous for starring on the CBS sitcom Murphy Brown.
He battled a heroin addiction and was being investigated for his girlfriend's death when
he died.
But his death was ruled accidental when he overdosed in 2004.
He was found dead on the floor of his bathroom with a needle in his arm at the age of 49.
Hoffman was one of the greatest actors of his generation, and while he had battled drug
addiction in his youth, he'd been sober 23 years by 2012.
But that year he fell off the wagon.
The following year, he went into rehab.
Sadly, it wasn't enough.
In 2014, he too was found dead on his bathroom floor of an overdose with a needle still in
his arm.
He was 46.
"There's things I want to do.
You know?
There's things I want to do.
And I'm not gonna do them if I keep doing this."
John Gregory Dunne was a journalist, screenwriter, and novelist, happily married to the author
Joan Didion, with whom he had one daughter.
Michael Witney was an actor, unhappily married to the much more famous model Twiggy, with
whom he, too, had one daughter.
And while their deaths happened almost exactly 20 years apart, they had some odd similarities.
Witney was already estranged from his wife of six years when he sat down to dinner with
his young daughter at a restaurant in New York City on November 30th, 1983.
But he didn't get to enjoy the meal, as he suffered a massive heart attack.
He was rushed to a hospital, but doctors failed to revive him.
Twiggy was onstage in a play at the time and wasn't told of her husband's passing until
the show ended.
Dunne was also sitting down to dinner with family in New York City, this time with his
wife at their home, when he died on December 30th, 2003.
He also died of a massive heart attack before he could enjoy his last meal with his loved
ones.
Parallels in natural deaths are one thing, but similarities in murder are even more disturbing.
Actor Phil Hartman and NFL star Steve McNair were both shot in their sleep by women with
substance abuse issues with whom they had deteriorating romantic relationships.
And both women then killed themselves.
Hartman found fame on Saturday Night Live and then branched out successfully into other
TV shows and movies.
But his marriage was tumultuous, and his wife Brynn had issues with cocaine and alcohol.
On the night that he died, he and Brynn had an argument over her drug use.
Then Hartman went to bed.
At some point, Brynn got out one of their guns and shot her sleeping husband three times
in the head and chest.
She got drunk, made some phone calls, drove to a friend's house, and then went back home
to see what she'd done.
The police showed up.
Eventually, Brynn locked herself in the bathroom and took her own life.
McNair was married but had a girlfriend on the side.
His lover Sahel Kazemi knew he was cheating on her with even more women, so she cheated
on him back.
Two days before she killed him, she got a DUI.
Knowing their relationship was unraveling, she bought a gun and as he slept on his couch
in 2009, she shot him four times in the head and chest.
She then turned the gun on herself.
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide
Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).