A death hoax is an unverified rumor, or a planned and misleading report, that declares a person’s death but is later revealed to be false when that person is discovered to be still alive. In the rush to grab all the headlines, the media occasionally reports the deaths of certain celebrities and prominent people too quickly. Sure, it’s sometimes just a mistake. Most of the time, though, it’s the consequence of ill-advised gags and pranks, as well as conspiracies. Here are five celebrities that have been victims of death hoaxes:
1. Miley Cyrus has died loads of times
Miley Cyrus has been the subject of far more death hoaxes than you might take a stab. Cyrus was declared dead in 2007 and again in 2008, the latter as a consequence of a car accident. In 2012, a Twitter account posing as MTV News announced that the singer had been discovered dead in her Miami home. Strangely, the fact that the page’s linking to the supposed circumstances of the death led to an advertisement for anti-aging cream did not exactly alleviate the panic around the story.
2. Paul McCartney is already dead and has a look-alike living his life
Conspiratorial Beatles fans seem to think that McCartney actually died in 1966 and that everything that has unfolded since then has been orchestrated by someone who looks and sounds exactly like him. Not only that, but they believe compositions penned by fellow musicians George Harrison and John Lennon gave hints to McCartney’s demise. For example, when John Lennon’s “A Day in the Life” is played backward, the lyrics “Paul is dead, miss him, miss him”… are believed to be heard.
3. Justin Bieber died in a car crash
According to a website in early 2015, Justin Bieber was pronounced dead after a car accident on the highway between Morristown and Roswell. The rumor was so well-supported on the Internet that the majority of people truly believed it. Justin Bieber later broke the bogus death news by posting a photo of himself on Instagram. Even in the years 2013 and 2014, he was afflicted by this death hoax illness.
4. A paragliding accident took Will Ferrell’s life
Will Ferrell was rumored to have died in a paragliding accident in Southern California in 2006, a suitably ludicrous claim for such a humorous figure. Apparently, an unexpected burst of wind blew Ferrell and his partner off track while paragliding. This caused them to lose control and plummet into some adjacent woods. Despite efforts to revive the two, they died on the way to the hospital owing to major head injuries and fractured bones. The assertion was shortly withdrawn, and numerous other websites exposed it as a fraud.
5. Jackie Chan lost his life shooting for an action scene in a movie
In 2015, a Facebook page called RIP Jackie Chan was formed, claiming that Chan was killed during the production of a movie while filming an action scene. When Chan learned of the allegation, he clarified that it was just a hoax. When people were somehow still not convinced, he shared a photo of himself on Facebook with the caption, “I am still alive and posting a picture with today’s newspaper.”
