If these famous people were writing a personal statement, this would be their hook.
When I was six years old, I chopped down a cherry tree, and when confronted by my father admitted to it because "I cannot tell a lie." It was through this experience that I learned the value of truth and honesty.
George Washington
I died after my doctor gave me a powerful mix of drugs, leaving behind my pet monkey Bubbles, two children (though I may or may not have been their biological parent), and numerous platinum records.
Michael Jackson
The Murdered Monks and Dame Blanche (White-Clad Lady) of Mortemer Abbey -
According to several accounts, revolutionaries murdered four monks in the Mortemer Abbey, dragging them to the cellars to carry out the nefarious deed. Monks’ blood and overturned jugs of wine are said to have intermingled on the cold cellar floors, leaving a gruesome scene.
Since then, rumors of ghostly monks haunting the skeletal ruins of the Abbey have persisted for generations. There’s even an account of a benevolent robed ghost emerging from the forest surrounding the Abbey during World War II, saving an English paratrooper from enemy attack by ushering him to a hideout.
France
Winston Churchill claimed that he saw my ghost while late at night wandering the halls of the White House.
Abraham Lincoln
Sightings of these large, hairy humanoids who wander through forests have been reported throughout the United States, particularly in the Pacific Northwest.
Bigfoot/Sasquatch
When I was 8 years old and my mother was taking me to Atlanta to audition for the Mickey Mouse Club, all I knew was the small town of McComb, Mississippi, where I had lived all my life. Little did I know I would be a global pop start ten years later, date a NSYNC member, and eventually be called the "princess of pop."
Britney Spears
I thought I was the ultimate animal tamer. Then I met the wrong stingray, who poisoned me with its barb while I was filming an underwater documentary.
Steve Irwin
Gjenganger - These grouchy spirits kill via a pinch, usually delivered at night. The pinched skin will turn blue and cause a wasting disease, which will eventually travel to the victim’s heart. Unlike most ghosts, gjenganger look more or less like normal living people, which makes them difficult to spot. So keep your wits about you next time you’re testing beds at IKEA.
Scandinavia
This town in New York is supposedly haunted by a headless horseman who wields a jack o'lantern as a weapon.
Sleepy Hollow
I supposedly live in a famous Scottish lake, occasionally surfacing to scare local tourists, leading them to think that some creatures thought extinct may have escaped the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs.
Lock Ness Monster
My journey to the "top job" took me from Hawaii, to California, to New York City, to Chicago, and eventually Washington D.C. My life has truly been a reflection of the breadth and scope of America. Though my father was born overseas, I am, in a sense, as American as apple pie.
Barack Obama
I died while constipated on the toilet from a cardiac arrest, likely impacted by drug use. My fans flocked to my mansion outside Memphis, Tennessee, to pay tribute to my long and sometimes up and down career as one of the first rock starts.
Elvis Presley
Skondhokatas -
The headless ghosts of people decapitated in train accidents, skondhokatas haunt the places where they died. Passengers report seeing them in train stations at night, or from the windows of trains traveling in the dark. They’re said to be violent, but easy to outwit—after all, they have no heads.
Likely origin: Given the patchy safety record of this country's railway system, which is the fourth largest in the world, it’s not surprising that headless train wreck victims would warrant their own category of ghost.
India
These three ghosts haunted old Scrooge until his icy heart finally melted and I became a second father to Tiny Tim.
A UFO carrying several "green men" crashed outside of this town, leading to conspiracies that claim the technology recovered from the wreck may be housed in Area 51.
Roswell
"Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee." I repeated this mantra to myself and others so often that it came to define me. Facing my greatest challenge, though, I realized that my famous phrase was going to have to be something more than just words.
Muhammad Ali
I died in Whitehall Palace after a long period of declining health, including suffering from gout and an infected leg wound that I got during a jousting competition. None of my 8 wives mourned me - several of them because I had them executed for treason.
Henry VIII
Toyols -
Tiny green-skinned goblins with glowing red eyes, toyols are dead fetuses or stillborn babies reanimated by black magic. Masters are said to keep their toyols in jars, feeding them milk and candy and—on special occasions—drops of blood drawn from the toe of the lady of the house. When bidden, toyols will steal money for their masters or commit other acts of petty crime and sabotage.
Likely origin: The toyol legend may have originated in pre-Islamic Mecca, where infanticide was common and newborns were sometimes buried alive.
Indonesia and Malaysia
I supposedly killed my father and stepmother with a hatchet in the unassuming house in Massachusetts. Now a bed and breakfast, I spook guests by wandering the halls, screaming, and moving objects.
Lizzie Borden
This shape-named area is supposedly the grave of dozens of boats and planes that dared entered these haunted waters.
The Bermuda Triangle
I lived in what many thought was the backwaters of the Islamic World: West Africa. Little did the elites in Cairo know that when I showed up in the 14th century on my way to Mecca for hajj, I would spend so much gold that I caused rampant inflation in the Mediterranean world for the next decade. My journey from the margins to the center of the Islamic world shows that I have the grit necessary to overcome any obstacle or naysayer.
Mansa Musa
I was having fun "twisting the night away" until my manager shot me in the heart after I drunkenly confronted her. The incident was labeled a justified murder and my manager was never charged.
Sam Cooke
Adze - a vampiric being that takes the form of a firefly, though it will transform into human shape upon capture. When in human form, the adze has the power to possess humans. In firefly form, the adze would pass through closed doors at night and suck blood from people as they slept. The victim would fall sick and die.
Togo and Ghana
In this play, perhaps Shakespeare's most famous, a ghost appears three time to warn his son that he was killed by his treacherous brother Claudius and asks his son to avenge his death.
Hamlet
Discovered in the 1930s (when we could finally fly high enough), the drawings are massive white geoglyphs – some being 275m across – made from shallow lines dug into the ground and are thought to have religious significance. One scientist speculated that they were composed using a rudimentary hot air balloon, but archaeologists have since found wooden stakes that were used to coordinate their creation.
The Nazca Lines