If you're familiar with this image, you probably recall how it was spread by word-of-mouth.

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pnothing@reddit

Ted Danson has a podcast and on a recent one with Tom Selleck they mention this and yes it was a cardboard cutout of Ted Danson.

As a kid I remember the story being that the building was hunted, turns out it was filmed in a sound studio not in an actual building.

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On_my_last_spoon@reddit

Not to be pedantic, but a sound studio is a building. And anyplace can be haunted.

The set itself is built inside a sound studio and the set isn’t a building of its own. I’m sure this is what you meant but I’m gonna be that person right now 😆

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On_my_last_spoon@reddit

Look, I’m not saying I think ghosts are real. But my Mom 100% says she’s interacted with ghosts and I have to say…I kinda believe her.

I also used to work in a house that was 150 years old and enough weird shit happened that I can’t explain.

To bring this back to Xennial nostalgia, Dan Atkroyd really does believe in ghosts and pulled some things from Spiritualism for Ghostbusters.

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Pardot42@reddit

You're definitely saying ghosts are 100% real and that anywhere can be haunted by them.

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DerailedDreams@reddit

What he's really saying, all over these comments, is that he's a giant tool.

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tacos_burrito@reddit

Next time you want to start a sentence with, “not to be pedantic”, please take a breath and count to three and ask, “would I want to hear me tell myself this?”

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On_my_last_spoon@reddit

Look, I’m here on Reddit. I am gonna do as I want! None of this is serious.

Besides, I’m still right. A sound stage is a building. I know what they meant, that the set isn’t a building of its own, but they still said it wrong. And I will die on this hill!

And also, anyplace can be haunted. There aren’t limits on that.

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FaceRidden@reddit

Not to be pedantic but a soundstage can can be built outdoors, sometimes around buildings….

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On_my_last_spoon@reddit

Sound stages are buildings. Shooting outdoors is shooting outdoors. You can build a set outdoors, but it’s not in a sound stage at that point.

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FaceRidden@reddit

Sound stages are structures, not buildings. Sometimes an entire building is designed as a sound stage. Just go google bro.

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On_my_last_spoon@reddit

But we’re on Reddit. This isn’t real life.

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On_my_last_spoon@reddit

About what? I feel like you’re just trying to rib me because you’re bored.

I mean, I’m doing the same thing because … we’ll see my previous comment.

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Burglekutt_2000@reddit

I’m with you on the building thing

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I remember hearing the story and watching the movie over and over again looking for it but not being able to find it. For me the cardboard cutout was obviously a cardboard cutout so there's no way people would be thinking that was the ghost.

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ClampLoader@reddit

Seriously, that’s the “ghost”? Never could find it but I guess that’s why. I was always looking for something ethereal behind the curtains.

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debaser64@reddit

Wrong. It’s actually Vicki in the Michael suit.

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zomgkittenz@reddit

Surprise dummies! What I’m a total munch!

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dunnkw@reddit

It even showed the cutout earlier in the movie in the apartment

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PercentageRoutine310@reddit

My favorite urban legends were Richard Gere stuffing a gerbil up his ass and Paul from The Wonder Years (or Rob from Mr. Belvedere) became Marilyn Manson.

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sky-lake@reddit

The other version of the Marylin Manson legend was that he was Kevin from Mr. Belvedere

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LemonPartyW0rldTour@reddit

Now that one I’d never heard.

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sky-lake@reddit

I think it's something to do with the nose and chin shape of the actor, it does remind me of MM for some reason! But it could just be that I heard the urban legend so now I see him that way.

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Evening_Ad_1099@reddit

This was the one I grew up with

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Vondelsplein@reddit

And that he removed his ribs to fellate himself

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Kellysi83@reddit

Honestly how did we all hear these exact urban legends!? The internet wasn’t even a thing really!

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Ari2079@reddit

Especially when you consider it went around the WORLD. We had all these legends in Australia too

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anarchetype@reddit

I like to think it was all from one person who saved up a lot of air miles and was a gossipy little bitch.

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CactusHide@reddit

People still talked about stupid stuff before the internet. It just took a little longer to make the rounds.

Paranormal magazines used to print things like the topic, and late night AM radio shows like Art Bell’s gave fun things for these people

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to share at work or school.

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TaDow-420@reddit

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You know you can hear the theme song in your head.

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nonamesleft--@reddit

I'll watch most any horror movie and not bat an eye, but you play that theme music and I'm hiding under the covers.

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anarchetype@reddit

Same. Well, either hearing that theme song or the sudden intrusive memory about the episode where they reenacted this ghost head on a surface (top of chest-of-drawers?) near someone's bed that would slowly open its mouth and close it without making a sound. My aplogies if you know what I'm talking about.

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TaDow-420@reddit

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Can you tell me why Robert Stack was so creepy??

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Ari2079@reddit

its the trench coat. Why does he need a coat when he is inside?

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Dr-McLuvin@reddit

Prob has a bunch of kooky crime fighting inventions hidden in there like Inspector Gadget.

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Ari2079@reddit

I watched one of the new episodes last week. Half way through I had to call my dog into the room… and then asked her to escort me around the house so I could shut all the curtains lol that childhood trauma never goes away

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TaDow-420@reddit

After watching the new episode about Mothman, I had to grab a baseball bat to take with me while running the garbage out to the curb the other night. If something swoops down and snatches me up out of the darkness I’m swinging for the fences like Ken Griffey Jr.

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Ari2079@reddit

I can watch any violent true crime show with no issues….but the unsolved mysteries music nup

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Ari2079@reddit

lol that was the episode!

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Kellysi83@reddit

So true but it’s kinda wild when you think about how it all went down like that before!

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Tiny-Reading5982@reddit

Forums and message boards mostly lol. Aol chat rooms.

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Kellysi83@reddit

This! Message boards and chat rooms were the Wild West of the internet days! What a time it was to come of age!

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protoman86@reddit

A few weeks ago one of my customers at work rattled off his email to me and it was a AOL email. The memories washed over me 😂

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Kellysi83@reddit

Now that’s keepin’ it real 💯

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NightWriter500@reddit

I believed for years that Mr. Rogers was a sniper in Vietnam.

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sky-lake@reddit

I think this one originated from the (real) fact that Bob Ross (the painting guy from PBS) was a vietnam vet. Since he was such a calm/sweet/wholesome guy on the show, maybe it evolved to be Mr. Rogers.

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NightWriter500@reddit

Well there you go, TIL Bob Ross was a 20-year vet who only retired because his paintings earnings began to surpass his military salary.

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terrildactyl@reddit

He also said he didn’t want to be a guy who shouted at people anymore.

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Dr-McLuvin@reddit

Imagine joining the military and getting your ass reamed out by Bob Ross.

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kalitarios@reddit

Happy little holes. They live right here, right in these fields over here. And in those holes we have trench warfare but today they’re full of anticipation for close combat… there we go. Just like that

slaps brush on easel leg

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terrildactyl@reddit

Imagine dealing with him for four years, getting cussed out for every misstep, every misspoken word, every error no matter how small to the point where you dread interacting with him. Then you’re discharged and you go home and flip on PBS and there is Master Sergeant Nightmares with a squirrel on his shoulder, painting a stream, gently encouraging you to express yourself and embrace your mistakes.

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justonemom14@reddit

And then 20 years later, people on the internet somehow know exactly what you experienced, and post it on reddit. Paranoia intensifies.

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MhaelFox83@reddit

And interesting thing I've learned about that particular urban myth is that the person removing their ribs changes depending on the age and origin of the individual, it even predates Manson

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cionn@reddit

It was Orince in the 80s. And i heard of this in Ireland

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sky-lake@reddit

It's funny how this one has been around for different celebs. When that one became common in the 90s, one of my teachers overheard that and laughed, she said when she was in highschool (the 70s), the urban legend was that Cher removed her ribs to have a more hourglass figure.

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heykidzimacomputer@reddit

Then the rumor of Rod Stewart getting his stomach pumped for being full of semen was updated to be about Alanis Morissette.

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_Sympathy_3000-21_@reddit

NKOTB in my school

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SweetBaileyRae@reddit

It was Jordan at my school. I was in the 4th grade and had no idea what it meant lol! Somebody just told me it means they are gay. I swear it couldn’t have been just our schools because at the same time NKOTB popularity really took a nose dive. You won’t convince me it wasn’t because of this rumor.

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Writefrommyheart@reddit

Mine too!

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TemporaryBuilding395@reddit

The whole band?

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_Sympathy_3000-21_@reddit

Yup. 🪣 🪣 🪣 🪣 🪣

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philouza_stein@reddit

It was Lil Kim in my school

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neuroxin@reddit

Same i never heard that one until it was Lil Kim, supposedly it happened when she was in prison

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TPlain940@reddit

☝🏿

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Valten78@reddit

It was Marc Almond, the lead singer of Soft Cell, when I was a kid in the UK. Never head that attributed to anyone else.

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philouza_stein@reddit

Mike D and Screech being brothers

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SpaceMonkee8O@reddit

They’re not?

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philouza_stein@reddit

Nope. It's weird because they look exactly similar enough to be brothers.

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Status-Hovercraft784@reddit

Who and how the Richard Gete gerbil thing got started is beyond, but what's also crazy is how easily my (and I'm assuming other's) mind was willing to accept Gere stuffing a gerbil in his ass. Like, that's super hardcore shit.

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TargetApprehensive38@reddit

The origin of the Richard Gere thing is crazy. Supposedly Sylvester Stallone had beef with him and started the rumor, telling it to various people around Hollywood for years. It spread by word of mouth around town, and then someone made a fake PETA press release about it and sent it out to thousands of fax machines.

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AlongTheWay_85@reddit

There was talk of gerbils!

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call-me-the-seeker@reddit

Which was the style at the time. Talk of gerbils. They didn’t have any brown gerbils, because of the ozone layer. The only thing you could get was those gray ones.

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TrustAffectionate966@reddit

Everyone knows it was "Kevin" from Mr. Belvedere who became Marilyn Manson.

🧉🦄

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JustHCBMThings@reddit

No it was the nerd from the wonder years.

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YouKnowMoose@reddit

Word of mouth - PRH Pre Reddit History

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Procrastineddit@reddit

This one and the person hanging themselves on the set of the Wizard of Oz that turned out to clearly be a stork or something in HD versions.

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sewer_pickles@reddit

There was also the rumor that Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon would sync up as a soundtrack for Wizard of Oz. Before VHS or DVD, you would have to wait for it to show on TV and then start your record player at just the right moment if you wanted to test this. Now you can find it on YouTube if you want to see it for yourself.

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TwoBirdsEnter@reddit

Did this one with some friends about 20 years ago - It was actually pretty fun!

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anarchetype@reddit

It was great and a pleasant media experience, in my opinion. Ngl, also kinda fun to trip to. Totally a gateway drug, though, as friends and I soon after started experimenting with other film + album combos, either stuff we'd try on our own and report back if successful or stuff we'd find on archaic websites. I remember The Matrix + one of the Tool albums being a big one. Lots of Radiohead and Tool albums in general showed up on those lists.

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Miss-Bees@reddit

Right after the lion’s third roar

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PissedPieGuy@reddit

This is the way

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BoomersArentFrom1980@reddit

And if you do it stoned, it works! /s

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neuroxin@reddit

I heard you had to play it backwards

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Salt-Patience7384@reddit

You gotta hit play on the cd, exactly when the lion roars in opening

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avlisadj@reddit

It’s on HBO Max (or whatever it’s called now) and I watched it recently…had major flashbacks of a late night spent with my cousins trying to pause the VHS at exactly the right time to confirm the alleged suicide. But yeah…it’s a bird.

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Olive_tree_33@reddit

I totally forgot about that one!

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Dangerous_Radish2961@reddit

This is the only thing that gave me nightmares as a kid.

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kup1986@reddit

I have no idea what this one is. Can someone fill me in?

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Grongebis@reddit

Same. I don't even think the name of the movie is even mentioned in this thread. It's just referred to as "this movie" is it 3 men and a baby????

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Powerful_Wombat@reddit

This is a new one to me, what’s the urban legend here?

My favorite word of mouth story was that Mikey (from the Life cereal commercials) died of eating pop rocks and Coca Cola at the same time

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loztriforce@reddit

This pic is misleading as the average vhs copy back then had a more washed out image: kids would pause it here and there’d be this ghostly image.
It was an urban legend borne from shit image quality.

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_Sympathy_3000-21_@reddit

This literally just reminded me that we couldn’t pause VHS like you pause DVD / streaming. You’d get those staticky lines all through the image.

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Pooh_Lightning@reddit

I remember my mind being blown the first time I watched a DVD and found out you could do this. Crazy to think it wasn't easy to just see any still picture from a film or TV before this.

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_Sympathy_3000-21_@reddit

I think by the late 80s/early 90s some higher end home VCRs could do it, and pro equipment could do it, but the basic Sanyo VHS was fuzz all the way.

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justonemom14@reddit

Yeah at some point we had a "4 head" VCR, which was better because a regular VCR just had 1 or 2 heads I think. So many years of adjusting the tracking.

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imgreydabadeedabada@reddit

shoutout nude scenes in blockbuster rentals

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loztriforce@reddit

Yeah, and the more people stopped/rewound to the same place on the VHS, the blurrier/shittier the image would get.

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Chadmartigan@reddit

My friends told me it was the grim reaper and even on my grainy-ass 23-pound VCR I could tell they were full of shit

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dufflebag7@reddit

TBF - he liked it

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MhaelFox83@reddit

The urban legend is that the figure in the background is a ghost caught on film, as in the same scene it seems to appear as the characters walk across the room one way, and is gone when going rhe other way.

I always thought the explanation was just a kid who got caught on camera watching and pulled off set while off camera. Apparently it was a cardboard cutout of Ted Danson

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CrittyCrit@reddit

What movie/ show though?

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MhaelFox83@reddit

Three Men and a baby, if memory serves

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CrittyCrit@reddit

Thank you!

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sixfourtykilo@reddit

I thought it was River Phoenix?

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TheLadder330@reddit

Internet: 1 Urban Legend: 0

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cwaft@reddit

I live in a smallish town in England and remember being told about this in the mid 90s !!!!!

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cionn@reddit

This made this movie the scarriest ive ever seen. And im a massive horror nerd

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no____thisispatrick@reddit

This terrified me as a kid.

It wasn't until Snopes came out, and I finally saw it debunked that I could lay it to rest.

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Basic-Pair8908@reddit

This sort of stuff amazes me when its almost purely word of mouth and it reaches across the pond between usa and uk.

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poisonivee97@reddit

And all the way down to Australia

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Ok_Owl5141@reddit

I was SO scared to watch this movie because I heard you could see an actual ghost lol

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icky_boo@reddit

It's not a ghost, it's just a paper cut out of Ted Danson.

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noronto@reddit

It’s a ghost of the Ted Danson cut out.

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AnimatronicCouch@reddit

Or the cardboard Ted Danson is haunted by the spirit of the son. Like an Annabelle situation.

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SpaceMonkee8O@reddit

This is what I heard.

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Icy_Character_916@reddit

I heard a family lived in that apartment before they filmed there, and their son tragically died by jumping out the window and now he haunts their apartment. Ted Danson cutout? Fake news!

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superdeepborehole@reddit

Maybe their son was a cardboard Ted Danson??

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LemonPartyW0rldTour@reddit

It’s a huge conspiracy by Big Cardboard!

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Taupenbeige@reddit

They lived in a soundstage?

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loptopandbingo@reddit

Sounds like something a ghost-coverer-upper would say

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Lmf2359@reddit

One night when I was around 8 and this movie had just been released on videotape to rent my mom and I kept hearing our neighbors whole family next door scream excitedly every few minutes. A little later our house phone rang and they were calling to invite us to come over and see something amazing.

My mom and I walked next door to find all of them and some other family members, maybe about 10 people, gathered around the tv and they explained to us that they had heard about the “ghost” that appears in the one scene. We heard the whole rumor about the kid being killed in the apartment and everything. Then we watched the scene a couple of times with them.

That’s how I heard about it first.

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Salt-Patience7384@reddit

You gotta hit play on the cd, exactly when the lion roars in opening

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JudgeJuryEx78@reddit

When my friends and I rented this movie, the part with this scene was warped from everyone rewinding to watch it over and over.

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Beck316@reddit

I renege telling my college roommates about this and the image of the gun. One had brought movie on tape. The way we all screamed when we saw that image. Then rewound fit the ones that missed it.

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Hypatia76@reddit

How is it that we all knew those kinds of urban legend things when there was no internet?

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FrauEdwards@reddit

I remember going to a fair type thing and a woman had this as her exhibit. She had part of the movie cued up on a tv and would play it and explain how it’s a ghost boy in the movie.

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higherfreq@reddit

I remember being with my friends wearing out that ten seconds of magnetic tape on the VHS cassette because we kept rewinding and rewatching trying to figure out what we saw.

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AKEsquire@reddit

My older sister's friends showed up at our house with the vhs tape, all excited to show my whole family! 🤣

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Aspence22@reddit

I remember hearing it was a boy that died on the set when filming a different movie only to find out it was a cutout. We talked about it in third grade like we actually saw a ghost on film😂

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Icy-Lawfulness-6868@reddit

I was told it was the ghost of Eric Clapton’s son for whom he wrote “Tears in Heaven.” 😟

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Aspence22@reddit

I'm pretty sure 3 Men and a Baby came out well before his sons accident

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Icy-Lawfulness-6868@reddit

Shows how gullible I was at that age 😂

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Aspence22@reddit

I would've believed it though too at that time 😆

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taleofbenji@reddit

I'm still mad that Unsolved Mysteries basically convinced me that ghosts are real.

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BulimicMosquitos@reddit

That poor kid. Died right on the set, and didn’t even get to see the movie finish filming.

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kbudz32@reddit

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garden__gate@reddit

We talked about this so much in my 7th grade math class that my teacher had someone bring in a tape so we could watch that scene. 😂

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RedditRatsPodcast@reddit

Still gives me the chills

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ReadyPlayerUno1@reddit

Oh you mean the cardboard cutout that appears in a defense or two before this one? What about it?

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Dreamteam420@reddit

Jk cinema.com was the way.

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zenitram66@reddit

“My cousin’s freshman roommate’s best man at his wedding grew up with that kid” - sixth grade me listening to classmates hitch their wagons to a pre-internet viral moment.

I still recall my friends and I talking about it. And it seemed weird how quickly the story got around without major news coverage.

But one friend rented the movie again to rewatch. He was obsessed for that brief window of time when it seemed like we all knew something we shouldn’t have known.

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