Some people immediately accept the existence of ghosts, while others are forced to sleep with the lights on for weeks. Oddly enough, action movie heroes are the ones who lose their nerve when confronted with the inexplicable.

Jean-Claude Van Damme, “Mr. Muscle of Brussels,” admits he was terrified by the appearance of a ghost in his bathroom mirror:

“Suddenly, I felt a chill. I turned around and thought, ‘I’ve had a vision or something.’ It was bluish-white, and the body seemed to be made of fog. From that moment on, I believed in ghosts.”

Jean-Claude Van Damme (right) and Nicolas Cage. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Movie star Nicolas Cage, who played the brave guy in films such as Face/Off, Windtalkers, and Lord of War, admits he saw a ghost in the house of his uncle, Francis Ford Coppola.

“I lived in an attic where bats scratched between the walls. One day, I was almost asleep when the door opened, and a pitch-black silhouette of a woman with a high hairstyle appeared in the doorway. I thought it was my aunt who had come to say goodbye to me for the night. So I said, ‘Good night,’ and she said nothing.

Then she came towards me. At first I froze in fear, and then I let out a heart-rending scream and threw my pillow at her. Then she disappeared. Can I say I saw a ghost? I still don’t know. But I saw something that shook me.”

The Matrix’s Keanu Reeves may have been a messianic hero who saved the world in virtual space, but he still wakes up in terror when he has nightmares about a ghostly encounter he actually had as a child.

“I was living in New Jersey when I once saw and felt the presence of a ghost. I remember a figure in a double-breasted white suit appearing in my room. But there was no torso or legs visible. This thing appeared in my room and then disappeared.

I simply stared at the phenomenon in silence, then turned my gaze to my nanny, who was equally shocked. I couldn’t sleep for a long time afterward, and I still see that figure in my dreams and nightmares.”

Keanu Reeves (left) and Richard Dreyfuss. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Richard Dreyfuss, star of Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, met a ghost who cured him of his cocaine addiction.

“In the late 1970s, when I was in a car accident, I was already at my wits’ end. From then on, the image of a little girl haunted me every night. I couldn’t shake the vision. It became clearer every day, and I couldn’t figure out what the hell was going on. I had no children; I was a bachelor.

Then I realized: perhaps it was my daughter, who had not yet been born, or perhaps it was the image of the child who, fortunately, did not die when I had the accident. I immediately sobered up. I still don’t have a child, but look, it worked.”

Even the queen of thrillers can be frightened when confronted with an unexplained phenomenon in real life. Scream star Neve Campbell learned this firsthand when she bought a Hollywood home without checking its history.

“It turns out there was a murder there six years ago before I bought the house. I had friends over, and I went into the kitchen, leaving them in the living room. At that moment, a woman entered the living room, and at first they thought it was me who had returned so quickly. I was in the kitchen at the time, which means they must have seen the woman who was murdered there. The previous owner performed an exorcism, but I don’t think it worked.”

Rumor has it that just months after moving in, former celebrity couple Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman were forced to leave their dream home, an 18th-century mansion in Sneadens Landing, New York, due to the constant unexplained occurrences within.

It seems they were too frightened by what they saw and experienced in that house, because they did not want to remember it even after they returned to their peaceful old apartment in Manhattan.

Uma Thurman and Tim Robbins. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

One might think that living in a former church would guarantee peace and tranquility. However, Tim Robbins, star of the psychological drama Jacob’s Ladder and writer and director of the (ironically) titled Dead Man Walking, hastily fled his new apartment, which was clearly haunted.

“It was 1984 in Los Angeles. I had just moved into a new apartment. It was in a former church that had been renovated and converted into an apartment building. I had two cats living there. I hadn’t even had time to unpack my things yet; they were still sitting in boxes all over the apartment.

“One evening I came home, it was dark, and the cats were acting very strange, as if they were very scared. The atmosphere in the room was eerie; it was clearly haunted. Then I looked at the wall, and it was crawling with cockroaches. I moved out the next day.”

From Paul Roland’s book “The Big Book of Ghosts and Hauntings”