With Halloween coming up, we asked a few rock stars to share some personal ghost stories.
James Valentine, Maroon 5: [We recorded our latest, It Won't Be Soon Before Long, at Rick Rubin's allegedly haunted house]. One night, when I was there alone, I saw a figure walking up the stairs, when there was nobody else in the house except my girlfriend at the time. I was so certain that I'd seen someone that I called out to this thing and then went up to the room that it had walked into. There was nobody there. I don't know how to explain it, but that's what I saw.
Steve Bays, Hot Hot Heat: [I formed this band with this guy] and, on the night of our first jam, we drove forever out to his place, this really forested area. He hadn't drummed in a year because, he said, he'd been drinking and into drugs ... but he says, "I've quit now...." But I remember he was sweating a lot, pretty profusely, through the whole damn thing. That night I have this really crazy dream where I go into the bathroom and see this guy in the mirror. This ghostly figure in the mirror is [basically] saying goodbye to me, and he gives me this necklace, this medallion. The next day I heard, three hours after the jam, he died. His heart stopped. I guess his body was so run down that drumming for three hours essentially killed him. It's creepy ... when he died was basically when I had the dream.
Alice Cooper: I get out of rehab, and Joe Perry got out of rehab at the same time. I was going to write two songs for this movie [and I invited him to join me.] We checked into this big old house in the middle of [upstate New York], this big Gothic-looking thing. I'm putting my clothes away. I leave the room and come back and ... the drawer I was packing is closed.... On the second night we're there, we're sitting there eating dinner and it sounds like somebody is moving furniture in the basement.... I say to Joe: "We're the only ones here, right?" ... I say, "This house, every time I put my coat down, I come back and it's gone." Joe said, "The same exact thing is happening to me too. I thought I was just going through a recovery thing, being forgetful." So we ran out of the place. I found out later this is where the guy who wrote The Amityville Horror wrote the story, there in that house.
