Death is having a moment. With Hulk Hogan, Ozzy Osbourne, and Malcolm Jamal-Warner all dying within days of each other, misinformation about celebrity deaths is having a moment, too. Let's dig into the folklore, superstitions, and conspiracy theories surrounding famous people taking the lightless walk.
In early January 2016, David Bowie, Glenn Frey and Alan Rickman all died within the same week. Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, and Ed McMahon kicked off over two morbid days in June 2009. Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper all died at the same moment in 1959. So what gives? Does the Grim Reaper really save up to create heavenly trios?
I'll bet you've already guessed I'm gonna say "no." The "rule of three" is caused by a combination of our tendency to invent patterns from random information and from a large sample size, all driven by our fear of death.
Since celebrity deaths are spread randomly over time, occasional "clusters" of famous deaths are as inevitable as a gambler hitting a lucky streak if they play long enough. If there were never clusters of celebrity deaths—say, if stars only died on days when no other famous person died— it would be so unusual I'd believe there was an order behind it. But the timing of celebrity death is in keeping with randomness.
Apophenia (finding patterns where there are none) is particularly easy to do with a sample size as large as "all famous people." Notable people die every day, so you can always find two other "stars" to accompany one who kicks off, especially since the time window for a death to "count" as part of a trio is subjective.
There's also the problem of defining who is a celebrity and who isn't. Wait, musician Chuck Mangione died on July 22; does he count? What about Connie Francis, who died on July 16? What about Tom Lehrer, who died on July 26? He's famous to me.
With the addition of Mangione, Leher, and Francis, we're up to six famous people dying within 10 days of each other. "That's two groups of three," you might be saying, but then what about the death of British jazz legend Cleo Laine on July 25? What about "beloved therapy bunny" Alex The Great? You can make the cluster as big as you want, but really, celebrity deaths don't happen in sixes, twelves, or threes; like all deaths, they happen in ones.
Are more celebrities dying?
More celebrities are dying now than died generations ago, but that's because there are more celebrities around to die. Before radio, TV, and the Internet, the number of people "everyone had heard of" were limited to presidents and other notable politicians, a few sports figure, maybe a few stage actors or opera singers—the kind of people who would be written about in a newspaper. Now there are new categories of famous people, like reality TV stars or YouTube celebrities. There's every actor on every TV show you watched when you were 10. And 100% of them are going to die.
Were these deaths caused by the Covid 19 vaccine?
In certain corners of the internet, it's fashionable to ascribe any celebrity death to the COVID-19 vaccine, not matter how ridiculous—Betty White was 99 years old, but that didn't stop people from blaming the vaccine. With this current death trio, Ozzy Osbourne is the focus of "the jab did it" folks. Conspiracy theorist king Alex Jones posted, "The iconic Ozzy Osbourne has died suddenly after years of illness which mysteriously started after getting vaccinated."
But Ozzy's illness didn't start after getting vaccinated. Ozzy told Billboard he was relieved to receive a Covid shot in 2021. In 2020, Osbourne revealed he was suffering from Parkinson's disease, and wrote that he was originally diagnosed in 2003. He said he had suffered from blood clots in his legs in 2019. Oz had a staph infection, was hospitalized with the flu, and recovered from a serious quad-bike accident, all before he was vaccinated. And then there's his self-documented history of substance abuse. If it took the vaccine four years to kill a hard-living 76-year-old man with a range of serious health problems, it's a the worst bioweapon in history.
...or was it was the Deep State?
You can't blame the vaccine for Hogan's demise; he was openly anti-vax. And it seems impossible that Malcolm-Jamal Warner's drowning death could have come from a vaccine. But there has to be something—in conspiracy world, death is never natural, so If the vaccine didn’t do it, maybe the CIA killed Hulkster with a heart attack gun. Never mind that Hogan reported decades of health problems, took steroids, and abused drugs, or that Malcolm-Jamal Warner drowned in a rip current: Someone had to be covering up something. Was there a murder plot? Were all three killed as part of a ritual sacrifice to cover up the Epstein files? Anything is preferable to the uncomfortable truth: People just die.
The chaotic nature of death
Pattern recognition and conspiratorial thinking account for the expression of our folklore around death, but the force behind modern-death folklore is simple and primal: We're terrified of death. We're afraid of its utter disregard for our plans and precautions, its randomness, its inevitability, and its finality. Death doesn't come in threes, it's just coming, so we ward against it. We cling on to any explanation for death except "everyone just dies," even if it means thinking Hulk Hogan's heart giving out is because of a nefarious plot instead of because he abused drugs and steroids, and even if he hadn't, all hearts stop beating eventually, and death comes for all—kings, paupers, and wrestling superstars alike.
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