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Some famous faces have lived through ordeals that sound ripped straight from a horror screenplay. Join us as we count down our picks for the most chilling real-life stories endured by celebrities that are almost too frightening to believe! Which of these survival stories shocked you the most? Let us know in the comments below!
Transcript
00:00Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks from the most chilling real-life
00:04ordeals endured by famous faces that sound almost too frightening to be true.
00:08These celebrities all survived their experiences, though sadly, not everyone involved in the
00:13situations did.
00:14She is not the first to be pursued by a crazed fan, but seldom does such fanaticism result
00:19in tragedy.
00:22Eminem.
00:22Clinton Township police said they watched Hughes break into the house on security camera.
00:32A stranger in your home is nightmare fuel, especially when he came looking for you.
00:36In April 2020, Matthew David Hughes entered the rapper's Clinton Township property while
00:41Eminem was home.
00:42Eminem awoke, mistook Hughes for his nephew, and according to testimony, was told the
00:47intruder was there to kill him.
00:48He escorted Hughes outside.
00:50It wasn't the beginning.
00:51In 2019, Hughes had broken into a Rochester Hills property formerly owned by The Star,
00:56while searching for him.
00:58We have some ring video that shows this guy going and knocking on the door of a house
01:03that he thought Eminem still lived in.
01:05It turns out Eminem did not live there at the time, but it used to be a house that Eminem
01:10owned.
01:10After imprisonment for violating probation, Hughes was paroled in May 2024.
01:14That August, authorities said he'd entered Eminem's property again.
01:18Man convicted of breaking into rapper Eminem's Clinton Township home for a second time.
01:24Convicted of first-degree home invasion and aggravated stalking in 2025, Hughes ultimately
01:29received consecutive sentences requiring at least 18 years in prison.
01:33Drew Barrymore.
01:35Oh no, the house burned down.
01:38Thank you, Tom.
01:39Yeah, but we got married, so.
01:40The house burned down.
01:42A barking dog was all that stood between a sleeping couple and a house going up in flames.
01:47In February 2001, Drew Barrymore and then-fiancé Tom Green awoke after their dog, Flossie, alerted
01:54them to the fire tearing through their Los Angeles home.
01:57So I sort of have this lifelong love of dogs now because of Flossie.
02:02They escaped entirely unharmed, but Barrymore later called the experience very traumatizing,
02:07recalling how suddenly she lost everything that mattered to her.
02:10She also remembered watching telephone poles explode and fearing the flames would ravage
02:14neighboring homes.
02:15About 60 firefighters spent nearly an hour extinguishing the terrifying blaze, which
02:20caused an estimated $700,000 in damage.
02:23Green managed to make her laugh through the shock, but Barrymore was blunt about the aftermath
02:27years later, calling it trauma.
02:29In the middle of what was such a terrifying moment, there's this one little light in it,
02:35and it's you making me giggle so hard.
02:39These celebrities lived through experiences most people would never expect to face.
02:43For more remarkable stories from the worlds of film, music, television, and beyond, scan
02:48the QR code on screen and tune in to watch Mojo's 24-7 live stream.
02:53Tracy Morgan
02:54You're a sight for sore eyes.
02:56How do you feel?
02:57I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I can't believe I'm here.
03:01After a stand-up gig, the ride home turned into a nightmare on the New Jersey Turnpike.
03:06On June 7th, 2014, a Walmart tractor trailer slammed into Tracy Morgan's limousine van, leaving
03:11it on its side.
03:13Investigators later said the rear doors were jammed, and emergency crews needed 37 minutes
03:18to remove the first victim.
03:19Morgan was critically injured, suffering a traumatic brain injury, broken leg, broken ribs, and
03:25broken nose.
03:26Unfortunately, his friend, James Jimmy Mac McNair, lost his life.
03:30He was a good man.
03:32It just hurt for me to see that he's gone.
03:35That's it.
03:36Morgan spent weeks hospitalized and in rehabilitation after surviving the crash, with recovery stretching
03:41through the following year.
03:43In 2016, he told Oprah Winfrey the experience changed him, saying he now tells strangers,
03:48I love you, constantly, and feels grateful simply for life.
03:51Just life.
03:52Seeing him sitting there, seeing her sitting there, seeing them, just life.
03:56Every day.
03:58Every day.
03:58Jeremy Renner
04:09On New Year's Day 2023, the Avengers actor and his nephew were trying to free a pickup
04:14truck from the snow.
04:15Renner used his 14,330-plus-pound piston bully, but after the truck was moved, the machine began
04:21sliding downhill.
04:22Realizing it was headed towards his nephew, Renner tried to climb back into it, but his
04:26track pulled him underneath.
04:27He suffered 38 broken bones, a collapsed lung, and a rib that pierced his liver, and was
04:33hospitalized in critical condition.
04:36Is he awake?
04:38Barely.
04:39Are there any obvious injuries?
04:41Oh my god, yes.
04:42I just have to ask the questions.
04:43They're on their way.
04:44Renner said he remained conscious through the crushing, and believed he would have died
04:48had he been alone.
04:49Recovery stretched on for many months.
04:51The following winter, he drove the same snowplow again, determined not to let fear of the machine
04:56control him.
04:58Look, we know how this thing ends.
05:00We know how the movie ends.
05:01I'm here, right?
05:02So I can endure.
05:03Thank God.
05:04Number six, Justin Long.
05:07A night out with strangers turned terrifying when jumping from a moving car seems safer
05:11than staying inside.
05:12While filming Youth in Revolt in Michigan in 2008, Long says some local men offered him
05:17marijuana he later believed contained PCP.
05:20He quickly became severely disoriented.
05:22According to Long, the group drove him to multiple places against his will, discussed
05:27filming him while intoxicated, and refused to return him to his hotel.
05:30But I know it sounds ludicrous that I should put myself in that position, and looking back,
05:34it was, and obviously there are things I wouldn't have done.
05:37After noticing they had passed the hotel, he became convinced he might die.
05:41Long opened the door and jumped from the moving car.
05:43He escaped, but the vehicle ran over his leg, leaving permanent nerve damage.
05:48That, right, I remember right after I got run over, I stood up and my leg was like,
05:52it just bent, twisted.
05:53Years later, Long said the experience helped him appreciate boundaries, and changed how
05:58he moved through the world.
05:59But I thought they were going to kill me.
06:00Leonardo DiCaprio.
06:02Some people collect travel stories.
06:04This actor seems to collect brushes with disaster.
06:07And you jump out of an airplane?
06:09Yeah.
06:10On a regular basis?
06:11I only did that once.
06:12Will you do it again?
06:13When both parachutes don't open, you tend to not go repeat something like that.
06:17During a 2010 Galapagos dive, DiCaprio followed a group of spotted eagle rays,
06:22ran dangerously low on air, and ultimately shared Edward Norton's oxygen supply underwater.
06:27And he's coming toward me, and I can see from like 50 yards away, his eyes are like,
06:31like this big, and he's going like this.
06:36Like.
06:36That was hardly his only close call.
06:39DiCaprio has also described a great white shark entering his cage in South Africa.
06:43What do you mean?
06:43It was in with you?
06:44It was in the cage, wasn't it?
06:45Yeah.
06:45How did you survive that?
06:46I don't know.
06:47I don't know.
06:48A tandem skydive in which both parachutes initially tangled,
06:51and a flight to Russia where an engine erupted in flames before an emergency landing at JFK.
06:56In 2015, he joked to Wire that if a cat has nine lives, he had already used several.
07:01Between the ocean, the sky, and everything in between,
07:05DiCaprio has amassed a ridiculous collection of survival stories.
07:09Ric Flair.
07:10Well, we're flying along.
07:11All of a sudden, the red engine goes boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop.
07:14A routine wrestling flight became a career-threatening disaster before reaching Wilmington, North Carolina.
07:20In October 1975, 26-year-old Ric Flair was aboard a plane carrying several wrestling figures when it ran out
07:26of fuel near the airport.
07:28The attempted emergency landing ended in a crash that fractured three vertebrae in Flair's back.
07:33Pilot Joseph Farkas later died from his injuries.
07:36Doctors told Flair he might never wrestle again, but after months of rehabilitation, he was back in the ring by
07:41early 1976.
07:43I was in a hospital for 31 days.
07:46I couldn't even open a can of Diet Coke.
07:49I had to learn how to walk again.
07:51Somehow, that was not his only bizarre brush with death.
07:54Flair later claimed that, after getting off a plane in Richmond, Virginia,
07:58lightning struck his umbrella before hitting and killing a man behind him.
08:02Flair walked away from that incident, too.
08:04The most cowardly act of my life.
08:06It just froze.
08:06Everybody was running out the door, hollering, screaming.
08:08I couldn't believe what I saw.
08:10Duffy.
08:11A birthday celebration became the beginning of a nightmare that lasted for weeks.
08:15In 2020, singer Duffy revealed she had been drugged at a restaurant, then drugged across a four-week period, and
08:22taken to another country.
08:23She said she regained awareness in a moving vehicle, was taken to a hotel room, and was sexually assaulted by
08:29the perpetrator.
08:30Duffy recalled fearing she could be killed, saying the man made veiled comments about wanting to end her life.
08:35After returning home, she fled and moved repeatedly because she still felt unsafe.
08:39The trauma helped explain her withdrawal from public life, which she said lasted nearly a decade before she finally felt
08:45able to speak publicly about the terrifying experience in detail.
08:48She has since hinted at a comeback on her Instagram.
08:52Bjork.
08:52She is not the first to be pursued by a crazed fan, but seldom does such fanaticism result in tragedy.
08:58A package in the mail came frighteningly close to becoming a murder weapon.
09:01In 1996, 21-year-old Ricardo Lopez, an obsessive Bjork fan, built a device inside a hollowed-out book and
09:09mailed it toward the singer in London.
09:11The package was designed to spray sulfuric acid when opened.
09:14Lopez left behind an 803-page diary and roughly 22 hours of videotape.
09:19The latter chronicled his escalating fixation and attack plan.
09:23The final tape documented Lopez taking his own life.
09:26Police found the recordings in his Florida apartment and used the addressed envelope shown on camera to alert London authorities.
09:33Thankfully, Scotland Yard intercepted the package at a London postal facility before it reached the singer.
09:38And a couple of the night sautters, really very vigilant, picked the item up very quickly.
09:43She later said the incident left her deeply upset and especially worried about her young son.
09:48Bjork said she was terrified by the news.
09:50It's just kind of a very sad thing, you know.
09:52Travis Barker.
09:53Well, after my accident, as well, I was fed, you know, four months in a hospital, being fed morphine every
10:00day for four months.
10:01Long before takeoff, the drummer felt something was wrong.
10:04In September 2008, Barker survived a Learjet crash in South Carolina that killed four people and left him with second
10:11and third degree burns.
10:12He later recalled his daughter, Alabama, crying and warning him not to go,
10:17while he phoned his father with an awful feeling and asked him to care for his children if anything happened.
10:22The aftermath remained profound.
10:24He told people he felt as though he were living in Final Destination, hiding away because he believed death would
10:29come for him next.
10:30Barker avoided airplanes for nearly 13 years after the crash before flying with Kourtney Kardashian to Mexico in 2021.
10:37And this thing had huge power over me to the point where it, you know, it dictated how I got
10:42on tour,
10:43how many days I'd travel on bus to New York, how many days I'd be on the Queen Mary 2
10:47going to England.
10:49His 2026 documentary, Travis Barker, Louder Than Fear, revisits his trauma and recovery.
10:55Knowing how close I got to not being here, my appreciation for life is something I can't even explain.
11:00Which of these survival stories changed the way you see celebrity life?
11:02Share your thoughts in the comments.
11:04Share your thoughts in the comments.
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