In 1987
Tom Selleck,
Ted Danson and
Steve Guttenberg all starred in the hugely popular film
Three Men and A Baby. A
rumor has persisted for several years that the figure of a ghostly
spirit of a dead boy and the gun that he killed himself with appears in the movie.
Suddenly the film is in the papers and media. The whole world is borrowing the video to spot this paranormal event which appears in the film.
but...
Those who are stupid enough to believe cannot see or will not accept the truth... And the truth is pretty obvious. The "ghost", as people refer to it, is nothing but a cardboard cutout of Ted Danson behind the curtains. Ted Danson is wearing a full tuxedo including a top hat and tails.
Shotgun? What shotgun? Oh that. Apparently in the cutout of Ted Danson, the way the curtains move in the background cause the folds in the tuxedo shirt to look like a shotgun. Pretty crazy isn't it?
What happened is that a standee prop was created as part of a story line involving a dog food commercial in which Danson's character (an actor) appears in, but references to the figure were cut from the finished version of the film. The figure was accidentally left in front of a window on the set by a propman and thereby "sneaked" into the background of one scene.
The most common form of this rumor claims that a nine-year-old boy committed suicide with a shotgun in the Three Men and a Baby apartment (the gun part of the story obviously came from the image that is created as the curtains move away from the figure's left-hand side therefore forming an outline that does resemble a shotgun standing on its end).
Other variations on the story merely mention that a boy died in the house, without specifying how, then go on to say how the dead boy's parents moved out and the house was rented or bought by the film studio, who allegedly used it for interior scenes of the movie Three Men and a Baby.
More detailed versions of the rumor have the boy's mother suing the film studio after they refused her request to remove the image from the film, and/or making the rounds of television talk shows (Oprah, Geraldo, 60 Minutes) to repeat her strange tale of woe. Even wilder versions have the mother spotting her dead son, dressed in his burial clothes, in the film. And of course what would the story be without the mother immediately going insane and having to be confined to a mental institution, where she has remained ever since.
As for the boy killing himself in the apartment, the film was actually shot on a Toronto sound stage -- no actual apartment was used for the interior.
Once the rumor started in August 1990 the studio did nothing to stop it and most probably helped spread it. Well you have to admit it's a fantastic way to promote a film, especially when it has just been released onto video and you would like your sales increased.
Nice trick... and it worked too.
Some of this info was taken from snopes.com
http://www.snopes.com/movies/films/3menbaby.htm