What People Are Getting Wrong This Week: Do Celebrities Always Die in Threes?

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.