The ghostly urban legend of ‘Three Men and a Baby’
Leonard Nimoy’s 1987 American comedy Three Men and a Baby famously stars Tom Selleck, Steve Guttenberg, and Ted Danson as three bachelors living a carefree life. However, the arrival of the love child of one of the men causes the group to adapt their lives to fatherhood. While directed by Nimoy, the 1985 French film Trois Hommes et un couffin (Three Men and a Cradle) was the source of inspiration for the script, and upon release, the movie was a box office hit, and a sequel, Three Men and a Little Lady, quickly followed.
However, this lighthearted and comforting classic featured an onscreen error that prompted a disturbing and unsettling urban legend. These stories or fallacious claims circulated as truth infiltrate various forms of culture. Folkish tales, ranging from comical to creepy, appear in history, the music business, and film. The latter involves alleged incidents on set and rumours of directors’ intentions.
The most notable examples of film’s urban legends are The Wizard of Oz‘s hanging munchkin and Stanley Kubrick directing The Shining to be a covert confession that he helped stage the 1969 moon landing. Over the years, movie fans have delved into these theories, overanalysing the finer details and uncovering new threads of conspiracy to share online. Film historians and critics, meanwhile, prefer to remain sceptical, providing any evidence they can to disprove the urban legends.
So, what is the Three Men and a Baby urban legend?
Over an hour into the film, Jack, the baby’s father, walks through the house with baby Mary and her mother. On the left-hand side of the screen, they pass a background window with a black outline that appears to resemble a rifle pointed downward. It is also possible to see a human figure in the window as they walk past 40 seconds later. An urban legend followed, claiming a boy had been killed in the house where the film was shot, and this mysterious and unbecoming figure was his ghost. The most common version of this myth was that a nine-year-old boy committed suicide with a shotgun at that location, causing the grief-stricken family to leave the premises. The series TV Land: Myths and Legends dissected the myth in 2007. The second-season episode of the TV series: Supernatural: Hollywood Babylon also referenced this legend.
However, there is a rational explanation for this paranormal myth. A part of the storyline shows Jack, an actor, appearing in a dog food commercial and getting a cardboard cutout. This cutout is what can be seen in the background of this scene, not a tragic phantom. Jack’s commercial wasn’t in the movie’s final cut, so the cutout pops up in the background unexplained. Furthermore, Robert Ebert dismantled the urban legend by confirming that the film wasn’t even shot in a real house, but a soundstage studio.
The ghostly legend of the Three Men and a Baby‘s set is one of the many film urban myths that have since been debunked. Watch how the story started below.
