Some final words stuck around for decades, not because they’re beautiful, but because what happened seconds or minutes later made them very creepy.
One sound aboard Challenger
‘Uh-oh’ may not sound like a dramatic pair of last words. They’re barely even a sound. But that’s exactly what Michael J. Smith, pilot of the Challenger, said on January 28, 1986, just as the shuttle was beginning to come apart.
This was 73 seconds after liftoff. He didn’t give a grand speech or any kind of warning, just those two very ordinary words. He realized something was very wrong, and shortly after, there was nothing more from Smith. It’s kind of creepy how normal he sounded.
A note beside the Kodak founder
The last words of George Eastman, founder of Kodak, came on March 14, 1932, although he didn’t say his last words. He wrote them down. Yes, he wrote, ‘My work is done. Why wait?’ and then took his own life at the age of 77.
Eastman had already been dealing with severe physical problems that made walking painful and difficult for him. He’d already spent decades building one of America’s biggest photography businesses. But then, he ended his life with a note that sounded so utterly ordinary.
Elvis answered from the doorway
The last words Elvis Presley spoke were to his fiancée, Ginger Alden. He got out of bed at Graceland on August 16, 1977, and went into the bathroom to read, among other things. Alden warned him not to fall asleep in there. He allegedly replied, ‘Okay, I won’t.’
Turns out, he did keep his promise, although not in the way anyone would expect. Alden later found him unresponsive on the bathroom floor, and he was pronounced dead shortly after. He didn’t fall asleep. He died instead. How creepy.
Michael Jackson only wanted sleep
Michael Jackson had been struggling with insomnia for a while, and his planned concerts in London only made it worse. That’s why, on June 25, 2009, he requested that his doctor, Conrad Murray, give him something to help him sleep. He specifically asked for the drug propofol, which is a powerful anesthetic that Jackson sometimes called ‘milk.’
Jackson supposedly told Murray, ‘Just make me sleep.’ He later became unresponsive that same morning and was pronounced dead at age 50. Jackson may have wanted to sleep, but unfortunately, he never woke up.
The Grim Reaper line
One of the creepiest final words came from the murderer Robert Alton Harris. He was scheduled to be executed at San Quentin State Prison on April 21, 1992. But before that happened, he said, ‘You can be a king or a street sweeper, but everybody dances with the Grim Reaper.’
Harris had been sentenced to death after being convicted of murdering two teenage boys in 1978. He was executed in the gas chamber, and officials released the statement shortly after he died. It seems that Harris knew exactly where he was going when he wrote it.
We’re going down
Air Florida Flight 90 was a flight that, on January 13, 1982, struggled to take off from Washington National Airport due to freezing weather. It didn’t take long for those on board to realize something was wrong. First officer Roger Pettit said, ‘Larry, we’re going down, Larry.’
Larry Wheaton, the captain, replied, ‘I know,’ and the plane crashed almost immediately afterward. The Boeing 737 hit the 14th Street Bridge and fell into the Potomac River, killing seventy-four people aboard and four on the bridge. It’s scary to think how much fear they must’ve been in since they knew what was about to happen.
Christine Chubbuck stayed on script
It should’ve been an ordinary local news program. Viewers in Sarasota, Florida, tuned into what they thought would be a regular broadcast on July 15, 1974, until reporter Christine Chubbuck changed direction. She faced the camera and said, ‘TV-40 presents what is believed to be a television first. In living color, an exclusive coverage of an attempted suicide.’
She then shot herself during the live broadcast and died later at the hospital. By far the creepiest part was that her coworkers found afterward that she’d written a news script describing her own shooting. It had all been carefully planned.
Betty Ong’s request
American Airlines Flight 11 was another doomed flight, and Betty Ong was one of the flight attendants aboard. She explained on a call to American Airlines that hijackers had taken over the flight and stabbed people. She also said the cockpit wasn’t responding.
During the phone call, Ong said she could see the plane getting closer to buildings and said, ‘Pray for us. Pray for us.’ Shortly after, Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center, becoming the first attack during 9/11.
Pete Maravich felt perfectly fine
Basketball player Pete Maravich was only 40 years old when he died. He was playing a casual basketball game in Pasadena on January 5, 1988, when someone asked how he was feeling. The NBA legend replied, ‘I feel great.’ Then he collapsed.
Doctors later discovered that Maravich had been born with an extremely rare heart defect. He had no left coronary artery. Yet somehow, he’d managed to play professional basketball for years, without ever knowing. His final sentence eerily came only moments before his body gave out.
DiMaggio mentioned Marilyn
Baseball player Joe DiMaggio had been heartbroken about the death of his ex-wife, Marilyn Monroe, for many years. He passed away due to lung cancer on March 8, 1999, at his home in Florida. But what made his death particularly spooky were his last words.
He apparently said to his lawyer, Morris Engelberg, ‘I’ll finally get to see Marilyn.’ DiMaggio and Monroe had married in 1954 and divorced less than a year later, although he remained devoted to her after her death. Hopefully, they really were reunited.
Sam Kinison seemed to answer someone
Sam Kinison somehow managed to survive the initial impact when another vehicle hit his car head-on near Needles, California, on April 10, 1992. Friends rushed over to the comedian and found him conscious, but badly injured. Things then got strange.
Witnesses claim they saw Kinison talking to someone who wasn’t actually there. He apparently kept asking, ‘But why?’ and then said, after a pause, ‘Okay, okay, okay.’ Kinison went quiet shortly after and died. Nobody ever found out who that final exchange was with.
A pilot described something overhead
There are so many strange parts to Frederick Valentich’s death. He was flying over Australia’s Bass Strait on October 21, 1978, when he radioed air traffic controllers to tell them he saw something strange. There was an unknown object following him and moving around his aircraft.
It followed him for quite some time. Then, he said his chilling final words. He told the controllers, ‘It is hovering, and it’s not an aircraft,’ and afterward came an unexplained sound over the radio. Valentich completely vanished along with his Cessna 182, and has been presumed dead ever since.
A sentence that became a song’s history
Jeremy Wade Delle was someone whose death made him famous. He walked in late to his English class at Richardson High School in Texas on January 8, 1991. So, his teacher sent him out to get an admittance slip. The 16-year-old came back with something else.
He returned carrying a gun and walked to the front of the room, where he told his teacher, ‘Miss, I got what I really went for.’ Delle then committed suicide in front of his classmates. The story later inspired the rock band Pearl Jam, and they wrote the song ‘Jeremy’ about it.
Rex Mays described where he was going
Convicted murderer Rex Mays has some particularly chilling last words for his executioners. He was killed by lethal injection on September 24, 2002. But before dying, he told those around him, ‘I am going to go and see Jesus tonight and reserve a special place for each one of you.’
Mays allegedly thanked people, too, and said he was ready to die. It’s kind of spooky to think that he genuinely meant those final words.
MH370 signed off normally
The scariest part of the final words on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 was how normal they were. Kuala Lumpur controllers told the Boeing 777 to switch to Vietnam air traffic control at 1:19 a.m. on March 8, 2014. A voice in the plane’s cockpit then said, ‘Good night Malaysian three seven zero.’
It seemed like a relatively normal response, but a minute later, the plane’s transponder stopped showing up on civilian radar. The plane completely disappeared with all 239 people aboard, and nobody has found it since, although pilot suicide is the most common theory. That makes the final words on the plane sound pretty creepy.
Chris Farley asked her to stay
Comedian Chris Farley’s final words were even sadder when you look at the larger context. On December 18, 1997, an escort was getting ready to leave Farley for the night in his Chicago apartment.
He apparently told her, ‘Don’t leave me,’ but she left anyway. Farley’s brother John found him dead later that day, and an autopsy found both cocaine and morphine in his system. Heart disease played a part in his death, too.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
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