10 Mysterious Celebrity Deaths That Shocked The World

7. Andy Kaufman

Stand-up comedian, performance artist, agent provocateur and wind-up merchant Andy Kaufman made a career - no, a lifestyle - out of increasingly elaborate staged pranks, hoaxes and stunts, delivered with the po face and assured style of a professional bullsh*t artist. That meant that when Kaufman passed away on 16th May 1984, there were some that doubted that his death had taken place at all. He€™d apparently been diagnosed with an extremely rare form of lung cancer and, gaunt and frail, would frequently make reference during live performances to the alternative treatments he was trying, and the New Age diets and €˜natural medicines€™ he was on. However, Kaufman had also told several people that he was interested in faking his own death, and according to some had stated that, were he to indeed stage his own death, he would return to prominence after twenty years lying low. That time expired in 2004: but in 2014, Kaufman€™s friend and occasional performance partner Bob Zmuda and Kaufman€™s long-term partner Lynne Margulies published a book claiming that Kaufman had indeed faked his death, and would be reappearing that year - thirty years after the original €˜prank€™. When this resurrection too failed to occur, Margulies responded by saying that it was likely that Kaufman had in fact died for real in the intervening period, claiming that that HIV/AIDS was a possibility. Matters were complicated by a hoax circulating in late 2014 that Zmuda himself was dead, although it was quickly revealed to be nonsense: the man who broke the €˜news€™ later claimed that Zmuda had paid him to start the rumour. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqtF4MWmkDA Still, no one really knows, thirty-one years on: did Kaufman actually die from a rare illness in 1984? Death certificates can be forged, and it€™s certainly possible that he could have passed on from unrelated causes since then€ never able to reveal the truth for himself...