The unusual image at a window appears when Jack Holden (Ted Danson) and his
mother (Celeste Holm) are walking through the house Jack shares with his two
buddies. As Mrs. Holden plays with the baby girl left who was left in the three
men's care, a human figure can be glimpsed standing behind the curtains of a
background window at the left-hand side of the screen. A rumor has persisted for
several years that this figure is the eerie image of a boy who was killed in the
house where this scene was filmed.
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 house. (A detail obviously
inspired by the jagged black outline created as the curtains move away from in
front of the figure's left-hand side. The black portions of the figure form an
outline that does resemble a shotgun standing on its end, barrel down.)
Other variations merely mention that a boy died in the house, without
specifying how. The dead boy's despondent parents supposedly moved out after
their son's death, and the house was rented or bought by a film studio, who
allegedly used it for interior scenes of Three Men and a Baby. More
detailed versions of the rumor have the boy's mother suing the film studio after
they refuse 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. In stock folkloric fashion, the
mother immediately goes insane and has to be confined to a mental institution,
where she has remained ever since.
