Deaths in Threes May Have Inflated with Myriad Celeb Deaths in Summer of '09

Consider this article to be a sequel of sorts to an article I did about Deaths in Threes back in March 2008. When writing then, I figured writing it ahead of time would be a smart writing task considering I knew we'd be dealing with some big deaths in threes again in the near future. Well, of course, we did have one of the biggest trios ever in June of this year with the passing of Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson during the same week. But it didn't stop there what with everybody from Billy Mays, Karl Malden to football star Steve McNair dying within a short period of time after. Add in the passing of no less prestigious but lesser-known celebs such as Gail Storm, Fred Travalena and Harve Presnell and you have a lot of people noticing that much of Hollywood seemed to be kicking the bucket in an unusually condensed period of time.

It was the day Fawcett and Jackson died when I went on my Twitter page and plugged that above-mentioned article and later received an email from an ABC News reporter interested in talking to me about possibly referencing it in a network news piece on the subject. As of this writing, it appears the story fell through due to no return communication since that particularly unusual day. However, it was suggested by some friends of mine that perhaps ABC News gave up on doing a feature on deaths in threes when it was quite clear America was losing a lot more than three notable people within a two-week time span.

Perhaps it was the death of Billy Mays on June 28 that changed the minds of the ABC News head brass while concurrently breaking the seemingly consistent pattern that notable deaths came in threes. Nevertheless, I was quick to note that the death of Mays could start a second group of three. And that more or less did happen with Karl Malden and either one of the above-mentioned three celebs you think is the most important. The only problem with convincing people it's a second group of three is when you have even more deaths surrounding that second group and the natural predilection to group one continuous line of something into one group rather than segments.

That's exactly the contradiction I noted in the previous deaths in threes article and through the eyes of supposed experts who've studied the mathematical structure of this phenomenon. The most profound thing I found that can't necessarily be discredited is the type of deaths that occurred intermittently going back decades. In the first article, I listed a litany (via help from World Almanac and reliable online lists) of notable deaths in threes starting back as early as the late 1950's. Keep in mind these were mostly Hollywood deaths since this is what people usually consider when talking about the subject, other than the occasional world-renowned individual who wasn't a part of show business.

Out of all in each ensuing decade, they seemed to get more significant as if we were getting recurring messages about the significance behind them. Yes, I insinuated that there could be a profound design behind it all as time goes on to help us put more current troubled times into a more meaningful context.
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The evidence behind the above theory was in the more significant trios of deaths starting in the 90's and into the 2000's. Each set had interesting combinations that represented significant aspects to our current culture for better or worse. Most of the more important combinations started in the mid 2000's beginning with Ronald Reagan/Ray Charles/Mattie Stepanek and eventually heading into the impossibly perfect combos of Gerald Ford/James Brown/Saddam Hussein and Jerry Falwell/Yolanda King/Charles Nelson Reilly in 2006 and 2007. Those seemed to set us up for 2009 and the ultimate deaths in threes arguably in the history of Hollywood: Ed McMahon/Farrah Fawcett/Michael Jackson.

But now that we're at the end of the first decade of the 21^st century, are we starting to get an increase of significant deaths to signify what the world may be facing in the second decade? As noted, the summer of 2009 (or at least June and July) may go down as containing the most number of notable deaths possibly ever. All of them represented every aspect of life, entertainment and even sports, hence making the contrasts all the more marked and seemingly sending the world populace valuable lessons along the way.

It doesn't even have to be said how much buzz the deaths of Fawcett and Jackson brought to the media in some of the most leading causes of death worldwide: Cancer and heart disease/polypharmacy. You can also include a hundred other things in between all that for any person on the planet to take away to help shape a better life.

That alone might be why, if there's an intelligent design to deaths in threes (or sixes or nines), we saw an increase this year to help us prepare for the next decade where similar increased challenges are going to beset us all. The more lessons to be learned from some of the best-known individuals on the planet, a more acute sense of survival will kick in when it'll be mandatory once more events bedevil the world. Even if Michael Jackson had been the only death, there were more life lessons in his life to learn from both negatively and positively than one lifetime could handle.

Still, this doesn't take away my final supposition in the first article about how so many other lesser-known people died in-between all the notable threes I mentioned. Yet when placing emphasis on the life lesson design behind the process, who else other than notable people can fit into that equation? This obviously doesn't give the final word on the Deaths in Threes phenomena, though may help us get a somewhat better understanding of why the pattern finally broke this year if you don't believe in the separate groups of threes theory.

You have to wonder then what'll happen next and whether more significant people will die in high numbers in the coming decade. Or, it may be a signal it'll stave off after learning everything we need to know with the most recent ones. In the event it happens again, the surprise of it happening may not be as acute as it was during 2009's summer of discontent.

Link to my Deaths in Threes article from 3/27/08:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/670923/deaths_in_threes_is_there_any_truth.html?cat=40