By “The Showbizztoday Ghost Writer”
Published 2 minutes ago — because Hollywood news waits for no one, especially not the undead
If you walked past a dusty, abandoned church in Los Angeles back in 2009 and heard a strange choir of children singing about werewolves while a man who looks exactly like Ken from Barbie played a broken piano, don’t call an exorcist.
That was just Ryan Gosling and his weird gothic folk duo, Dead Man’s Bones.
Yes, the same Ryan Gosling who made everyone cry in The Notebook, drive angrily in Drive, and laugh at him eating cereal in La La Land — that guy once had a full-blown musical obsession with ghosts, graveyards, and Disney’s Haunted Mansion ride.
And he just sat down with NME to explain the whole glorious, spooky mess. So naturally, we here at Showbizztoday decided to translate it for normal humans who have never recorded an album with a children’s choir while wearing a skeleton costume.
First: Who the Hell is Hail Mary?
Before we get to the ghosts, let’s address the question nobody asked but we’re going to answer anyway: Who the hell is Hail Mary?
Turns out, that’s the name of Ryan Gosling’s new sci-fi movie, Project Hail Mary. It’s based on a book by Andy Weir (the same guy who wrote The Martian, where Matt Damon grew potatoes in his own poop). In the film, Gosling plays a lonely astronaut who wakes up with amnesia in a distant galaxy and has to save humanity. So basically, Cast Away but in space, with less Wilson and more existential dread.
But forget that for a second. Because the real story here is much weirder and much more wonderful: Ryan Gosling’s haunted childhood, his fake stage name, and the time he tried to make a musical about monster love.
“My Mom Thought Our House Was Haunted, So We Moved”
Let’s start at the beginning. Ryan Gosling didn’t just wake up one day and decide to form a spooky band. No, this trauma was baked in from childhood.
As he told NME:
“I don’t believe this is true but my mum felt like our house was haunted when I was younger, so we moved because of that. She also liked to hang out in graveyards, read the tombstones and do the genealogy of those names. I hung out in those graveyards with her sometimes. All of that created a fear of the undead.”
Let’s pause here.
Ryan Gosling’s mom: “Honey, this house is haunted. Let’s move.”
Young Ryan: “Okay, Mom. Where are we going?”
Ryan’s Mom: “To the graveyard! It’s family reading time!”
Most kids get bedtime stories. Ryan Gosling got cemetery field trips and a lifelong phobia of zombies. Honestly? It explains everything. The intense stare. The quiet vibe. The fact that he once broke up a fight between two men on a New York street by calmly saying, “What are you doing?” That is the energy of a man who spent his formative years reading dead people’s grocery lists off tombstones.
Then Disney Made Death Look Fun
When you’re a kid terrified of the undead, the last place you want to go is a ride about ghosts. But Gosling — who, by the way, was a Mouseketeer on The Mickey Mouse Club alongside Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake (imagine that lunch table) — went on the Haunted Mansion ride at age 12.
And instead of being traumatized, he had a revelation.
“It presented [death] like: ‘Well, maybe it’s not so bad or scary. Maybe it’s fun.’ So it just clicked for me.”
That’s right. Disney’s singing ghosts and dancing skeletons cured Ryan Gosling’s fear of death. Not therapy. Not medication. A ride where ghostly organ players sing “Grim Grinning Ghosts.”
From that moment on, Gosling was hooked on “scary but fun.” He name-dropped The Skeleton Dance (1929) and The Old Mill (1937) as early influences. Yes, Ryan Gosling has the taste in cartoons of your goth great-aunt.
The Birth of Dead Man’s Bones (Or: How to Make a Band the Hard Way)
Fast forward to 2007-ish. Gosling meets Zach Shields (a writer and fellow spooky-obsessed weirdo). They bond over one thing: the Haunted Mansion ride. Not music. Not movies. A Disneyland ride with holographic ghosts.
Most friendships start over sports or beer. These two started over a fake séance in an elevator.
They decide to make a “monster-ghost-love-story musical” for the stage. But it was going to cost “a bajillion dollars” (my words, not his), so they scrapped the play and kept the songs.
Thus, Dead Man’s Bones was born. A band where the two core members insisted on playing every instrument themselves — even the ones they had no idea how to play.
“The goal was to figure it out. There was a quality to [that approach] that we liked, but I’m sure we had people come in and help make [the album] actually work.”
Translation: “We sounded like garbage at first, but it was charming garbage, and then we hired pros to fix it.”
The Secret Sauce: A Children’s Choir Founded by Flea from RHCP
Now here’s where it gets truly unhinged in the best way.
To make the album sound appropriately creepy and beautiful, Gosling and Shields recruited the Silverlake Conservatory Children’s Choir. That choir was founded by Flea — the bassist from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who famously wears no socks and plays funk-rock.
So the recording sessions were:
- Ryan Gosling (Ken / The Notebook guy)
- Zach Shields (some writer you’ve never heard of)
- A bunch of kids singing about death
- Run by a man who once wore a light-up bass guitar on national television
And it worked. The self-titled Dead Man’s Bones album (2009) is genuinely beautiful. Songs like “In the Room Where You Sleep” and “My Body’s a Zombie for You” sound like what would happen if Tim Burton made a folk album inside a haunted orphanage. It has 189,000 monthly listeners on Spotify as of this week — nearly 17 years after its release. That’s more than some current pop stars.
The Live Shows: Churches, Synagogues, and No ‘Baby Goose’
Dead Man’s Bones didn’t play normal venues. No arenas. No clubs. They played churches, synagogues, and cabaret rooms — because nothing says “fun date night” like watching Ryan Gosling sing about undead romance under a stained-glass window of a weeping angel.
The audience dressed up in Halloween costumes. Gosling and Shields wore skeleton suits. The children’s choir stood in pews. It was basically a gothic revival tent meeting, but with better cheekbones.
They reunited for a few shows in 2010, and then… nothing. Silence. Dead Man’s Bones became, appropriately, a ghost.
The Great ‘Baby Goose’ Controversy
Now, we must address the most serious allegation in the entire interview.
Wikipedia — that lying, beautiful, sometimes-correct website — once claimed that Ryan Gosling performed under the stage name “Baby Goose.”
Let that sink in.
Baby. Goose.
When asked about this by NME, Gosling didn’t laugh. He didn’t joke. He looked the reporter dead in the eye and said:
“Not true.”
That’s it. Two words. No elaboration. No “that’s silly.” Just cold, hard denial. You can tell he’s been asked this before. You can tell he’s tired of it. You can tell that somewhere, deep in his Canadian soul, a tiny part of him wishes he had used “Baby Goose” because it would have been hilarious.
But no. We are denied. The world is lesser for it.
Will Dead Man’s Bones Ever Return?
In 2023, while doing press for Barbie (where he played Ken — a role that required him to have zero brain cells and six-pack abs), Gosling was asked about a possible reunion. His answer?
“Never say never.”
That’s showbiz for “maybe if the price is right and my therapist agrees.”
So here we are, in 2026. Project Hail Mary is in cinemas now. Ryan Gosling is a movie star, a dad, a meme, and — apparently — still the co-owner of a dormant gothic folk band that once played a synagogue.
And somewhere, in a dark corner of Spotify, 189,000 people a month are still listening to a man who used to eat lunch next to Britney Spears sing about being a zombie in love.
The Moral of the Story
If you take anything away from this, let it be:
- Don’t trust Wikipedia — Baby Goose is a lie.
- Disney’s Haunted Mansion is cheaper than therapy.
- If your mom drags you to a graveyard for fun, you might grow up to be a movie star with a weird band.
- And if you ever get the chance to see Ryan Gosling sing in a church with a children’s choir, wear a costume and bring flowers. Because that man is never, ever doing that again.
Now go listen to Dead Man’s Bones. Light a candle. Pour some tea. And remember: the undead aren’t so scary. They just have really good taste in folk music.