Earl “The Pearl” Monroe is a very superstitious man, said Eric Spitznagel in Men’s Health. In his days as a pump-faking, sweet-shooting basketball legend for the Baltimore Bullets and the New York Knicks in the 1960s and ’70s, Monroe insisted on eating spaghetti and meatballs before every game. “There was one game when I had spaghetti and meatballs and then had sex before going to a game, and I scored 56 points. I wanted to duplicate that.” Monroe, 68, also believes in ghosts, and claims he was once attacked by a phantom as he slept on a girlfriend’s sofa. “I’m laying there and I feel like there’s something on top of me. I can’t move. I have my eyes open but I don’t see anything. I cursed this thing out. Every curse word you can think of. But it wasn’t working. So I started praying, and all of a sudden it let me go. I left the apartment and vowed I would never come back.” Since then, Monroe says he’s suffered repeated late night spirit attacks. “I deal with it in different ways now. I lay there and laugh and joke.” He just wishes the ghosts weren’t always so violent. “Why can’t they bring me a cup of tea or something? Although, I gotta say, I’d really freak out if I saw some tea floating at me.”
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