Elvis Presley was sitting outside one night looking at the stars with his friend and fan Wanda June Hill when he made a remarkable confession: he wasn’t of this Earth. He was, in fact, from Jupiter’s ninth moon.
When Hill wondered why he looked so human and didn’t, for instance, have blue skin, the King of Rock n’ Roll told her his eyes glowed and an aura surrounded his form.
As Presley told others, he’d had repeated encounters with aliens. When he was a boy, Presley claimed, they gave him a vision of his future in a white jumpsuit and insisted to him that he had powers that could only be described as supernatural.
Indeed, Presley believed he could heal the sick, manipulate the weather and even astrally project himself into the stars.
In ‘The Occult Elvis: The Mystical And Magical Life Of The King,’ author Miguel Conner argues that the iconic singer didn’t just obsessively study mysticism and magic but claimed to his closest friends that he could actually practice it.
And it seems that Conner tends to believe it himself. The author appears to have developed an obsession with Presley after drinking the psychoactive drink ayahuasca in a ceremony three years ago. He calls Presley the ‘greatest magician in western civilization’ and a ‘shaman’ who would read Tibetan Buddhist incantations on stage in Las Vegas and wore an Ancient Egyptian talisman around his neck.
Yet Presley is largely remembered as a devout Christian.
So, how do all these beliefs in daemons, weather manipulation and Buddhist incantations tally with his church-going?
Elvis Presley told others he’d had repeated encounters with aliens. When he was a boy, Presley claimed, they gave him a vision of his future in a white jumpsuit and insisted to him that he had powers that could only be described as supernatural.
Presley believed he could heal the sick, manipulate the weather and even astrally project himself into the stars.
Presley is largely remembered as a devout Christian. So, how do all these beliefs in daemons, weather manipulation and Buddhist incantations tally with his church-going?
Conner argues that Presley was a ‘gnostic’ or Christian mystic who believed there was magic in the world. ‘I think Elvis often thought he was a prophet,’ said his friend Bill Browder. ‘He was very religious. Everything in his life was connected to spirituality.’
For a superstar seemingly deeply rooted in the material world – from his lavish gun-obsessed mansion life at Graceland in Memphis to his glitzy sojourn in Las Vegas – Presley was intensely interested in the spiritual world, reportedly reading more than a thousand books about different aspects of ‘new age spirituality’.
At times Presley confided to friends that he felt that God had put him on the path of being a superstar to show others the path to other realms of existence.
The star borrowed heavily from other religions, telling friends for instance that he believed in reincarnation, a key tenet of Buddhism. Meditation became an important part of his religious life – he did it in his garden at Graceland, when visiting cemeteries and even after shows. ‘Meditation is better than any drug I know,’ he said.
Presley, of course, took a lot of drugs, mainly the prescription pills to which he became addicted and which many believe contributed to his death aged just 42 in 1977. They certainly could have distorted his perception of reality and his own place in it.
Combine that with the hero worship he received from so many devoted fans, and it’s easy to imagine that he could have convinced himself he was somehow chosen by God and given supernatural powers.
He was further encouraged to explore the occult by his hairdresser, Larry Geller, an ardent fan who’d spent years immersing himself in alternative spiritual traditions. Geller, who Presley met in 1964 when the King went for a haircut, became his spiritual guru and he came to exert so powerful an influence over Presley that it aroused the resentment of his wife, Priscilla and his Machiavellian manager, Colonel Tom Parker.
Geller believed Presley’s entourage had his house burgled while Parker once invited him for dinner at which he put his hand on Geller’s thigh under the table. The hairdresser believed Parker was trying to see if he and Elvis ‘had more than a spiritual bond’, says Conner.
Presley also claimed to have had several encounters with UFOs – and in some cases, he had witnesses.
One night in 1966, Presley was at his mansion in Bel Air, California, with Sonny West, his friend and bodyguard. Suddenly, he drew West’s attention to a light coming through the trees and getting bigger before enveloping the mansion. Terrified, West was convinced it was a UFO and thought Presley had been kidnapped. ‘If they make contact, we can’t be afraid because they are not going to hurt us,’ Presley told him omnisciently.
Around the same time, Presley and his entourage were driving along Route 66 in New Mexico when they saw a bright disc streaking across the night sky. The UFO descended but abruptly halted before making a sharp right-angle term and accelerating away until it vanished.
On a third occasion, Presley and his father, Vernon, claimed to see a UFO – blue, naturally – hovering over the garden at Graceland for some five minutes.
In fact, strange events occurred around Elvis from the moment he was born, says Conner.
Although he had the sense to share his bizarre ideas with only a trusted few, Presley held that he was guided through life by two supernatural beings, or ‘daemons’ – Jesus and the spirit of his stillborn twin brother, Jesse – who in turned passed on some of their powers to him to perform good deeds.
Larry Geller became his spiritual guru and he came to exert so powerful an influence over Presley that it aroused the resentment of his wife, Priscilla (pictured with Elvis) and his Machieavellian manager, Colonel Tom Parker.
Geller believed Presley’s entourage had his house burgled while Parker once invited him for dinner at which he put his hand on Geller’s thigh under the table. The hairdresser believed Parker was trying to see if he and Elvis ‘had more than a spiritual bond’, says Conner.
It was at age four or five that Presley started hearing a voice in his mind that he recognized as being that of Jesse, says Conner.
In adult life, Presley referred the voice as that of his ‘psychic twin’ or ‘original bodyguard’ and claimed that after losing his twin brother, he’d ‘always felt part of me was missing’. Presley believed this alter ego, who was neither completely alive nor dead, also had supernatural powers.
The young Presley was further instilled with ideas from superhero comics, which were still considered ‘fringe’ at the time but which he consumed hungrily as he sought a fantasy refuge from his bleak existence in Tupelo.
Presley’s favorite superheroes were Captain Marvel and his adopted son, Captain Marvel Jr., who were ordinary folks who could instantly assume superhero powers.
Presley remained ‘infatuated’ with them for the rest of his life, endlessly borrowing the former’s thunderbolt logo while adopting the latter’s quiffy haircut and dying his blond hair to match Jr’s, says Conner. When Presley went to Vegas, his elaborate caped stage costumes copied Captain Marvel costumes.
Among Presley’s powers, he told friends, was his ability to project himself into the stars, so-called ‘astral travelling’ that he told a girlfriend, June Juanico, that he’d been able to do since he was a boy. Wherever he was, the star loved to be outside in the middle of the night so he gaze into the heavens, where he believed ‘cosmic waves of energy moved plants across the universe’ and ‘a magus like him could witness the heavenly bodies and their paths’.
Presley’s belief in magic and supernatural powers was likely encouraged by his parents – Gladys and Vernon – who were Pentecostalists. As members of the Assembly of God Church, they believed in healing hands and speaking in tongues (when possessed by the Holy Spirit). Presley was ‘utterly immersed’ in the church as a youth, says Conner.
According to Presley, on the evening of his birth in 1935 in Tupelo, Mississippi, his father, stepped outside for a cigarette and was shocked to see the house lit up by a strange blue light in the sky as the wind suddenly died and a weird stillness descended.
Conner says Presley ‘felt that the blue light incident at birth represented God’s relationship with him and his destined part in this incarnation’. Whenever, he prayed or meditated, blue materialized as ‘the force of divine energies.’ Inevitably, blue became his favorite color.
He was particularly convinced that he had a God-given power to heal. Years later, as a star living at Graceland, he believed he healed the arthritis and other ailments of his grandmother, Minnie Mae, by placing his hands on her forehead, praying and visualizing blue.
Wife Priscilla insisted he really did have healing powers and did wonders for her headaches with just a touch of his hand. Ginger Alden, his girlfriend in his final years, claimed he once cured her of nausea by putting his hands on her abdomen.
Jerry Schilling, a childhood friend and member of his inner circle, said Presley once visited him in hospital where he was suffering intense back pain after a motorcycle accident. He recalled the singer put his hands on his back and started to pray and visualize blue light. Schilling said he woke up the following morning with no pain. ‘Whatever Elvis did somehow worked,’ he insisted.
The list of miraculous healings by the laying on of Presley’s hands goes on and on. He healed a groupie’s sprained leg and, once driving through Nashville, jumped out of his limo to help a bus driver who was staggering about clutching his chest. Presley placed his hand over the man’s heart and the pain disappeared.
Presley was particularly convinced that he had a God-given power to heal. Years later, as a star living at Graceland, he believed he healed the arthritis and other ailments of his grandmother, Minnie Mae, by placing his hands on her forehead, praying and visualizing blue.
Wife Priscilla insisted he really did have healing powers and did wonders for her headaches with just a touch of his hand. Ginger Alden, his girlfriend in his final years, claimed he once cured her of nausea by putting his hands on her abdomen.
The list of miraculous healings by the laying on of Presley’s hands goes on and on. He healed a groupie’s sprained leg and jumped out of his limo to help a bus driver who was staggering about clutching his chest. (Pictured: Presley and Priscilla with daughter Lisa Marie).
On a winter trip to Colorado, he and friends were sledding down a hill when the son of Presley’s doctor broke his leg in a collision. Witnesses said Presley knelt over the injured leg, placed his hands on it and began to pray. It was healed. Sylvia Shemwell, a Presley back-up singer in his 1970s Vegas-era, said her stomach cancer disappeared the day after he laid his hands on her belly and prayed.
But Presley failed to heal the chronic pain afflicting a bodyguard who didn’t believe in his powers – a fact that Conner acknowledges could mean a placebo effect was in play. Others convinced themselves that there was no trickery involved and that Presley appeared to genuinely have bizarre powers.
DJ and TV presenter George Klein, a longtime pal, recalled Presley telling him to concentrate on some bushes they found as they walked around the Graceland grounds. Presley waved his hands over them and the bushes started to shake.
On the day of his death, the star was out early in the morning with two friends as they walked through the Graceland estate towards his racquetball court. When one of the pair complained that they wouldn’t be able to play as it was raining, Presley replied: ‘Ain’t no problem. I’ll take care of it.’
He raised his hands towards the sky and the rain immediately stopped. ‘See, I told you,’ he said.
Given all the supernatural powers attributed to him, perhaps it’s no surprise then that nearly 50 years after his death so many people still claim to have seen Presley.
