Is Elvis Presley Still Alive?

Elvis Presley Lives! The Conspiracy Theory That Will Not Die

By Danny Salter

It wasn’t the most dignified way for a man described as “The greatest cultural force of the 20th century” to go. On August 16th 1977, Elvis Presley – The King of Rock ‘n Roll – was found slumped on a bathroom floor in his Graceland home in Memphis, Tennessee, after having fallen somewhat ungracefully from the toilet. Elvis The Pelvis was pronounced dead shortly afterwards at the age of just 42.

But considering that he’s supposed to be dead, Elvis certainly seems to have been keeping himself surprisingly busy over the last 45 years. He’s been spotted doing a spot of shopping, attending to the grounds in Graceland, enjoying a trip to Legoland, making surprise cameos in movies, and even attending his own 82nd birthday memorial party. Well, it would be poor etiquette not to bother showing up for that.

Perhaps more significantly, on the very same day that he supposedly made his very last ‘difficult’ visit to the bathroom, it’s alleged that a man who bore a startling resemblance to Elvis was seen at Memphis International Airport, boarding a flight to the Argentine capital Buenos Aires – a city which was rife with Elvis sightings over the next few years. The name used by the mysterious passenger was John Burrows – an alias that Elvis was known to have regularly used when checking into hotels. It’s enough to make suspicious minds start wondering if Elvis really did leave the building on that day.

If nothing dodgy was going on, why was his corpse strangely sweaty, why was there so much disagreement over his exact cause of death, and why is his death certificate still sealed until 2027? And could it be that Elvis is either still in hiding from the mafia, or was quietly replaced by his identical twin brother, or took on the new role and identity of singing pastor Bob Joyce from Arkansas? No spoilers, but I can already confirm that at least one of those theories isn’t true…

Promised Land

I’ve only ever seen one Elvis tribute act, and even that was entirely accidental. Well, it wasn’t a proper Elvis show, it was more a kind of talent competition in which anyone was welcome to take to the stage and try to entertain the crowd for a few minutes. I was hoping to get up there myself to perform my acclaimed sock puppet reenactment of the crucifixion of Christ, but I chickened out at the last minute. This other guy was braver than me, though.

He jumped onto the stage in his white jumpsuit – they always wear the white jumpsuit – and mumbled along to an Elvis song, although the performance largely seemed to consist of him going “Uh huh huh” every few seconds. He didn’t win the contest.

It struck me afterwards that for all I know, I might just have glimpsed the real Elvis. He does seem to get around quite a bit, although I’m not sure his travels would ever have extended quite as far as a grotty old pub in Rotherham. But it stands to reason that if Elvis was ever considering a post-death career, then working as an Elvis impersonator would probably make perfect sense. He did have a pretty unusual career even back when he was alive, and it’s maybe not quite as consistently successful as some people seem to remember.

Don’t get me wrong, one of the most influential artists of all time who began a rock ‘n’ roll revolution has probably done more to transform the shape of popular music than anyone else in history. As John Lennon once noted: “Before Elvis, there was nothing.” And it’s not all about ancient history – even today, Elvis still holds an impressive amount of world records including the most certified gold and platinum albums, the most singles and albums to chart on Billboard, and the most convincing demonstration of a lip curl ever seen. According to the Recording Industry Association of America, Elvis has sold over 146 million albums, although this only puts him third in the all-time list, behind The Beatles in pole position with 183 million sales, and, for reasons that I can’t even begin to fathom, Garth Brooks in second place with 157 million.

Yet in a career that spanned 1956 to his faked death in 1977, there were plenty of ups and downs – and arguably, there were more downs than ups. His 1956 breakout single ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ may not have been the very first rock n roll single, but it’s widely considered to be the record that introduced and defined the genre to the masses when it first topped the charts. This was followed up by a few intense years of glorious success as both a performer and a prolific movie star, although not everyone was a fan of the rebellious bad-boy persona and the suggestive hip-swivelling.

Legendary US broadcaster Ed Sullivan described the performances of Elvis as “unfit for family viewing” whilst ‘The New York Times’ observed: “Popular music has reached its lowest depths in the ‘grunt and groin’ antics of one Elvis Presley. Elvis, who rotates his pelvis, gave an exhibition that was vulgar, tinged with the kind of animalism that should be confined to dives and bordellos”.

These shameless displays of vulgarity were put on hold for a couple of years when Elvis was quite cheerfully drafted into military service in 1958. But after being honourably discharged in 1960, Elvis arguably squandered the next eight years. Under the guidance of his manager Colonel Tom Parker, he turned his back on live performances and proper albums, focusing instead on appearing in a long list of cheap shitty films for which he also performed the soundtracks. By the time we hit the latter end of the ’60s, the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll’s crown had lost much of its shine, and he was even beginning to look and feel a little old hat as he lost ground to the hip new sounds of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Beach Boys, and, erm, Freddie and The Dreamers.

Elvis finally got his act together again when he staged a remarkable TV comeback performance in 1968 which led to a few more years of wildly successful tours and an extended residency in Las Vegas, although he still wasn’t bothering the charts too much. However, the personal life, career, and health of Elvis would slump into serious decline by 1973, and it was a slump from which he would sadly never recover.

Elvis had married Priscilla Beaulieu in 1967, and his only child Lisa-Marie was born exactly nine months after their wedding day. It was actually Elvis’s big comeback in 1968 which ended up putting a strain on the initially happy marriage, as his renewed commitment to touring meant that he was usually away from home. Whilst he was playing away, it was alleged that he embarked upon a string of affairs which eventually led to a divorce in 1973.

Elvis had also clearly let himself go, a situation not helped by his obsessions with fried peanut butter sandwiches, and biscuits and gravy. He reportedly once spent around $16,000 taking his private jet on an overnight trip to Denver just because he had a craving for a particular sandwich – a Fool’s Gold Loaf - that could only be bought at The Colorado Mine Company. On top of that, he’d also become addicted to a long list of painkillers being prescribed to him by Dr George Nichopoulos, and once spent three days in a coma after overdosing on barbiturates.

Whilst grappling with various other serious health issues, Elvis still continued to perform but the results weren’t pretty. The gyrating hips and swing moves of the 1950s had been replaced with the sad sight of a bloated man in a jumpsuit who was drugged up to the eyeballs as he struggled to remember the words that propelled him to stardom whilst desperately trying to reach the end of each set without keeling over. And yet he still kept limping on and on.

All Shook Up

On the very same day that he died, Elvis had been due to embark upon yet another soul-crushing tour. The previous evening, he had popped out for a drive through Memphis before returning to Graceland to spend the whole night playing racquetball. Elvis was finding it difficult to find real friends at this point, and even his opponent on the racquetball court wasn’t a buddy as such – Elvis was generously paying the guy to play racquetball with him all night long. Not a bad line of work, really.

The following day, Elvis had been due to take a flight to Portland for the first leg of his latest tour, but the audience were destined to be disappointed. Well, they would have been disappointed even if he’d shown up, but the news that came out of Graceland that day sent shockwaves throughout the world.

Elvis had been dating Ginger Alden for around a year, and the couple were now engaged to be wed, although other members of Elvis’s family didn’t seem convinced that Ginger planned to go through with it. It was Ginger who found Elvis unofficially dead in the second-floor bathroom at around 2pm, lying face down on the floor in a completely unresponsive state, with his pyjama bottoms around his ankles. One of the Graceland cooks had apparently heard a loud noise coming from upstairs about four hours earlier but didn’t believe it to be anything of great concern – so Elvis had presumably been lying there for quite some time.

Fiancée Ginger Alden later recalled in her 2014 memoir: “I stood paralyzed as I took in the scene. Elvis looked as if his entire body had completely frozen in a seated position while using the commode and then had fallen forward, in that fixed position, directly in front of it.” It was believed that a severely constipated Elvis had experienced a bad reaction to codeine, and had suffered from excruciating pain whilst attempting to use the toilet before stiffly falling face down on the floor. He wasn’t officially pronounced dead until he had been rushed to Baptist Memorial Hospital shortly afterwards.

But there was controversy and suspicion almost from the very beginning. I’m not talking about the mysterious black helicopter that supposedly landed at Graceland and then took off again shortly before the supposed body of Elvis was taken to hospital. And I’m not talking about the guy who later checked into Memphis International Airport to board a flight to Buenos Aires. I’m talking about the quite legitimate reasons why some fans felt they were being lied to over the cause of death.

Memphis medical examiner Jerry Francisco appeared to be in quite a hurry to make a public announcement which would reassure fans that the cause of death was perfectly natural and that no drugs were involved whatsoever. Just one day after Elvis died, Francisco issued a statement to the press which revealed that his tentative ruling for the immediate cause of death was cardiac arrhythmia. He went on to stress that any prescription drugs taken by Elvis would certainly not have been a contributing factor.

Shortly afterwards, Jerry Francisco’s Medical Examiner’s Report went into a little more detail, concluding that Presley had the clogged arteries of an 80-year-old man, and that he had died from hypertensive heart disease associated with atherosclerotic heart disease. It seemed a little odd that Francisco had been in such a panicked hurry to quash any press speculation over how exactly Elvis had died whilst reassuring everyone that The King hadn’t been involved in any dodgy activity. It was also a little odd that he announced his initial findings long before either an autopsy or a toxicology analysis had been completed.

Indeed, when the toxicology report was eventually released, it didn’t entirely fit in with Francisco’s findings as it showed that the body of Elvis was pumped full of prescription drugs, including a level of codeine which was over ten times the usual prescribed range. Francisco’s reputation as a medical professional was placed in doubt when it was reported that even his own colleagues didn’t agree with his conclusions. You can’t blame them really. Not only had he jumped the gun with his tentative ruling, but it also turns out that cardiac arrhythmia is a condition which can only be identified in a patient who is still alive.

Yet Francisco angrily doubled down on his claims, as he insisted that Elvis had died from natural causes, and pointed out that the only drugs found in Presley’s system were perfectly legal drugs prescribed by his personal physician Dr George Nichopoulos. Not everyone was happy with the controversial and slightly dubious handling of this matter, and of course this naturally fuelled theories that Jerry Francisco – and perhaps even higher authorities – were trying to cover something up.

The family of Elvis certainly seemed keen to get a second opinion when they later requested a second private autopsy. And this is where many recent reports into the whole ‘Elvis Lives!” story tend to get a bit confused over all the official documentation.

Quite a few sources will confidently tell you that the official death certificate was released shortly after the King’s passing, and this backed up Francisco’s not wholly convincing claim that Elvis died from heart disease, and that drugs had nothing to do with it. Other sources will tell you that the results of the second autopsy requested by the Presley family are sealed until 2027, and this is the document that will finally reveal the whole truth when it’s released in just a few years. But these claims are just the result of jumbled-up paperwork.

The only document to have been released to date is the aforementioned Medical Examiner’s Report from Jerry Francisco. It’s the official death certificate which remains sealed until the year 2027. And that sounds a bit fishy, right? There have apparently been numerous attempts over the years to get this certificate released to the public, but all have failed. So what are they trying to hide?

Well, in fact, this is just how they roll in Tennessee. Ever since 1908, all new death certificates are kept by the Tennessee Office of Vital Records and are considered by state law to be strictly confidential until fifty years have passed, at which point they are made public. So, this will indeed be released in around four years which is when we’ll get to see if the original coroner agreed with Jerry Francisco or thought that he was talking out of his arse.

As for the results from the private autopsy requested by the Presley family, this is obviously not sealed at all as it’s a private document which belongs to the family and is unlikely to ever see the light of day unless a future Presley decides to make a few bucks from it.

So, without these last two bits of documentation, are we any closer to finding out the exact cause of death? It’s safe to say that Elvis hadn’t been partaking in anything illegal. During his lifetime, he was pretty vocal about his contempt for illegal substances. And no illegal drugs – or even alcohol for that matter – showed up in the toxicology analysis. It’s more a question of whether heart failure was the cause of death, or heart failure was perhaps a symptom of bingeing on over-prescribed medication.

In 1994, the coroner Joseph Davis took another look into the original investigation and concluded that he pretty much agreed with Jerry Francisco that heart failure was the root cause. He reckons: “The position of Elvis Presley’s body was such that he was about to sit down on the commode when the seizure occurred. He pitched forward onto the carpet, his rear in the air, and was dead by the time he hit the floor. If it had been a drug overdose, he would have slipped into an increasing state of slumber.

He would have pulled up his pyjama bottoms and crawled to the door to seek help. It takes hours to die from drugs. Everything points to a sudden, violent heart attack.”

But other medical professionals disagree, and it has long been suggested that Elvis died from the serious abuse of legal drugs which Dr George Nichopoulos was effectively providing by the truckload.

Dr George Nichopoulos – commonly known as Dr Nick – had a preference for celebrity patients, counting Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, and several other big names amongst his client list. He first started treating Elvis for saddle sores in 1967 before taking on the role of personal physician to the King in 1970. The pair apparently became good friends, and Dr Nick later served as one of the pallbearers at the funeral. But was it a friendship based entirely on the over-inflated size of Dr Nick’s prescriptions?

And did these prescriptions play a part in Elvis ending up in the very coffin that Dr Nick was helping to carry?

Alarm bells began ringing when an investigation later revealed that during the last couple of years of Presley’s life, Dr Nick had prescribed him over 19,000 pills and tablets and vials, including strong painkillers, uppers, downers, and in-betweeners. You have to wonder how Elvis even found the time to neck quite so many pills every day. And whilst it can be tricky at the best of times to remember to pack all your medication for trips away, imagine what it must have been like for Elvis when he was away on tour. Not to worry though, Dr Nick apparently took care of all that, packing him up with no less than three large suitcases of drugs for every trip, although he argued that this was intended for the whole of the touring crew who were all presumably just as wired as Elvis.

This obviously led to concern and downright anger from some Elvis fans who blamed Dr Nick for the death of their hero, arguing that there was no justification for prescribing quite so many pills. It’s perhaps no coincidence that in 1979, Dr Nick was shot in the chest whilst he was watching a football game. He survived to tell the tale, and the attacker was never caught, but it’s often been suggested that the culprit was a disgruntled Elvis fan.

Dr Nick had more than just a lone gunman to deal with in 1980 when he was finally put on trial, charged with 14 counts of overprescribing drugs to patients including Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis. Dr Nick’s defence was that he always served in the best interests of Elvis to try and control his addiction to medication. He feared that if he had ever turned down a request from Elvis, the star may have been tempted to source his pills from the streets instead.

That seems a tad unlikely, considering Elvis had such a strong aversion to illegal street drugs. And I can’t help feeling that if Dr Nick was trying to sensibly control the addiction, then prescribing over 19,000 drugs within two years was a strange way of going about it. However, quite incredibly, he was acquitted of all charges when the jury agreed that he was always serving in the best interests of the patients.

That very same year though, the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners took a slightly different view when they concluded that whilst Dr Nick had not been behaving in an unethical manner, he had been guilty of overprescribing controlled substances. The decision was taken to suspend Dr Nick’s medical licence for three months and place him on probation for three years. But Dr Nick still couldn’t curb his overwhelming generosity. He was like the medically-trained brother of Santa Claus.

He was again hauled up before the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners in 1992, now accused of overprescribing medication to known addicts which amounted to gross malpractice and unethical conduct. This time he had his licence permanently revoked.

Dr Nick later whimpered that his only problem was that he “cared too much.” With relation to Elvis in particular, he gave an interview to The Daily Beast in 2009 – seven years before his own death – in which he complained: “No one understands that Elvis was so complicated. I worked so hard just to keep things together and then they turned the tables on me after he died and decided I was to blame.”

I don’t think we’ll ever reach a universal agreement on whether any blame should be thrown in Dr Nick’s direction. It’s true that Jerry Fransisco’s mad rush to make a statement on the cause of death now seems like a deliberate attempt to close down any speculation or controversy relating to drugs – and it’s possible that he may have been acting on behalf of the family who were keen to preserve the reputation of Elvis and hide any association with drug addiction, legal or otherwise. But ironically, it was probably the shifty and unconvincing nature of these early statements that ignited a great deal of immediate speculation of a cover-up.

Let’s face it, Elvis was not in the healthiest shape in 1977 anyway, and it was only a matter of time before all those fried peanut butter sandwiches began to bite back. But whilst he was already suffering from a long list of ailments which may have been leading him to an inevitable early grave, you can’t help wondering if popping 19,000 drugs throughout the last couple of years of his life – given to him on tap by a doctor who was later banned for gross malpractice - might just have given Elvis a fastrack pass to the cemetery.

Return to Sender

The very next day after Elvis died, his father Vernon agreed to allow mourners to pay their respects by filing past the open casket in Graceland. Well, a tiny percentage of mourners anyway. The open casket was only on view for a couple of hours, and it’s reported that as many as 75,000 fans descended on Memphis to get a glimpse of the body in the casket – which turned out to be a problem as only 16,000 of them were able to get a bed for the night before every single hotel in the city was fully booked.

And the majority of them would be in for a disappointment anyway. Only a few thousand mourners were able to file past the casket before the time slot expired and the Graceland doors were once more shut to the public.

One guy who probably didn’t need to join the queue to get a view of the open casket was Elvis Presley’s cousin Billy Mann. But he abused his privilege by accepting an $18,000 bribe from ‘National Enquirer’ magazine to take a sneaky photograph of the body with a miniature camera. That’s around $90,000 in today’s money.

The subsequent photograph was plastered on the cover of the next edition of the magazine which went on to become the biggest-selling issue in history, shifting over 6.5 million copies. It’s not clear why Billy Mann would have stooped so low, although he may just have been strapped for cash and feeling a bit pissed off that he didn’t get a namecheck in the will.

Not many people did, to be fair. Not even his fiancé Ginger Alden. The only three people named in the will were daughter Lisa Marie, father Vernon, and Elvis’s beloved grandmother Minnie Mae. Within the space of just a couple of years, the latter two would also pass away, leaving the entire estate in the hands of 11-year-old Lisa Marie.

But was it a bit harsh that Elvis’s fiancé didn’t get a cut? Vernon had his doubts that she ever really intended to marry his son, as he sniffily pointed out to the press: “Ginger has already gotten her share of gifts from Elvis.”

Meanwhile, Vernon’s brother – known to Elvis as Uncle Vester – had a little more to say on the matter when he revealed that Ginger had been banned from entering Graceland. He said: “She couldn’t get in here on her own to save her life. She can go to the grave by calling and asking.

Any time she comes to this gate I’ve got to call Vernon and OK it.” He later gave the pretty harsh assessment: “We’re not interested in her. She took advantage of Elvis’s name.

Ginger Alden is dead now as far as the family is concerned. We don’t even recognize her as a human being.” It’s not entirely clear where this hatred stemmed from, other than a suspicion that Ginger was leading Elvis up the garden path and was more interested in using him as an extended shopping voucher rather than giving any serious consideration to marriage – although Ginger claims that she and Elvis were still enthusiastically planning their wedding right up until the day he died.

Still, although there’s no evidence to prove it, it’s generally believed that Ginger Alden was at least allowed to attend the private funeral, along with around 200 other people.

I was actually quite surprised to discover that the funeral was held just two days after the death of Elvis which seems like a pretty fast turnaround to me. Here in the UK, you’re usually facing a wait of anywhere between two to four weeks to finally make it into the crematorium. You’d think that they’d try to hurry up the process a little bit, especially when the funeral directors are getting paid thousands and thousands of pounds to essentially just set something on fire. But even though there was clearly no mucking about in burying Elvis, there was still enough time within those two days for fresh rumours to emerge regarding the body.

It’s true enough that the face of Elvis does seem surprisingly thin on that famous $18,000 photograph snapped by his cousin. In fact, he looks more like the young Elvis from his ’50s heyday than the heavily bloated Elvis seen in the last photographs taken of him alive in 1977. This could potentially be down to the sterling work carried out by the undertaker on smartening up the body before making it presentable to the public, whilst some of the fluid buildup may have naturally drained from the body during the embalming procedure.

It’s also possible that the National Enquirer’s retouch artist Robert Stevens may have gotten a little carried away in his efforts to make Elvis look good in the death photograph. Some of the people who caught a glimpse of Elvis in the open casket have suggested that the face looked significantly different to the one slapped on the cover of The National Enquirer. But other mourners who filed past the casket have suggested that they saw something else that didn’t seem quite right.

Elvis was sweating.

Although he always looked a bit sweaty during those final years, you would have expected Elvis to have calmed down a bit with the excessive perspiration by the time his body was put in the casket. I wasn’t initially sure where exactly this ‘sweaty corpse’ theory was heading. Was it being suggested that Elvis was still alive when he was posing in the casket and he had started to feel the heat? And did this explain why the casket was only on show for a couple of hours, as this was deemed the maximum length of time that Elvis could lie motionless before he got a craving for another fried peanut butter sandwich?

Of course not. That would clearly be preposterous.

The conspiracy theorists have instead suggested that the answer can be found in the coffin that was being carried during the funeral the following day. It was observed that the pallbearers – including of course, Dr Nick – were visibly struggling with the weight of the copper coffin which some have estimated was in the region of around 900lb. We know that Elvis had put on a bit of weight during his final years but surely he hadn’t put on that much.

So why would the coffin be so heavy? Well, it’s obvious, really. The coffin contained an elaborate dry-ice cooling system which was designed to stop the waxwork dummy of Elvis from melting.

Yep, the supposed corpse was actually just a wax model, and the shit had very nearly hit the fan on the previous day when the dummy had started melting in the open casket, giving the impression that Elvis was sweating. To avoid that happening again on the day of the funeral, the coffin had been kitted out with a swishy soundproof cooling system which would help mop the waxwork dummy’s brow.

We’ve only really got the words of a few supposed unnamed witnesses to go on here, and I would bet my last jar of pickled onions that nobody actually saw a corpse sweating in the open casket. As for the super-heavy coffin on the day of the funeral, it was probably a fair bit heavier than most as it was made from solid copper rather than sheet copper, and it would have been a fairly hefty thing to try and lift even when it was completely empty. One of the pallbearers – another of Elvis’s cousins, Billy Smith – later joked that it weighed a ton as it was lined with gold in a bid to outdo the coffin of King Tutankhamun, before he admitted that it really wasn’t that heavy at all. And pallbearing in mind that he was one of the people carrying it, I’d trust his word over someone who was watching from afar and thinking about waxwork dummies.

Yet all this stuff about sweating corpses and waxwork dummies, along with the genuinely bewildering press statements made by medical examiners who hadn’t yet had time to medically examine anything, helped to plant the initial seeds of doubt into the minds of devoted fans who were beginning to suspect that Elvis wasn’t quite as dead as he claimed to be. But what possible reason could he have to fake his own death in the first place?

Clean Up Your Own Backyard

It’s been suggested that Elvis had grown weary of the fame and the burden of being one of the most famous men on the planet. He wanted to put an end to the gruelling tour schedule, and he wanted to get away from the bothersome fans and the management and everybody else who were desperate to get their piece of Elvis. Faking your own death seems like an extreme method of just trying to get a bit of peace and quiet, though. He could have just retired, locked the Graceland gates, taken the phone off the hook, and upped the hours of the guy who came round to play racquetball.

A far more popular theory is that Elvis was in league with the FBI who helped him to fake his own death in order to avoid any retribution after selling out the mob. It’s a theory which gathered steam after publication of a 1988 book by Gail Brewer-Giorgio which went under the original title of ‘The Most Incredible Elvis Story Ever Told’ before it was later renamed to the snappier ‘Elvis Alive?’ In the book, Gail claims that she pored over thousands of pages of classified FBI documents which revealed that Elvis had connections with a criminal gang known as The Fraternity.

Elvis had first hooked up with The Fraternity to help him secure a good deal on an airplane, but he soon had second thoughts about mixing with criminals and eventually offered to help the FBI bring down the gang. After key members of The Fraternity were subsequently arrested, it became blindingly obvious that Elvis had been the mole, and he was now at risk of facing the fiery vengeance of the mob. The FBI figured that the only way to guarantee the safety of Elvis was to fake his death, after which The Fraternity would presumably lose all interest and start thinking about opening up another casino or something.

Gail Brewer-Giorgio reckons that Elvis felt compelled to sell out the gangsters because of his deep love of America and his deep respect for the FBI. And she’s still sticking to her story today, recently informing TIME magazine: “Elvis faked his death because he was going to be killed and there was no doubt about it.”

It’s perhaps not so outlandish to think that Elvis may have worked undercover for the FBI at some point. According to some sources, Elvis was either an honorary member of The Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, or he was a fully-fledged secret agent working for the FBI. And whilst I initially scoffed at such a notion, it turns out there’s at least a grain of truth to the first claim.

In 1970, Elvis wrote a meandering letter to President Richard Nixon in the hope of setting up a meeting. Throughout the letter, Elvis expressed his concern over illegal drug abuse on the streets, useless hippies, Communist brainwashing techniques, and even the success of The Beatles whom he accused of fuelling a new trend of anti-Americanism. Paul McCartney was actually a little pissed off when he heard about that.

The band had previously enjoyed a friendly relationship with Elvis who had regularly performed these ‘anti-American’ Beatles songs during his own live shows. McCartney revealed: “I felt a bit betrayed. The great joke was that we were taking illegal drugs, and look what happened to him.”

That’s a fair point, Paul. Although it might not have been the real Paul McCartney who said those words. It was more likely to be his lookalike imposter Billy Shears.

But that’s a whole different kettle of walruses.

Elvis was now offering his services to the president as a federal “Agent-at-Large” who would be able to send a positive message to his legion of fans and wipe out the drug culture that was sweeping the United States of America. But it sounds as if all he really wanted was a badge. Apparently, Elvis was mad for official badges and he was keen to add some kind of federal agent badge to his collection.

Elvis got his brief meeting with President Nixon at The White House, an encounter which Nixon himself reportedly found to be incredibly awkward. But more importantly, he was also awarded his shiny new badge which described Elvis as a “Special Assistant” to The Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. Of course, it was a meaningless title which Nixon had just made up to appease Elvis who never actually worked for any federal bureau in his life.

It was a dead good badge, though.

But going back to the FBI angle, it’s certainly true that the FBI did keep files on Elvis between 1956 and 1980 which referenced how the singer had been targeted by criminals during numerous attempts at extortion. We know this because 760 of them were released to the public, and not one of them mentions any hint of Elvis working undercover to bring down a criminal organisation, or the faking of his death for his own safety. So where was the author Gail Brewer-Giorgio getting her classified FBI documents from? We have no idea.

We could just take her word for it that she knows what she’s talking about. But she’s come up with so much more blatant rubbish since then that you can’t blame people for being a little sceptical.

Gail later released the audio of a telephone conversation she had supposedly taken with the real Elvis Presley in 1988. Yeah, the voice on the other end sounds a bit like Elvis, but it also sounds a bit like Nicolas Cage and potentially millions of other people. She also claimed as recently as 2019 that she’d dug up the official death certificate of Elvis Presley, and was astounded to find that the signature at the bottom of the certificate was from Elvis himself!

Gail had compared the signature on the death certificate with the signature at the bottom of the letter that Elvis had sent to President Richard Nixon moaning about drugged-up hippies, and found that they were practically identical. She even called in the expert graphologist Paul Weist who concluded: “In my professional opinion, the same person who wrote the letter to President Nixon also wrote Elvis’ death certificate.”

Why exactly a person attempting to fake his own death would choose to sign his own death certificate is beyond me. But again, Gail forgets to mention how exactly she got hold of a death certificate which is still being kept under lock and key by the Tennessee Office of Vital Records. I can only assume she sourced it the same way she sourced all those thousands of classified FBI documents that nobody else in the world knows about.

It’s interesting to note that before she got so obsessed with Elvis, Gail Brewer-Giorgio wrote a 1978 novel called ‘Orion’ which told the fictional story of a massively popular singer from the south who faked his own death to hide away from the horrors of fame and get a bit of privacy. She later claimed that her publisher inexplicably began to recall all copies of the novel, leading the author to suspect that it bore too much similarity to the genuine case of Elvis Presley’s fake death, and this is where she seemed to lose the plot altogether. But for the record, there’s no evidence that she ever uncovered any genuine official documentation, and there’s nothing else to connect Elvis to any FBI plot to fake his death to escape retribution from a criminal organisation that he helped to stitch up good and proper.

So, this leaves us without any clear or logical motive as to why Elvis would want to go to all the bother of setting up his own funeral, unless he just quite fancied attending the service and grabbing some of the nibbles whilst he was still alive. But just because we can’t currently comprehend a motive, that doesn’t necessarily mean that he didn’t do it. The King moves his hips in mysterious ways. And just like every other great conspiracy theory involving the cover-up of an earth-shattering secret which must never be revealed at any cost, the perpetrator was certainly happy enough to leave behind fun clues…

Double Trouble

If we fast-forward to 1988, we might be able to hear an unusual new song playing on the radio for the first time. Well, to be honest, you were unlikely to hear it on that many radio channels, and the song in question was a spectacular flop. But the track entitled ‘Spelling on the Stone’ certainly seemed to raise a few questions – the most prominent of which being: Was this the first new Elvis Presley song to be recorded and released after his faked death?

We don’t glean very much from the name of the artist because the single, released by LS Records, was completely uncredited. The owner of the record label Lee Stoller reckoned that the recording was delivered to his office by an anonymous man who sped off in his limousine after handing over the new tune.

The voice certainly sounds a bit like Elvis, and he appears to be addressing his own death in the lyrics of the song. Here’s a taster: “People wonder, people ask/Am I present, am I past?/I never left, I haven’t gone/Check the spelling on the stone.” “Was my leaving, due to sin?/Did my faith somehow grow thin?/My secrets out, so many know/Check the spelling on the stone.”

It’s now widely believed – although not proven - that the mystery voice behind the track was just an impersonator by the name of Dan Willis, and that the record was a silly publicity stunt cashing in on recent Elvis sightings. Even if the vocalist wasn’t Dan Willis, the professor of music theory John Davis later concluded that the voice did not belong to Elvis and was more a caricature of his performance. It’s a publicity stunt which didn’t go down well with everyone. A media coordinator for Graceland slammed the release as “a very cruel hoax” whilst ex-wife Priscilla took the time to respond to the single by making it clear that Elvis would never be cruel enough to stage his own death.

But what exactly did the singer mean by “Check the spelling on the stone”? This harks back to one of the earliest theories to rise from the grave, shortly after Elvis had been buried. His full name was Elvis Aron Presley. The ‘Elvis’ was taken from father Vernon’s middle name, whilst the ‘Aron’ – spelt with just one ‘A’ - was possibly inspired by Vernon’s good friend Aaron Kennedy who spelt his first name with two ‘A’s.

However, it was decided that Elvis should only have one ‘A’ in his middle name so that it looked similar to the spelling of his identical twin’s middle name – Jesse Garon Presley. More on him in just a second.

The thing is that the spelling on the gravestone appears to be wrong as it spells the middle name of Elvis with two ‘A’s rather than one. So what’s all that about? Was the engraver offering a free extra digit which was too good a deal to turn down? Or was Elvis offering some kind of teaser that it wasn’t really him buried beneath that gravestone?

Probably neither. It seems that Elvis was never really keen on the original spelling and in later life he had resorted to sticking an extra ‘A’ in there himself to match the spelling of the biblical Aaron. His father Vernon was aware of this, and it was he who ordered the gravestone to be engraved using the spelling that he knew his son preferred. It also has to be said that it would have been a pretty lame clue to leave behind.

But this leads us into one of the most patently absurd yet remarkably resilient Elvis conspiracy theories. Imagine for a moment that it wasn’t really Elvis buried beneath that gravestone. Who else could be taking that place? Well, how about that identical twin brother Jesse?

The official narrative is that Jesse Garon Presley was stillborn 35 minutes before the birth of Elvis, although the exact cause of the stillbirth is unknown. However, Elvis Truthers are of the firm opinion that Jesse did not really die at birth. His survival was kept a secret so that he could serve as a double for Elvis in later life.

We can apparently see some evidence for this in a couple of Elvis interviews which were filmed in the early 1970s. Whilst Elvis was known for his piercing blue eyes, these video clips appear to show a slightly different version of Elvis sporting brown eyes. Could it be that only the real Elvis had blue eyes whilst the eyes of twin brother and body double Jesse were brown, and this is how you can spot the difference between the two?

Elvis could potentially have been wearing contact lenses, but he wouldn’t have had much reason to choose contact lenses that changed the distinctive colour of his eyes. It’s more likely to be down to the lighting and the positioning of the camera, as blue or green eyes have been known to turn a different colour when viewed under unusual lighting conditions or from funny angles. Or a slightly less savoury explanation is that Elvis was already popping too many pills by this point, resulting in a dilation of his pupils which reduced the levels of piercing blue you would normally expect to see when facing the King.

Either way, I’m pretty sure that we weren’t looking into the eyes of Jesse Presley.

The biggest problem with the conspiracy theories relating to Jesse Presley is that they make absolutely no sense whatsoever. Let’s just say for a moment that Jesse was not stillborn. and he went on to serve as his brother’s secret body double. If it was really Jesse and not Elvis that died and was buried in 1977, why would the latter need to fake his own death when he could just carry on alone?

Or if it was the other way round – Jesse was the main performer whilst Elvis was the occasional stand-in who died in 1977 – why couldn’t Jesse just carry on with the deception? There just seems no advantage under any possible scenario in faking the death of the wrong twin. Of course the silliest point of all is that Elvis’s parents could never have known at the time of Elvis’s birth that he would grow up to become the most famous and influential solo recording artist in history, so the macabre idea of pretending that the other identical twin died - just in case Elvis ever required a body double in the future – is obviously just completely bonkers.

Unless they just had particularly good intuition about this kind of thing.

One weird side note about all this regards a cenotaph for Jesse Presley which was placed in the grounds of Graceland. This is not the actual grave – the Presley family were extremely poor when Jesse was stillborn, and so he was buried in a shoebox beneath a small blank stone in Priceville Memorial Gardens in Tupelo. Some fans have questioned why Elvis didn’t move Jesse’s modest and largely forgotten grave to Graceland.

But that surely is an intensely personal decision, and I can see why Elvis may have leaned towards the idea of letting Jesse rest in peace rather than trying to dig up a fragile shoebox for the sake of a flashier spot. Installing a new cenotaph memorial in Graceland was clearly his preferred option, but for reasons that have never been explained, the cenotaph manages to spell Jesse’s first name wrong, putting in an extra ‘i’ before the final ‘e’. It’s possible that Elvis was simply not aware of the correct spelling, but it does seem a bit peculiar that both the Presley twins seem to have acquired extra digits in their names after death.

Perhaps the idea is that you’re supposed to keep collecting all the extra digits found on the gravestones and memorials of the Presley family until you have enough letters to form the name of the secret location at which Elvis has been hiding out all these years.

But maybe the true location of Elvis isn’t such a big secret after all. By the sound of it, he’s been happily popping up all over the place to wave hello.

Wild in the Country

One of the earliest sightings – accompanied with actual photographic evidence - of a post-death Elvis took place just over four months after he supposedly died. But it took a few years for the photographer to realise what he’d unwittingly snapped. A guy called Mike Joseph visited Graceland with his family on December 31st 1977, and he seized the opportunity to take plenty of souvenir photographs which included several shots of the Presley pool house.

It wasn’t until several years later when Mike was sifting through the old photographs again that he just happened to spot a slightly creepy and shadowy figure lurking inside the pool house and peering out of the window. He couldn’t immediately make out what it was supposed to be, but he was intrigued enough to dig out a magnifying glass to take a closer look. And that’s when he realised he was staring into the face of a clearly not-dead-yet Elvis Presley.

All those idiots who believed that Elvis had packed his flight bags to start a new life in Buenos Aires had been wrong the whole time. Elvis had decided that he may as well just hang out at home. After all, nobody would ever think of looking for Elvis in Graceland.

Mike even had the photograph checked out by Kodak experts who confirmed that the image had not been doctored in any way. So it’s got to be him, right? Nah.

Elvis’s former road manager Joe Esposito stepped in to suggest that the face in question was more likely to belong to Elvis’s old security guard Al Strada who certainly bears a passing resemblance to the King, and more importantly, was known to be alive at the time. Not everyone is convinced by this explanation, but Mike Joseph seemed to agree with it – and it makes a refreshing change for a potential Elvis spotter to get on board with a more rational explanation instead of blindly pursuing the more unfeasible angle that could make them famous.

If Elvis really had wanted to settle down into a new secret life, I reckon he would have at least made the effort to move out of his mansion so that Graceland could be transformed into a money-spinning entertainment complex whilst he kept his head down elsewhere.

A city that often pops up as a credible location for a post-death Elvis is Kalamazoo in the southwest region of Michigan where there have been multiple Elvis sightings since 1988. In fact, it’s often been suggested that it’s an open secret amongst the residents of Kalamazoo who largely protect him from the media and just give him a cheeky wink whenever they happen to wander past him. However, Louise Welling from Vicksburg, Mississippi didn’t appear to know the secret code when she spotted Elvis during a visit to Kalamazoo and immediately went blabbing to the local newspaper ‘The Commercial Express’.

Here’s the funny thing, though. ‘The Commercial Express’ weren’t remotely interested in publishing her story. So Louise went running to ‘The Kalamazoo Gazette’ instead.

And they weren’t interested, either. It was only when Louise tried her luck at ‘The Weekly World News’ based in Lantana, Florida, that she finally found a paper willing to publish her story – a paper that clearly wasn’t bound by the same secret pledges to protect Elvis which the local newspapers were honouring.

Louise claimed that she had spotted Elvis doing a bit of shopping at the Felpausch supermarket. He was waiting patiently in line at a checkout whilst clutching a single electrical fuse. And he was wearing his signature white jumpsuit because of course he was. Maybe he hadn’t had an opportunity to buy any new clothes over the last ten years so he was still stuck in those damn white jumpsuits.

Louise noted that he was looking a bit nervous as if he had something to hide, although this could just have been because he’d stuffed fifty other electrical fuses down his jumpsuit, and he only had enough money to pay for one.

Elvis was spotted again very shortly afterwards in a branch of Burger King around ten miles away, cheerfully tucking into a nice wholesome Whopper. The writer and economist David Adler reckoned in 1995 that this sighting was particularly noteworthy. According to him: “What gives this account eerie credibility is that Burger King was by far Elvis’s favourite fast-food chain.”

Yup. I think we’ll all agree that’s pretty much case closed then. The only sighting that could possibly sound even more authentic is if somebody ever spotted a man in a white jumpsuit tucking into a Fool’s Gold Loaf at Colorado Mining Company whilst a private jet hovered outside the front entrance.

David Adler was probably just using this sighting as a tool to promote his new book ‘The Life and Cuisine of Elvis Presley’ – a biography of Elvis told through the food he enjoyed. Be sure to pop that one on your Christmas list. And it’s also worth pointing out that this Burger King sighting was reported by none other than the daughter of Louise Welling.

Still, a few shrewd local business owners have been happy to take advantage of the various Elvis sightings in Kalamazoo over subsequent years, with one local dentist now boasting on his signage that “The King gets regular check-ups here!” I just can’t help feeling that if Elvis really was lying low in Kalamazoo, he probably wouldn’t have put on his signature white jumpsuit before popping downtown to buy an electrical fuse and a Whopper. Maybe Louise Welling really did spot somebody who looked a bit like Elvis in a white jumpsuit, but it might well have been an Elvis impersonator who’d just finished a quick set down at The Old Goat Tavern and hadn’t had time to change yet.

There are literally hundreds of thousands of Elvis impersonators now going about their business, and you’re bound to occasionally catch one out in the wild. And they’re quite easy to spot because the vast majority of them don’t even bother to try and emulate the young sharply-dressed hip-gyrating Elvis of the ’50s. It’s much easier to emulate the overweight Elvis of the late’70s who could just about squeeze into a jumpsuit without keeling over if somebody helped him with the zip.

I’m not sure if it’s the most respectful tribute you can pay to your hero, though; ignoring the glory days to focus instead on the period when he was well past his prime. It’s a bit like a John Lennon impersonator choosing to go on stage dressed in a white shirt riddled with bullet holes and blood stains. Perhaps Elvis really is living a quiet life in Kalamazoo where he enjoys protection from the residents and the local press, but I still think he’d just pay somebody else to fetch the electrical fuse and the Whopper.

Green Green Grass of Home

The next time that Elvis was spotted out and about in public in 1990, he was waiting in line in an airport queue. But the surprising point here is that it wasn’t a genuine airport queue – it was a scene in the smash hit movie ‘Home Alone’. Because if you’ve just spent the last thirteen years successfully fooling most of the world into believing that you’re dead, the next logical step is to pop up as an extra in the highest-grossing global box office hit of 1990 (although how it beat ‘Kindergarten Cop’, I’ll never know.)

The scene in question is the one where young Kevin’s mother, played by Catherine O’Hara, is holding up an airport queue as she hysterically attempts to haggle with a ticket agent to get a seat on the next flight home to her accidentally but unforgivably abandoned son. If you take a look over Catherine O’Hara’s left shoulder, you can very briefly make out a bearded man in the background who looks a bit like a slightly older and hairier Elvis. Some would say he’s got the same hairline, complexion, and even some of the facial mannerisms of the King, although I would say it’s difficult to make too many insightful observations from the few seconds that his face is fully visible on screen.

Still, one Elvis Truther certainly had a go when he noted in a YouTube comment that the extra adopted a curious expression when Catherine O’Hara starts shouting that she would happily sell her soul to the devil to get home. He wrote: “Elvis drops his head and appears to be pondering about his own life after hearing the mother explain her situation.” Yes. Or maybe you’re looking at this far too deeply. All I see is a man with a beard who’s been instructed to look a bit impatient.

One interesting point is that the previous movie completed by ‘Home Alone’ director Chris Columbus was the 1988 comedy flop ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ in which a bunch of kids attempt to kidnap Elvis Presley. The film may have been a box office disaster, but perhaps the real Elvis enjoyed it so much that he applied to be an extra in the next Chris Columbus movie. Not so, says Chris Columbus.

He reckons: “If Elvis was on the set, I would have known.” Despite the fact that it would clearly have been absurd for a man in hiding to take a role as a movie extra, some Elvis fans were really convinced about this one, and it didn’t help matters that nobody could identify the man with the beard, as extras don’t receive any kind of credit.

It was only within the last few years that sterling detective work from researcher and myth debunker Kenny Biddle finally confirmed the man’s identity as the late Gary Grott who had also appeared as an extra in a number of other Chris Columbus movies. Some Elvis truthers still weren’t buying it, though. Gary’s own wife left a comment on a debunking video to politely announce: “Yes, sorry guys, this is my deceased husband Gary, I didn’t want to ruin your hope.” This provoked one angry fan into responding with “You are wrong!

Stop spreading this stupid propaganda! You are a disgusting excuse for a person.” I’m beginning to think some people are taking this way too seriously.

You’re The Devil in Disguise

There was another brief flurry of excitement following an Elvis sighting at the opening of California’s Legoland amusement park in 1999, although this quickly died down again when Legoland confirmed that they had hired an Elvis impersonator to mingle with the crowds as an attraction. They were probably in on the secret. Somebody should have checked his pockets for electrical fuses and Whoppers.

Then it has to be said that things largely fell quiet for a long time until internet rumours eventually began to brew and bubble and mushroom in popularity over the years as Elvis Truthers were now able to form online communities in which they could share and affirm each other’s increasingly kooky theories. One of the biggest internet theories only really began to take a fully-fledged shape in around 2010 when fans began speculating if Elvis had taken on a new identity as singing pastor Bob Joyce from Arkansas. Videos were posted online which showed singing Bob Joyce strutting his funky stuff in front of his flock, and comparisons were made to the voice and facial features of Our Father Who Art In Heaven Elvis Presley.

Bob is certainly giving off a few vibes that suggest an older Elvis with white hair and white beard, and his voice seems to be channelling the best work of the King. I’m pretty sure he was at least heavily inspired by Elvis, even if I’m not entirely convinced that he bears that close a resemblance to the man himself.

YouTuber ‘Spa Guy’ decided to take matters into his own hands in 2020 when he tracked down Bob Joyce to ask him in person if the rumours were true. And predictably enough, Bob Joyce denied that he was Elvis Presley, just as Peter the Apostle had denied all knowledge of Jesus Christ three times before the rooster crowed on the morning after The Last Supper. Bob Joyce pondered: “Perhaps God is using Elvis’s voice to minister to broken hearts and broken lives. If Elvis were alive, I would say to him, my friend and brother, we are of kindred spirits.

We are one in Christ.” Alright Bob, chill out.

It’s also worth noting that Bob has darker eyes and a gap in his front teeth which Elvis clearly didn’t have unless he had a bit of work carried out down at that dentist’s clinic in Kalamazoo. But Bob seemed more worried and indeed slightly miffed about just how old people imagined him to be. If Elvis had been alive in 2020, he would have been 85 years old, whereas young whippersnapper Bob was a mere 68 years old. He seemed very keen to let everyone know that.

I think we should help him spread the good word. Just be aware that you might be accused of spreading stupid propaganda.

Moving back to 2015, a fascinating news story from the website EmpireNews generated a flurry of fresh interest from the ‘Elvis Lives’ movement when the site reported on a major exclusive scoop: The body of a homeless man found a few weeks earlier was now definitely confirmed to be that of Elvis Presley. All these years, the former King hadn’t been hiding away in Graceland or living the high life in Buenos Aires or Kalamazoo. He’d fallen on hard times and taken to the mean streets of San Diego, California.

The body of the 80-year-old man had been found in an underpass, but it had taken a while for authorities to identify him. All they had to go on was that some of the locals had known the man by the first name of Jesse. The man’s DNA was eventually put through a national DNA database, and the results took the lab technicians somewhat by surprise.

This guy’s DNA was a perfect match to that of Elvis Presley.

The story quickly gained traction on social media, with many Truthers pondering if this was either Elvis himself or his supposedly stillborn identical twin brother Jesse who had found it difficult to find work after his brother had passed on. They should have spent a bit more time checking the reliability of the source, though. Admittedly, this story is a little strange to decipher as it’s not particularly funny or satirical, but it was originally posted by EmpireNews who regularly post completely fictional stories for shits and giggles – or at least “for entertainment purposes only.”

Some of their other popular headlines over the years have included: “College Student Excused from Classes After Dog Eats Grandmother.” “Woman Gets Pregnant After Sleeping in Hotel with Dirty Sheets.” “Man Who Bought a Pair of Dentures on ‘Wish’ Website Can Suddenly Speak Chinese.”

And “Pope Francis Accidentally Holds Up Copy of Vintage Porn Mag Instead of Bible During Sermon.” So I think we can safely disregard this one.

But don’t lose hope. There are still a couple more fairly recent sightings to go before we give up the ghost completely.

Baby Let’s Play House

In 2016, a groundskeeper working at Graceland was captured on a short video which rapidly racked up well over 2 million views on YouTube. The white-haired guy in a bright orange t-shirt and baseball cap doesn’t appear to be doing anything that interesting – for the most part, he just seems to be trying to figure out what to do with a hosepipe. But he has got a little look of an aged Elvis about him.

And some fans have latched onto how he appears to flick a V sign towards the camera, a move which has been interpreted as a signal to his fans that it’s really him. If somebody stuck two fingers up in my direction, I think I’d be less inclined to take it as a vague sign, and more as a direct cue to piss right off out of this guy’s face.

Having said that, I don’t think this new Groundskeeper version of Elvis is actually trying to be rude to anyone, he just happens to be casually scratching the side of his face with two fingers. If Elvis could afford to employ someone to play racquetball with him when he was alive, I feel confident that he could stretch to hiring a groundskeeper when he was dead rather than getting his own cold hands dirty. It’s all academic anyway, as an Elvis fan later managed to hunt down the man in the video for a brief video interview in which it was revealed that the guy was a Graceland employee by the name of Bill Barmer.

Bill had a bit of fun during the interview, slyly brushing two fingers up and down the side of his face as he spoke to give the Truthers another clue to get all worked up about. But much like singing pastor Bob Joyce, he also seemed a bit miffed about the age thing. Whilst he didn’t disclose his actual age, he wanted to make it abundantly clear that he certainly wasn’t in his bloody eighties thankyouverymuch.

Still, it seems that far more people are interested in hearing the conspiracy theory than the definitive debunking. Whilst that original video of the groundskeeper quickly sailed past two million views, the interview with Bob Joyce has stalled at just 378,000, probably because it’s been identified as bullshit propaganda perpetuated by the corrupt media.

But the final major sighting of Elvis has yet to be conclusively disproved which obviously means that it must be true. We’ve already speculated that Elvis may have faked his own death just to get a front seat at his own funeral. And he sounds like the kind of guy who wouldn’t want to miss his own 82nd birthday party either, even if he’s supposed to have been dead for forty years.

After all, there might be birthday cake. Or fried peanut butter sandwiches. And so it was that when an 82nd memorial birthday party was held at Graceland in 2017, it inevitably generated another viral video, this time from a livestream showing a white-bearded man in his eighties wearing shades and lurking in the crowd during a cake-cutting ceremony on the lawn, apparently flanked by an army security guards.

This clip ignited particular interest on the ‘Elvis Presley is Alive’ Facebook group – a group which once boasted over 24,000 members and politely asked of new members “Please don’t come on this page and say that Elvis is dead.” The Facebook group seems to have mysteriously disappeared now, but before it was no doubt shut down by the FBI on the grounds that members were getting too close to the truth, it was a hive of activity when compelling new evidence like this emerged from the shadows. I mean, why on Earth would a supposedly random unknown man in his eighties need quite so much security?

Well, it could be argued that the security guards just happen to be in the same vicinity as this man, and there’s no evidence to suggest that they were on his payroll or were remotely interested in what he was doing. It could also be argued that the guy doesn’t really look anything like Elvis at all. But as the identity of the gentleman has still yet to be confirmed – quite a tricky task considering the vast number of attendees at the memorial birthday event – the Truthers are sticking to their guns on this one for now.

Mostly.

Some of them have veered off into a whole new theory that whilst the chap doesn’t exactly resemble Elvis, this might be because he’s actually singing pastor Bob Joyce who is of course Elvis anyway. But one member of the Facebook group shrewdly observed: “Notice his ponytail? Pastor Bob Joyce does not have a ponytail, therefore this must be Jesse Presley.” Indisputable logic.

Oh hang on a minute, I think I’m starting to come up with my own mad theories now. We already know that one of the reasons why singing pastor Bob Joyce can’t be Elvis is because Bob has darker eyes. But Elvis also had darker eyes when he was being played by his dead twin brother Jesse. So it’s a no-brainer when you think about it.

Singing pastor Bob Joyce isn’t Elvis at all – he’s Jesse Presley. And he turned up to the memorial event to quietly celebrate his own birthday whilst paying respects to his twin brother. He may also have hoped to have a word with someone about getting the name corrected on his own cenotaph. It’s all beginning to make sense in my mind now.

Or maybe I’ve just been thinking about all this for far too long.

But some people have been thinking about this kind of thing for well over four decades now. And considering that most of the evidence pointing to Elvis faking his own death is either utterly ridiculous or can be conclusively disproved, it makes you wonder how the ‘Elvis Lives’ movement ever managed to grow quite so big in the first place and how it managed to endure for quite so long. Or did it?

A Little Less Conversation

Of course, Elvis Presley is not the only high-profile figure in history to ever have been accused of faking his own death. It’s not out of the question that some major celebrity really did manage to fool the whole world into believing they were dead, but the problem is that if they were truly successful, then we still wouldn’t know about it. Or at least most of us wouldn’t know about it. Keep this under your hat for now, but my local pub quiz team is made up of myself, Kurt Cobain, Michael Jackson, Tupac Shakur, and Bruce Lee.

And just for the record, Kurt Cobain is completely bloody useless at sports questions.

But Elvis isn’t quite like any other celebrity. It’s exceedingly rare to witness the levels of love and devotion which have been heaped upon Elvis Presley by truly adoring fans. Yes, other artists and stars can hit massive levels of mainstream popularity but it’s not very often that you see the kind of unadulterated worship that Elvis managed to attract both in his lifetime and after his death. The only other people I can think of who are anywhere even remotely close to the same league are Morrissey, Simon Whistler, and The Bay City Rollers.

And perhaps this goes some way to explaining why so many fans fell into immediate denial and went searching for alternative facts. They just couldn’t believe it or accept it.

It’s not just the fact that their cherished hero had died so suddenly and unexpectedly at the age of just 42. It was the ungraceful manner in which he died. The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll couldn’t have just fallen from a toilet to his death.

It wasn’t supposed to end like this. I’ve often thought that the inelegant death alone is one of the reasons why a faked death just seems so fundamentally improbable. If you were one of the most admired people in the world and you were planning your own fake death, how would you go about writing your official final scene?

You could go for a butch and sporty and glamorous death like maybe a jet-ski accident or something. I think I would like to have gone down in a fictional blaze of glory, perhaps perishing in a fire after successfully rescuing ten dogs, three kittens, and a budgie from a burning 180-storey skyscraper, but not quite managing to save my own skin. But I can’t quite imagine Elvis Presley thinking: “Nah, I’d rather be found face down in front of the toilet with my pyjama bottoms around my ankles.”

There are stacks of other fundamental reasons why a faked death would be highly unlikely. Such a huge conspiracy would have required at least hundreds of people to keep their mouths shut for the next 45 years. And I suppose you would also have to be an absolutely massive bellend to put your millions of fans through all this heartache, whilst leaving your family to pick up the pieces and deal with endless interrogations from the media. If you were really trying to cling to the idea that your hero faked his own death, you’d also have to concede that it was a pretty dick-ish and unheroic move all round.

The fans in early denial found plenty to feed their initial suspicions in the immediate aftermath of the death. Along with the admittedly unconvincing and confusing medical statements and all the stuff about waxwork dummies in air-conditioned coffins, there were also the reports about a black helicopter circling Graceland just before the body was taken to hospital, and the sighting of a lookalike catching a flight from Memphis to Buenos Aires the following day, under the name of a known alias. The problem with both of these stories is that nobody knows the sources.

Some anonymous guy who was never heard of ever again claims he spotted the helicopter, whilst another anonymous guy who was never heard of again reckons he spotted Elvis at Memphis International Airport. There’s not a single scrap of evidence to suggest that a black helicopter was anywhere near Graceland on the day that Elvis died. And the lookalike who was trying to catch a flight from Memphis to Buenos Aires would have been in for a very long wait.

Back in 1977, you couldn’t even book an international flight direct from Memphis.

But it didn’t take too long for those initial waves of stories to largely fizzle out. One of the oddest things about the whole ‘Elvis Lives’ theory is that it hasn’t really burned consistently over the last 45 years – it’s more a kind of thing which dips in and out of trend. The theory had pretty much fallen silent for much of the 1980s.

I mean, I’m sure there was always somebody talking about it somewhere, but it was no longer a topic which generated any mainstream attention. Perhaps now that everyone had been given time to come to terms with the shock news, there was a gradual and reluctant acceptance that Elvis really had left the building. But then it all suddenly sprang back into life in around 1988 when Louise Welling claimed that she’d spotted Elvis buying an electrical fuse in Kalamazoo.

This in turn sparked further supposed sightings which in turn inspired fresh media attention which in turn inspired the hoax ‘Spelling on the Stone’ single which in turn inspired some conspiracy theorists to delve back into history and get all worked up again about gravestones and identical twin brothers. This in turn inspired failed novelist Gail Brewer-Giorgio to jump on the bandwagon and write a book of completely groundless claims that the FBI helped Elvis fake his own death which in turn whipped everybody up into an even bigger frenzy. Quite remarkably, this all pretty much happened in the very same year.

And this newly-revived ‘Elvis Lives’ mania continued to thrive into the first half of the 1990s, by which time the usual sightings of Elvis working as a policeman or in a California grocery store were now jostling for attention alongside wackier news reports of Elvis secretly preparing to run as president, Elvis living in a bunker underneath Graceland, and the discovery of an Elvis statue on the moon. Perhaps it was the increasingly bizarre and unbelievable nature of these later stories which led the ‘Elvis Lives’ movement to get crushed under its own vast weight, as we entered another extended quiet patch which lasted the best part of two decades.

It’s only in relatively recent years that the ‘Elvis Lives’ theory has really come back in vogue again, as a new generation of Truthers make use of their handy camera phones to snap pictures and take videos of old men which can be shared online and discussed with like-minded non-sheeples. They don’t even seem particularly fussy anymore about finding anyone with a genuine resemblance to Elvis. As long as it’s a man who looks like he’s over 40, has white hair, maybe a white beard, and, I don’t know, a face, then he’s a prime candidate to be Elvis Presley.

We’re probably due for another period of downtime fairly soon after the ridiculousness of it all implodes once again, but the good news of course is that the ‘Elvis Lives’ movement can’t realistically keep dropping in and out of fashion forever. Yes, there may continue to be speculation about whether or not he really died in 1977. But the question over whether or not he’s still alive today can surely only have a mortally limited amount of time left to run before the answer becomes painfully obvious even to the most ardently deluded fan.

But then again, if anyone on Earth was destined to live to be at least 750 years old, then it would surely be Elvis Presley. Long live the King. Uh huh huh.

Frequently Asked Questions

What was the official cause of Elvis Presley’s death?

The official cause of Elvis Presley’s death was cardiac arrhythmia due to hypertensive heart disease associated with atherosclerotic heart disease.

Why was there controversy surrounding Elvis Presley’s death certificate?

The controversy surrounding Elvis Presley’s death certificate stems from the fact that it remains sealed until 2027, leading to speculation about what it might reveal.

What was the name of the alias Elvis Presley used when checking into hotels?

Elvis Presley was known to use the alias John Burrows when checking into hotels.

What was the significance of the spelling on Elvis Presley’s gravestone?

The spelling on Elvis Presley’s gravestone spells his middle name with two ‘A’s instead of one, which was a preference of Elvis in his later life.

What was the name of the song that sparked rumors about Elvis Presley being alive in 1988?

The song that sparked rumors about Elvis Presley being alive in 1988 was ‘Spelling on the Stone,’ which was released by LS Records.

What was the name of the book that claimed the FBI helped Elvis Presley fake his death?

The book that claimed the FBI helped Elvis Presley fake his death was ‘The Most Incredible Elvis Story Ever Told’ by Gail Brewer-Giorgio, later renamed ‘Elvis Alive?’.

What was the name of the man who was spotted in a video at Graceland in 2016?

The man who was spotted in a video at Graceland in 2016 was identified as Bill Barmer, a Graceland employee.

What was the name of the man who was spotted at the 82nd memorial birthday party at Graceland in 2017?

The identity of the man who was spotted at the 82nd memorial birthday party at Graceland in 2017 has not been conclusively confirmed.

What was the name of the man who was rumored to be Elvis Presley in disguise as a singing pastor?

The man who was rumored to be Elvis Presley in disguise as a singing pastor was Bob Joyce from Arkansas.

What was the name of the book that claimed Elvis Presley was still alive and living in Kalamazoo?

There is no specific book mentioned in the article that claims Elvis Presley was still alive and living in Kalamazoo. However, there were rumors and sightings reported in the media.

Sources

• Original Decoding the Unknown video: Is Elvis Presley Still Alive?
• Hero image source by Aniol / openverse, cc0.