‘Elvis is not dead.’ Long live Elvis!

Adam Lusher

For the truth-seeking fans of Elvis Presley, the King of Rock ’n’ Roll, there could hardly be more heartwarming news.

“A big WELCOME to all Elvis Presley fans!” read Tuesday’s Facebook announcement.  “Evidence on this page proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that “Elvis Aron Presley is ALIVE! 

“There will be one post per day with exciting information leading to the fact that Elvis faked his death.

“Wishing everyone a nice day!!!

“Please do NOT come on this page and say that Elvis is dead.”

Thus does the ‘Evidence Elvis Presley is Alive’ Facebook page urge us to ignore the mainstream media doom mongers who still insist Elvis died on August 16 1977, 40 years ago on Wednesday, in the toilet of his mansion Graceland, in Tennessee.

And it has to be said the evidence gathered on the page is pretty conclusive.

On August 8, for example, there is “PROOF THAT ELVIS FAKED HIS DEATH!” — a link to a video making some “interesting points”.

We hear a doctor telling us “I can’t argue with science! Elvis was not in the casket!” – despite some 25,000 people having waited outside Graceland on the day of the funeral to get a glimpse of the King in his open coffin.  And despite the National Enquirer reportedly paying one of Presley’s cousins $18,000 to get a front page picture of the corpse.

 “In order to protect himself and his family from a criminal organisation called The Fraternity,” the video commentary explained, “Elvis Presley arranged things to look as if he had died.”

The real clincher, though, comes in the blurb introducing the YouTube video: “He is a Reptilian Shapeshifter that didn’t change but He also faked his death and fooled a lot of people by doing it…”

Forget such trivial details as the death certificate signed by coroner Dr Jerry Francisco. In the 40 years since he ‘died’, Elvis has been enjoying an active life. He has been spotted working behind the checkout of a California grocery store and as a New York policeman.  And appearing as an extra in an airport scene of the 1990 film Home Alone.

He visited Russia shortly after the Chernobyl disaster of 1986, but was back in the US to be spotted in 1988 in the quiet village of Vicksburg, Michigan, by local woman Louise Welling, who saw him in checkout queue number 2 of Felpausch’s Supermarket, waiting to pay for an electrical fuse. 

Last year, as a sprightly 81-year-old, Elvis was back at Graceland, working as a groundsman to ensure the estate’s 13.8 acres were kept in good order.

It’s pretty clear that some people believe all this stuff. The ‘Evidence Elvis Presley is Alive’ page has received 23,792 ‘likes’ since being set up in 2014.  There was also the Elvis Is Alive Museum in Wright City, Missouri, which between 1990 and its closure in 2007 attracted thousands of visitors, according to curator Bill Beeny, a real estate salesman and Baptist minister.

Claiming to have DNA evidence the King was alive, he made no apology for the poor quality of the replica Elvis that he displayed in a coffin: “It doesn’t look like Elvis, but neither did the guy in the casket”. What seems harder to explain is exactly why people believe Elvis is still alive and why they keep spotting him.

Dr Michael Wood, a University of Winchester lecturer specialising in the psychology of conspiracy theories, said: “If you are a fan of a celebrity. And you like and admire them, perhaps you don’t want to think they are dead.  It might be something as simple as that.”

There were other possibilities, though. “Alternatively,” said Dr Wood, “We have this general tendency to match up the sizes of cause and effect, so we think if something has a large effect, it must have a large cause.

“Diana is a great example: a slightly drunk driver and some aggressive paparazzi – this is not the usual way you think a princess would die.  It’s not satisfying. 

“One of the major psychological drivers of these kind of conspiracy theories is we have this mismatch between size of cause and size of effect.  We can [make them balance] by hypothesising a bigger cause or denying the effect.”

Elvis, if you’re out there, and have access to the internet, the comments section on this story is open.

— The Independent