Elvis spottings make for great ghost stories

As Halloween approaches, people love to hear a good ghost story, or any type of story dealing with monsters, the supernatural or politicians who do good things out of their genuine concern for their constituents. Oops. I’m sorry, that last one belongs in the X-Files as a conspiracy theory started by government agents to fool the American public into believing their votes actually count, Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t act alone and Guns N’ Roses will release Chinese Democracy this century.
I’m no exception, although I was more apt to believe them when I was younger than I do now. Back then, I read all sorts of books about these subjects and believed every story in them.
I also believed every story people told me, including one that the restaurant my mother worked at was haunted. This was particularly scary to me because I spent a lot of time there, watching the children of the owner in the upstairs apartment. The owner insisted doors slammed mysteriously, cupboards opened on their own, bathtubs filled themselves and a host of other spooky incidences took place there.
Every noise I heard when I was there, from normal creaking to furnaces starting, scared the bejesus out of me. I was supposed to be the babysitter, but someone else should have been there watching me.
Looking back, nothing strange truly occurred when I was there, except for the New Year’s Eve party in which my mother had too much to drink and was rolling around on the ground laughing. This sight actually terrified me because she had never been drunk in my presence before and I thought something was wrong with her. Now, I wish I could relive the sight just to have a good laugh.
I’m sure the restaurant wasn’t haunted and the owner was full of it, and thinking about the type of individual he was assures me that I’m correct.
The closest I’ve come to a supernatural experience occurred in 1999. A story I was working on about a potential program cut at a school was about to break, and the director of the program told me it would only be cut over his dead body. The following day he was killed in a freak accident.
All my logical reasoning tells me his proclamation and death was just a coincidence. But the part of my brain that believes crazy restaurant owner’s ghost stories thinks the director prophesized his own death. To this day I think twice about making my own death proclamations. I don’t know why his death had to occur, but the program wasn’t cut and today it thrives. I like to imagine he is watching over it with pride from some other world.
Ghost stories like this have been around since people have been dying. The Bible is full of them and “Hamlet” wouldn’t exist without one. But in my opinion the ultimate ghost story is Elvis Presley’s.
Not many people are familiar with this story, but in actuality they are. They are just looking at it wrong. You see, Elvis did die on Aug. 16, 1977, a fact many people dispute because of the numerous Elvis sightings that have taken place all over the world since then. Those sightings weren’t of a live Elvis, though, they were of his ghost. I believe I’m the first person to look at it this way, and hopefully by giving people a different perspective they might see I’m right.
Elvis has been spotted hundreds of times, shopping in supermarkets, Wal-Mart and other everyday places. Do people actually think the real Elvis would go to any of these places? Only if he could rent it for himself late at night out of the spotlight, like he did for movie theaters and amusement parks when he was alive.
But Elvis’ ghost would probably enjoy going to these places to see what life out of the spotlight was like. It would also enjoy making people think he was alive.
Elvis’ ghost would also enjoy making the women of his generation swoon with anticipation of his return. Someone I knew had a book that claimed Elvis wasn’t dead and he would make his public return on the 10th anniversary of his “death.” This person believed the author and was devastatingly disappointed when Elvis didn’t return. His ghost definitely had a good laugh with that little ruse.
Elvis’ ghost will probably haunt me now, since I’m spilling its secret. But I won’t be one to say he’ll only haunt me over my dead body. If he wants to haunt me, I’ll let him.