Elvis Presley - Elvis lives?

There is a belief in some quarters that Presley did not die in 1977. Many fans persist in claiming he is still alive, that he went into hiding for various reasons. This claim is allegedly backed up by thousands of so-called Elvis sightings that have occurred in the years since his death. Critics of the notion state that a number of Presley impersonators can easily be mistaken for Presley and that the urban legend is merely the result of fans not wanting to accept his death.

Two main reasons are given in support of the belief that Presley faked his death:

* On his grave, his middle name Aron is misspelled as Aaron. Presley's parents went to great lengths to remove the double 'A' on his official birth certificate after his twin brother Jesse Garon was stillborn.

* "Hours after Presley's death was announced, a man by the name of Jon Burrows (Presley's traveling alias) purchased a one way ticket with cash to Buenos Aires."

The Beeny evidence has been the subject of great debate. A comprehensive examination, both for and against, can be found on the EIN site:

On the is Elvis alive theme, EIN has also published "for and against" interviews/articles with Phil Aitcheson (Presley Commission: and the late Dr Gary Enders:

Two tabloid newspapers, the Weekly World News and The Sun, ran articles covering the continuing "life" of Presley after his death, in great detail, including a broken leg from a motorcycle accident, all the way up to his purported "real death" in the mid 1990s. However, since his "real death", the Weekly World News has continued to claim he is still alive, thus contradicting its initial story. In his unconvincing book, Elvis' DNA Proves He's Alive (2005), Bill Beeny claims to have conducted DNA testing on two tissues of Presley--one of the singer when he was alive, and one of the supposed dead body. According to the author, the two did not match. Therefore, he concludes, Presley's death may have been faked.

Both ETAs and the belief that Presley still lives figure into the story of Bubba Ho-tep, which features him living in a Texas nursing home after switching lives with an Elvis impersonator (Presley goes so far as to make a living "impersonating" himself). According to the movie, it was the impersonator who died in 1977, but the documentation of the switch was accidentally destroyed, preventing Presley from ever reclaiming his "real" life.

There was even a "television show about the life and death of Elvis Presley, called 'The Elvis Files' " endeavoring to present " 'evidence' for the possibility that Elvis is still alive. Some people believe that they had seen 'the King', and handwriting experts declare that they have seen notes written by Presley after his demise. A background of spooky music accompanied all of the testimonies." Although "the evidence presented on that program was extremely weak," it convinced 79 percent of the viewers who cast their votes to believe Elvis is still alive. "The results ... offer only one of many examples of the credulity of Western people. ... That television program illustrates that we are weak in our ability to reason. It also offers a paradigm of the way in which many people in the general populace make up their minds. They hear a televised news report or talk show interview with an 'expert'. The expert supplies a few supporting 'facts,' so the proposition must be true."

However, we have the words of the doctors who did the autopsy on Elvis. "Now in an autopsy, the doctor removes and examines the heart, the brain, and various other essential internal organs. To get to these essential organs, the doctor has to do various cuts and incisions. To quote the doctor, 'If he wasn't dead before I did the autopsy, he sure was afterwards!' "