John Lennon Was a Victim of the "Rosemary's Baby" Curse
Alien encounters! Secret identities! Satanic curses!
All this and more are part of the dark side of the Beatles, the biggest band in history. You might know their music, but there are a lot of creepy Beatles stories out there you probably don't know. This list highlights some of the strange, disturbing, and at times downright disgusting stories that circulated around the Fab Four.
The Manson Family's murders were committed in a house rented by controversial director Roman Polanski, who had just catapulted to fame with his horror movie classic, Rosemary's Baby. Sharon Tate, one of the victims of this horrendous crime, was married to Polanski, and eight months pregnant when she was murdered by the Mansons. This crime came on the heels of other sudden, shocking deaths and tragedies connected to Polanski's film. Rosemary's Baby, it seems, unleashed a curse that destroyed the lives of numerous people with even tenuous connections to the film. John Lennon was friends with both Polanski and Mia Farrow, the film's star.
The White Album Inspired Charles Manson's Crimes
And he and Yoko Ono lived for many years in the Dakota Hotel, where Rosemary's Baby was filmed (though it was called "The Bramford" in the movie). The gothic building, constructed in 1884, lent itself perfectly to the brooding, oppressive, ominous mood of a movie about Satanists. And the fictional evil of the film seems to have rubbed off on the real building. Because the Dakota Hotel is where John Lennon was murdered by Mark David Chapman in 1980. Chapman, of course, wasn't inspired by Rosemary's Baby or any of The Beatles' music (he was taking his orders from that novel of choice for psychos, The Catcher In The Rye), but maybe it was the evil of the movie's curse that drew him to kill Lennon at that particular location.
The friendship between John Lennon and Roman Polanski was not the only connection between the Beatles and Charles Manson, the mastermind behind the Tate-LaBianca murders that shocked the world in 1969.
Sgt. Pepper Might Actually Be Aleister Crowley
The Beatles' lyrics were an intricate part of Manson's off-kilter theology (he saw them as the four horsemen of the apocalypse mentioned in Revelations 9), and provided direct inspiration for the manner in which his Family carried out the murders.
Rumors have circulated for decades that "Sgt. Pepper" was actually Aleister Crowley, the so-called "wickedest man in the world" (who somehow kept getting called that despite being alive at the same time as both Hitler and Stalin). The Beatles featured Crowley's face among the famous people they admired on the album cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (he's at the top left-hand corner back row, right next to Mae West) and the album itself was released in the 20th anniversary year of Crowley's death ascension to pure ecstasy. So, when the Beatles open the album by singing, "It was 20 years ago today/Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play," they're in fact declaring their allegiance to Crowley's occult and spiritual teachings.
Paul McCartney Might Have Died and Been Replaced by a Doppelganger
John Lennon himself pretty much admitted this in one of his last interviews: The whole Beatle idea was to do what you want, right? To take your own responsibility, do what you want and try not to harm other people, right? Do what thou wilst, as long as it doesn't hurt somebody. "Do what thou wilst is the whole of the Law," was a Crowley teaching (followed by the crucial, and usually ignored, "Love is the Law, love under will"). So, basically, have fun and don't hurt anyone. Which is not bad advice, when you think about it.
"I buried Paul." These are the words many Beatles fans think they hear John Lennon saying at the end of "Strawberry Fields Forever." Lennon maintained that the actual words were "cranberry sauce - because that's totally a thing you say when you're recording a song about your childhood playground. There are persistent rumors going back decades that Paul McCartney was killed in a car crash in 1966 and replaced with a double named William Shears Campbell, an orphan who had recently won a McCartney look-alike contest in Edinburgh.
John Lennon Was an Abusive Hypocrite
At this point, false-Paul believers (called "cluesters") claim, the Beatles began dropping subtle hints of the truth in their music and album art, to slowly break the news to true fans.
John Lennon, the original brocialist, liked to talk a good game in public about peace and love, but behind closed doors, he was physically and emotionally abusive to his family and lovers. To his credit, Lennon admitted much of this about himself in later years, claiming it was the reason he was so keen on the concepts of peace and universal brotherhood.
The Beatles May Have Attended Pedophilia Parties
They were things he aspired to, rather than things he claimed to embody. But that all still wrings pretty hollow when you consider the scope of his pronounced and sustained abuse of others.
Jimmy Savile, the former host of the long-running British music chart show Top of the Pops, was also one of the UK's most prolific child rapists. According to a UK National Health Service investigation, Savile is believed to have sexually abused at least 500 children, some as young as 2, but most between 13 and 15. He also abused numerous adults over 75 at convalescent homes where he volunteered, and allegedly had a thing for corpses, too.
The Beatles Kick-Started the Notorious "Devil Horns" Hand Sign
Back in the early Sixties, Savile frequented a pedophiliac brothel with an unnamed "pop group" in tow, who were themselves suspected of sexually abusing the young girls trapped there. Police reports don't name the pop group, but thanks to their close friendship with Savile at the time, some have speculated that the Beatles are the culprits. It could be pointed out, in the Beatles' defense, that the evidence against them is circumstantial at best, and they were themselves little more than teenagers at the time.
It's universal heavy metal sign language for "you rock!" And also widely considered a symbol of "the beast," the horned man, the devil, or whatever moniker you wish to slap on the dark lord of the underworld that all rock & roll fans secretly worship (admit it). For many years, Ronnie James Dio and Gene Simmons of KISS both claimed credit for having pioneered the hand gesture adored by metal fans around the world. Dio claimed he invented it before joining Black Sabbath in 1978.
John Lennon Was Haunted by the Number 9
Simmons claimed he came up with the gesture as part of his persona as The Demon. (Of course, one or both rockers may have come up with the gesture independently, unaware that they had been beaten to it by a Beatle.)
The number 9 fascinated and frightened John Lennon. It kept turning up in his life at significant events, and he, in turn, used it for numerous songwriting purposes. According to numerology, "9s can end up being egocentric, arrogant, self-pitying, sentimental, discontent, fickle, cold, or mentally unstable." Sound like anyone we know?
John Lennon Had Two Alien Encounters
Seriously, though, the number of coincidental 9s in John Lennon's life is truly mind-boggling, and enough to make even someone who understands calculus give numerology a second look. (And yes, this is the ninth item on this list.)
It keeps coming back to John, doesn't it? Maybe he was just not of this earth. In any case, otherworldly entities seemed to take an interest in him. On two separate occasions, John Lennon claimed to have encountered extraterrestrials. The first one occurred on August 23, 1974, during John's infamous "Lost Weekend" period, when he was separated from Yoko Ono and shacking up with a new girlfriend, May Pang.
Paul McCartney Is a JFK Conspiracy Theorist
John awakened one night - when he was totally sober, of course - feeling compelled to go to his apartment window. There, he saw a flying saucer hovering "no more than 100 feet away" from him. He and May both took pictures, but the pictures showed nothing. Of course. It seems this fly-by wasn't enough for the aliens, though, because they came to see John personally sometime later.
Not to be outdone by his pal John, Paul also has some weirdness in his past. He was an early believer in the conspiracy theory that Lee Harvey Oswald was a patsy for the CIA, JFK's real killers. Paul was first introduced to the idea by Mark Lane, the civil rights attorney whose book Rush To Judgment was the earliest and most credible of the Oswald-didn't-do-it arguments. He'd met Lane at a party, and asked him for an advance copy of the manuscript for Rush To Judgment, because Paul was keenly interested in the case.
A "Wicked Dentist" Tricked the Beatles Into Trying LSD
It seems Lane's evidence convinced Paul, because the Beatle called him a few days later to chat about it, and they went out to dinner to talk about it further. Ultimately, the film's director chose not to involve Paul in the production, but the incident speaks highly of Paul's character, whatever you think about the JFK case. After all, when this occurred, Paul was at the height of his career, and stood to lose a lot by publicly standing with Lane and the JFK conspiracy theorists. But he was willing to risk it, because he genuinely believed in the cause, however kooky it might be.
Most people are at least a little nervous about their dentist, even though most dentists are decent people who would never harm anyone under their care. The Beatles weren't so lucky, however. They had a real jerk of a dentist, if the story about how they discovered LSD is true. John Riley, the dentist in question, was apparently the kind of guy who spiked his guests' coffee with LSD after dinner. Without telling them.
That's what the kids today would call "a dick move." Had he lived long enough, he'd probably have become a fan of roofies, too. George Harrison once called him "the wicked dentist," and it's not hard to see why. The Beatles ultimately enjoyed LSD and used it consensually for years. It's just too bad they were introduced to the powerful drug in such an irresponsible manner.