Hi everyone,
As you read this, I’m beginning a week of Beautiful Possibility research at Northwestern University. I’ll probably share some of what I find in a future update, but meanwhile—
It’s the week before Halloween, one of my favourite nights of the year, when the veil between worlds is thin and magick is afoot. Before I left for Chicago, one of my fellow Beatles scholars lamented that there aren’t many spooky stories in Beatles folklore.
Of course, the whole story of The Beatles is filled with unexplainable “coincidences” and goosebump-inducing magick of the most powerful kind. But my colleague is right — when it comes to Fab lore, goosebumps of the spooky variety are a bit thin on the ground.
There’s the ‘butcher cover,” which is gory and bizarre, but not especially spooky. There’s the whole “Paul is dead” nonsense, which is spooky only in that some people actually believe it. Cynthia Lennon claimed the villa she and John rented in Spain during the filming of “How I Won The War” was haunted, but that story ends up being more beautiful than spooky.1 And then there’s the time the Fabs attempted to contact the dead, which is mostly about George taking the mick and John and Paul falling for it.2
There is one story, though, that seems appropriate to the season of spookiness. It’s from Alistair Taylor, personal assistant to Brian Epstein and later managing director of Apple.
Now before we go farther here, it must be said that despite his platinum-plated Beatles credentials, Alistair Taylor is not a particularly credible source when it comes to the Fabs. Among other dubious claims, Alistair steadfastly maintained, for example, that The Beatles weren’t that interested in LSD and that drugs were not a significant influence on their music, and that Brian’s desire to turn his hand to pop management had nothing at all to do with his erotic attraction to the Baby Fabs’ leather-clad ‘rough trade’ vibe and was instead strictly based on his (non-existent) love of pop music.
But of course, while that sort of creative bending of the narrative is problematic in many ways, it’s also just the sort of thing that makes for a good ghost story.
So let’s suspend our disbelief, dim the lights, and listen to Alistair spin his tale — which takes place in the dark days of the breakup, in the wee hours of the morning, when Alistair was visiting Paul at Cavendish, and the two of them decided to take Martha for a walk… (edited slightly for readability)
We were pretty relaxed but we weren’t drunk. Martha leapt up from the rug by the fire and Paul and I piled into the DB6 and he drove us the half mile or so to the foot of Primrose Hill. We left the car outside London Zoo and went through the fence up the hill…
We enjoyed the spectacular view in the first light of dawn. There was a real freshness in the air as Martha hurtled off in all directions in search of sheep… and Paul and I enjoyed a few stolen moments of the day before the rest of London woke up. At 5.00 am there was so little traffic noise that we could hear some early morning noises from the occupants of the zoo…
‘Look at that dawn,’ said Paul in a whisper. ‘How anybody can say that there is no such thing as God, or some power bigger than us. If you stand and look at that sky, you know there must be more to life than we can comprehend.’
We were totally absorbed in the sights and sounds of the universe in front of us, as if we were the only men in an abandoned city.
Then, suddenly behind us, a stranger appeared. He was a middle-aged man, very respectably dressed in a belted raincoat and he appeared to have come out of nowhere. One second Paul and I were alone, straining to see which direction Martha would come bounding back from, and the next, this man was there.
He said, ‘Good morning. My name is John.’
Paul said, ‘Good morning. Mine’s Paul. This is Alistair and that’s Martha the dog.”
John said, ‘It’s lovely to meet you. Isn’t this wonderful?’ and he walked away.
Paul and I looked at each other and I said, ‘God, that was peculiar.’ I looked round and there was no sign of the man. The stranger had completely disappeared from the top of the hill as if he had just vanished into thin air.
There was nowhere for him to go… he had just evaporated.
Paul and I both felt pretty spooked by this experience. We both thought something special had happened. We sat down rather shakily on the seat.
Paul said, ‘What the hell do you make of that? That’s weird. He was here, wasn’t he? We did speak to him?’
‘Sure. He was here only seconds ago,’ I said.
‘Let’s go home,’ muttered Paul.
Back at Cavendish, we spent the rest of the morning talking about what we had seen and heard and felt. It sounds just like any acid tripper’s fantasy to say they had a religious experience on Primrose Hill just before the morning rush hour, but neither of us had taken anything like that. Scotch and Coke was the only thing we had touched all night. We both felt afterwards that we had been through some sort of mystical experience, yet we didn’t care to name, even to each other, what or who we had seen on that hilltop for those few brief seconds.3
I’ll leave you to make what you will of this story. Keep in mind that if — as Alistair claims — he and Paul were standing at the top of Primrose Hill admiring the view when “John” appeared, then Alistair is correct that there isn’t anywhere for someone to disappear to if they’ve only just stepped away from you seconds earlier.
Until next week,
Peace, love, and strawberry fields,
Faith 👻
PS A special spooky thank you to Beautiful Possibility’s volunteer researchers, who helped even more than usual in putting this update together.
“I loved being in Spain and watching the filming, but the villa we were staying in was damp and tatty. When Maureen and Ringo flew out to join us for a holiday it was the excuse we needed to find somewhere better. We searched out a vast villa with its own pool -- we were told it had once been a convent. No sooner had we moved in than we discovered the place was haunted. Lights would keep going off, objects would move mysteriously and we all felt a strange presence. We planned a party to cheer the place up, but half-way through the evening the electricity was cut off and a huge storm blew up. As thunder and lightning raged outside, we lit dozens of candles in the huge main room. In the flickering candlelight the atmosphere softened and someone began to sing. Everyone joined in and the most beautiful, melodious sound filled the air. It was as though we were totally in harmony, musically and spiritually. After half an hour the lights suddenly came back on and the spell was broken, but it was easy to believe that we had been guided in our song by the spirits of the nuns who had once lived there.” (Cynthia Lennon, John, Hodder & Stoughton, 2005.)
“On board the Royal Iris just before the boys performed on the all-night Riverboat Shuffle. They’re in the second-best dressing room - Acker Bilk had the star’s room - behind the captain’s bridge. We’d heard of something called a ouija board. We knew you turned a glass upside down on a table and somehow it would connect you to the supernatural. So the boys held each other’s wrists to create a magic circle. The only thing we didn’t know was that you had to put your hand on the glass! An interesting question: Where’s Pete Best? He’d probably wandered off somewhere because he never completely jelled with the others. Most likely he was with some beautiful girl below deck. Poor Pete!” (Mike McCartney, Remember: Recollections and Photos of the Beatles, H. Holt, 1992.)
Alistair Taylor, With The Beatles, John Blake Publishing, 2012.
full quote:
“We were pretty relaxed but we weren’t drunk. Martha leapt up from the rug by the fire and Paul and I piled into the DB6 and he drove us the half mile or so to the foot of Primrose Hill. We left the car outside London Zoo and went through the fence up the hill. It was very muddy at the bottom and Paul looked at my footwear and laughed, ‘So much for the man with the shiny shoes.’
We enjoyed the spectacular view in the first light of dawn. There was a real freshness in the air as Martha hurtled off in all directions in search of sheep or, better still, bones, and Paul and I enjoyed a few stolen moments of the day before the rest of London woke up. At 5.00am there was so little traffic noise that we could hear some early morning noises from the occupants of the zoo. It was chilly in the breeze that rustled the kites stuck up in the trees. Paul and I kept strolling around enjoying the experience and keeping warm.
‘Look at that dawn,’ said Paul in a whisper. ‘How anybody can say that there is no such thing as God, or some power bigger than us. If you stand and look at that sky, you know there must be more to life than we can comprehend …’ We were totally absorbed in the sights and sounds of the universe in front of us, as if we were the only men in an abandoned city.
Then, suddenly behind us, a stranger appeared. He was a middle-aged man, very respectably dressed in a belted raincoat and he appeared to have come out of nowhere. One second Paul and I were alone, straining to see which direction Martha would come bounding back from, and the next, this man was there. He said, ‘Good morning,’ politely. ‘My name is John.’
Paul said, ‘Good morning. Mine’s Paul. This is Alistair and that’s Martha the dog,’ as our four-legged friend returned swiftly.
John said, ‘It’s lovely to meet you. Isn’t this wonderful?’ and he walked away.
Paul and I looked at each other and I said, ‘God, that was peculiar.’ I looked round and there was no sign of the man. The stranger had completely disappeared from the top of the hill as if he had just vanished into thin air. There was nowhere for him to go, yet he had just evaporated. Paul and I both felt pretty spooked by this experience. We both thought something special had happened. We sat down rather shakily on the seat and Paul said, ‘What the hell do you make of that? That’s weird. He was here, wasn’t he? We did speak to him?’
‘Sure. He was here only seconds ago,’ I said.
‘Let’s go home,’ muttered Paul.
Back at Cavendish, we spent the rest of the morning talking about what we had seen and heard and felt. It sounds just like any acid tripper’s fantasy to say they had a religious experience on Primrose Hill just before the morning rush hour, but neither of us had taken anything like that. Scotch and Coke was the only thing we had touched all night. We both felt afterwards that we had been through some sort of mystical experience, yet we didn’t care to name, even to each other, what or who we had seen on that hilltop for those few brief seconds.”