Following the death of Elvis Presley on August 16, 1977, numerous reports of contact with him began to surface. One set of these reports concluded that he was still alive and for whatever reason had made some random contact with different individuals. The exploration of that hypothesis even became the subject of a prime-time television special on United States television.

At the same time, a number of mediums and other people with some psychic abilities claimed to have contacted Elvis and to have received messages from him in the spirit world. (It is not unusual for mediums to claim contact with famous people who have recently died.) Among the first to claim contact was Milwaukee medium June Young, who claims to have begun receiving messages within days of Elvis's death. She published a magazine, Elvis Still Lives, which included texts of her ongoing contacts.

Journalist Hans Holzer received information on a variety of people with messages, but was most impressed with those received by Dorothy Sherry, who seems to have begun contact in January 1978. The account became the basic story of his recent book Elvis Speaks from the Beyond and other Celebrity Ghost Stories (1993).

Such stories have appeared regularly in the weekly tabloids, among the most recent being a 1995 account of a woman who claimed that she was cured by the ghost of Elvis.

Sources:

Holzer, Hans. Elvis Speaks from the Beyond and other Celebrity Ghost Stories. New York: Dorset Press, 1993.

"I Was Cured by Ghost of Elvis." Sun (January 24, 1995).