Chanting and Other Things That Went on in Elvis Presley’s Graceland Bedroom
For more than four decades visitors have flocked to Elvis Presley‘s Graceland estate, but the upstairs of the house has always been off-limits. It was that way for many houseguests when the musician was alive too as only people “invited” could go into his bedroom.
Now, those who lived at the residence and were members of The King‘s inner circle known as the “Memphis Mafia” are revealing just what went on upstairs in the Graceland mansion.
The layout of the second floor of Graceland
Presley’s cousin, Billy Smith, and his wife, Jo, lived at Graceland with the entertainer.
Billy previously described the layout of the second floor where Elvis’ bedroom was telling the website Elvis Australia: “Originally, you went up the stairs and to the left was two huge double doors and they were padded at that time. And you went in and there was two more double type doors. One led to the office, which was his office, the other led to his bedroom and then off his bedroom was his bathroom.
“But before you went through the double doors, if you went around the little hall area, where his dressing room now is, was a bedroom. It was just an extra bedroom and over to the right was another bedroom. Grandma stayed there for a short period of time and then they moved her downstairs after Gladys (Elvis’ mother) died.”
What ‘crazy’ things went on upstairs in Elvis’ bedroom
Billy and Jo said that there were times when they would stay in the bedroom for days without leaving.
“Sometimes [Elvis] would read the Bible,” Jo recalled (per Express). “We could have stayed up there for days and sometimes we did.”
She continued: “Sometimes we would sit in the middle of the bed … and we would have a chant. It was usually Elvis, Linda, Billy and me. We would close our eyes and hold hands and we would have a chant that would be ‘Christ life, Christ love, Christ peace’ and then we would close our eyes and he would say, ‘What do you vision?’ Everybody probably thought we were crazy. He [also] loved numerology and he would look up everybody’s numbers and tell you what your character was, or what it said about you.”
Jo added they also listened to a lot of music and watching movies together. They would even watch the same film more than once if Elvis liked it.
The rock and roll superstar was obsessed with guns
Billy and Jo also remembered that Elvis would always have a gun with him in the bedroom.
According to Jo, “he always kept one on his nightstand” and would sometimes joke around with the gun reaching for it in jest if they disagreed with him about something. Jo laughed: “[We’d say] ‘oh maybe you are right!’”
The Jailhouse Rock star died of a heart attack at Graceland on Aug. 16, 1977.
