We know one famous “Lenin” who was in league with the devil—Vladimir, founder of Communism, genius behind the soulless, murderous Soviet Union and Communism. When Lenin died in 1924, a horrible howl was heard from his room, as if the spirits that he’d served so well had come to take him.
But what about, phonetically, an equally famous “Lennon”—John, as in the Beatles?
Caution here, of course; there can be dark false tales, calumnious ones; myths thrive around “legends.” And a legend Lennon (like Elvis) is.
Let us pray, instead of judge or condemn.
But there was no question of a dark underside. Part light, part dark (like so many of us, before turning to Christ)?
He was killed at the Dakota apartments in Manhattan, where he lived and where a creepy, evil-limned movie, Rosemary’s Baby, was filmed. His assassin heard “voices” directing him to kill Lennon, who himself was greatly interested (with wife Yoko, who would later call herself a witch) in the occult and psychics.
These they befriended and even visited the Dakota for seances. Yoko would later release an album called, “Yes, I Am A Witch.”
Lennon also had at least two “UFO” encounters, including one whereby, in his telling, strange, short “aliens” entered his bedroom.
Lennon’s fame would one day rival and at times surpass that of Elvis Presley, who also had experiences with UFOs, as well as an obsession with parapsychology. In fact the “King” had one of the world’s largest collection of occult books (as did Jackie Gleason).
What goes around comes around; what a web we weave.
This is all by way of introducing the following account on the internet.
Is it valid? We don’t know. Is it interesting? It’s that. At any rate, the post (which we have done our best to check):
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“Did John Lennon Make a Pact with the Devil?”
“Legend has it there are specific places in northwestern England where people can go to sell their soul to the devil. Most of these meeting places are at a crossroads, a traditional rendezvous point, but bridges also feature in the gazetteer of the damned and for many years, the bridge [is this it, below?] on Rose Lane, spanning the railway tracks leading to and from Mossley Hill station [in Liverpool, England, birthplace of the Beatles], has been associated with satanic soul exchanges.
“In the late 1950s, a Woolton businessman with the surname James lost all his life savings in a catastrophic business venture and considered blowing his brains out with a pistol in Sefton Park. He wrote a suicide note to his estranged wife before going to the park with his army service revolver. He put the gun to his head but couldn’t pull the trigger and so he left the park and aimlessly wandered the streets.
“He went to a public house called the Rose of Mossley, which is situated at the junction of Rose Lane and Bridge Road in the Mossley Hill district.
“At this pub, James overheard a curious conversation between two old men. The men were talking about a soldier who had come home after World War II to find that his wife had abandoned him. Not only that, the soldier became ill and ended up suffering from a virulent form of tuberculosis. His condition worsened and he went to ‘the bridge’ at midnight to sell his soul to the devil. The devil duly appeared and in exchange for the soldier’s soul, he gave him twenty years of excellent health and great fortune. The solider was now a wealthy businessman who lived in Caldy.
[SD note: When we checked, 251 Menlove Avenue, famously known as John Lennon’s childhood home, is about 1.5 miles away from the Mossley Hill district in Liverpool. It’s typically a short drive or a pleasant walk indeed between these two spots in Liverpool.]
“Mr. James went over to the table where the two old men were sitting. ‘I couldn’t help overhearing your story about the soldier then,’ he told them, then inquired as to the location of the bridge where the soldier sold his soul to the Devil.
“The old men said the story was nonsense—merely hearsay and rumor—but James was insistent and one of the men took him to the door of the Rose of Mossley and pointed. ‘There, that’s it,’ said the old man, indicating the slight bump in the road which formed the bridge across the railway tracks.
“James lingered in the pub until just before midnight, then walked to the bridge and waited for the devil, but he did not appear. ‘If you can hear me, give me a sign,’ the desperate man supposedly implored, ‘because I want to do a deal with you. Make me rich again for twenty years and you can have my soul in return.’
“A little mongrel dog came trotting across the bridge and stopped a few feet from James, who decided the dog could be the devil in disguise. ‘Is it you?’ he asked the dog and it began barking furiously.
[This rings of legend, but to go on]:
“Then a shadow of a man’s head and shoulders slid along the bridge. James turned and saw what was causing the dog to bark. It was the silhouette of a man with horns and he was well above normal height. James estimated the entity was at least 6’5” and wore a long black coat down to his knees and the toes of his shoes turned upward like those of Persian slippers. The wide, staring eyes radiated pure menace. ‘Twenty years of wealth I will give you in return for your soul,’ he bellowed. ‘Do you agree to these terms?’
“James was trembling. He nodded as the mutt ran as fast as it could off the bridge and into the night.
“’Then say you agree to them!’ the devil prompted.
“’I agree to these terms,’ James replied, but his voice was barely audible because his throat had closed shut in terror.
“‘So be it,’ said the devil, ‘and then I shall collect what is mine.’
“The dark form then turned and vanished and an aroma reminiscent of roasted pork filled the air.
“Overnight, the fortunes of Mr. James reversed. Three days after the deal was struck, he received a windfall when his premium savings bonds were chosen by Ernie, the electronic random number generator at Lytham St. Annes, Lancashire. James’s wife returned to him and after taking her out to dinner one night, they went to a bingo hall where he won £400.
“He went into the scrap metal business and made so much money he sold the business a year later and ventured into real estate. James prospered in every sphere of business and rivals either envied or admired him. A businessman who planned a groundless smear campaign against James involving falsified documents died in a horrific car crash and another man who tried to set fire to a factory belonging to James accidentally burnt himself to death.
“James finally confided to his best friend that his astounding success in everything was because he sold his soul to the devil, advising his companion to do the same.
“Shocked and appalled, his lifelong friend abandoned him.
“The story goes that in the late 1970s, James lost his wife and then one by one, his business concerns went bankrupt. His health declined rapidly and James realized his time was up.
“He intended to turn to Jesus because he feared the devil would soon be calling to collect his soul. Then James suffered a heart attack and the ambulance taking him to Sefton General passed over the bridge in Mossley Hill where the diabolical deal had been struck twenty years before and a strange darkness filled the interior of the vehicle. James’s eyes bulged in terror and he was declared dead on arrival at the hospital on Smithdown Road.
“There’s also a hoary old tale of a young, hopeless musician who sold his soul to the devil on the bridge of Rose Lane.
“According to the story, in December 1960, John Lennon, aged twenty, having heard the weird tales of the ‘Devil’s Bridge,’ became obsessed with the idea of selling his soul to Beelzebub in return for fame and fortune. It was his desire to become a bigger music idol than Elvis Presley, who had ironically been accused of being in league with the devil and playing the fiend’s music—rock and roll.
“Lennon sneaked out of his home at 251 Menlove Avenue, where he was living with his Aunt Mimi, and walked just over a mile through the December snow to the bridge of destiny, arriving there just before midnight.
“The devil duly appeared as a tall shadowy figure with horns and the same uncanny eyes described by James. A bargain was struck. Within three years, millions upon millions of people would idolize Lennon and his band – The Beatles.
“They broke all sales records with their songs and their success would be unprecedented.
“The band was seemingly surrounded by an aura that prompted the youth of the day to erupt into an ecstatic frenzy known as Beatlemania—a term first coined by Professor Rex Makin, a close friend of Beatles manager Brian Epstein.
“Then came John Lennon’s curious digs at Christianity, Jesus, and his disciples. In 1966, Lennon quipped that the Beatles were now bigger than Christ and ‘thick’ was the word he used to describe the disciples. ‘Christianity will go,’ he told a reporter. ‘It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that. I’m right and will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now.’
“Around this time, a musician who was in awe of the global following enjoyed by the Beatles asked John how he could account for his stratospheric success, and the reply he received was shocking: ‘I sold my soul to the devil,’ John [supposedly] calmly replied. [scroll for more:]
“But was this just one of those tongue-in-cheek remarks for which John was famous?
“Personally [says the blog], I believe the success of the Beatles can be explained through a number of mundane factors. They were an exceedingly skilled ensemble of musicians who had earned their apprenticeship with the grueling sessions in Hamburg and both Lennon and McCartney were truly phenomenal songwriters—as Harrison was in later years when he was given a chance to shine.
“Brian Epstein was an extraordinary manager who also shaped the popular image of the Fab Four and George Martin was nothing short of a genius producer—a true fifth Beatle, in fact.
“Then the timing was right. The Sixties themselves were the other hidden ingredient which set the stage for the revolutionary music of the Beatles. Without a doubt, there was a mass change in the collective consciousness of the planet at the beginning of that momentous decade.
“The music of the Beatles was like nothing that had ever been heard before. Lennon once said, ‘Before Elvis, there was nothing,’ but many Beatles fans the world over would also say that before the Beatles, there was nothing. Popular music was a wasteland and some believe the popular music scene has returned to a state of stagnancy in recent times.
“Still, the dark legend of Lennon’s pact with the devil continues to make the rounds. Some who believe in the story will cite strange incidents that seem to suggest there was some sort of supernatural genesis to the Beatles. Take, for example, the cryptic onstage remark John Lennon made after the death of his best friend, artist Stuart Sutcliffe, Wednesday, April 11, 1962.
“John told the audience in Hamburg: ‘Stuart Sutcliffe was a very special human being and a remarkable man. He once told me that he had the ability to see into the future and I for one now believe that Stu was telling the truth.’
“What had happened to convince Lennon that Sutcliffe had the gift of precognition?
“There were rumors that Sutcliffe had told Lennon the Beatles would be bigger than anyone—even Elvis. Sutcliffe had, however, possibly predicted that he would never see that success himself, for he tragically died at age 21 from bleeding in the right ventricle of his brain.
“The legend of the Faustian pact between Lennon and the fallen angel ends with the world-famous rock stars’ being gunned down outside the Dakota Apartments on the night of December 8, 1980—exactly twenty years after [supposedly] making his deal with the devil, when the two decades of world fame and super-fortune expired.”
https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/tom-slemen-column-souls-sale-3402335
Sources: The Lennon Prophecy: A New Examination of the Death Clues of The Beatles by Joseph Niezgoda; and Devilish Deals.
For an account of John Lennon’s ghost at The Dakota, see “The Dakota Apartments: Where the Dead Walk,” under the headings The crying lady and John Lennon Lives! – at The Dakota.
[Footnote: John Lennon famously claimed that the name “The Beatles” came to him in a vision. In this vision, a man appeared on a flaming pie and said to him, “You are Beatles with an ‘A’.” Another legend? On December 8–anniversary of his death–we pray for him, a special day indeed for the Blessed Virgin Mary]
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