The controversal "death" of Jim Morrison
On 3 July 1971, Jim Morrison-lead singer with The Doors, and one of the world's most enigmatic rock stars - died of a heart attack in his bath. Or did he? Every year, fans old and new visit the Parisian cemetary of Pere Lachaise, to see the grave in which he was buried. Or was he? For over 20 years, rumours have been circulating about the possibility that the death of this mystical 1960s icon was a stage - managed sham - that in reality Jim shed his leather - clad Lizard King persona and took on a new identity elsewhere.
Claims regarding this new identity are as varied as they are numerous, as reviewed in "Rumors, Myths and Urban Legends surrounding the Death of Jim Morrison", an absorbing article by Thomas Lyttle in Secret and Suppressed (1993). Some of these stories tell of a mysterious businessman supposedly involved in banking transactions at San Fransico's Bank of America. Others allude to a frequenter of certain controversial bars and night - clubs in Los Angeles. Who is the secretive star of various radio programs in Louisiana? Could Jim be a James - Bond - style intelligence agent with CIA links? According to yet another line of speculation, he is presently working as a minicab driver in Camberley!
Nevertheless, the concept of a faked death is not as outlandish as it might initially seem. Certainly, Jim was weary of his rock - star image, which he felt was responsible for his failure to achieve his aspired status as a serious poet. He had also publicly expresseda desire on many occasions to change his identity, to disappear and reappear as someone different.
But there is more to consider than just the necessary motive and inclination. Why was the media not informed of his death for six days - two days after the funeral itself? Isn't it rather strange that his parents were prevented from seeing his body, and that even his manager, the person who made the official announcement of his death, did not see it? Instead, he saw only Jim's widow Pamela, a sealed coffin
(which a fellow Doors member claimed to be too small to hold Jim's tall body) and a death certificate made out by a local French doctor who has steadfastly refused to give interviews on the subject.
In addition, there was no autopsy of his body, the funeral was attended by just a few very close friends amid intense secrecy, and attempts since then by fans to permission for the body to be dug up and formally examined have always been blocked. As for Pamela, the one person who would certainly know the truth, she died three years after Jim, without releasing any information.
Even those who accept that Jim's death was genuine are in disagreement about its prcise nature. Some discount a heart attack in preference for such diverse alternatives as: a drug overdose; assassination by covert intelligence agencies in the USA or France; death via spider venom used in magic initiation rituals, Jim was fascinated by many forms of occult practices, particularly voodoo; and supernatural murder via long - distance witchcraft perpetrated by a jilted lover in New York!
Thomas Lyttle offered a thought-provoking opinion from Ray Manzarek, Keyboard player with the Doors: "If there was one guy that would have been capable of staging his own death, getting a phony death certificate and paying off some french doctor...And putting a hundred and fifty pound sack of sand into a coffin and splitting to some point on this planet..Africa, who knows where - it is Jim Morrison who would have been able to pull it off."
Jim was famous for his macabre sense of humor: did he have the last laugh after all?
Jim Morrison's statue at his grave in Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris, France.
This information was copied from "The unexplained" by Dr. Karl P.N. Shuker, who is a zoologists, lecturer and writer specializing in crytozoology and animal mythology. A scientist with a longstanding interest in the unexplained phenomena of all kind.
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