OCCULT OBITUARY: John Lennon — Turn Me On, Dead Man
"Let Me Take You Down"....the Rabbit Hole
“Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it.”- John Lennon, 6/6/68
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I always pay extra-close attention to my posts on Facebook that Zuck & Co. shadowban (or delete entirely), and this FB-post-that-expanded-into-a-Substack-essay about John Lennon’s death was a recent one that suffered the fate. So let’s make a bigger deal out of it!
Today is the 41st Anniversary of the ultimate in “Toxic Fandom”: the public murder of singer/songwriter/pop culture icon John Lennon, the “smart” Beatle, in front of New York City’s legendary Dakota Building. The Dakota’s got a long history of weird shit happening in it or around it that’s probably worth its own investigative article someday that I’ll never actually write.
Lennon got shot and killed by a typecast “deluded lone gunman” named Mark David Chapman, yet another three-named assassin like Lee Harvey Oswald, James Earl Ray, John Wilkes Booth, etc. Blobby, bland & bonkers, Chapman was portrayed by Joker jerk-off Jared Leto (who’s totally definitely never killed anyone IRL) in a very bad 2007 biopic and misguided piece of Oscar-bait that fortunately sank nearly without a trace called “Chapter 27.” That’s all we’ll have to say about either of those clowns today.
I was 18 years old and a Theology Scholarship Student at creepy West Virginia Wesleyan College in a remote section of the Mountain State, watching Monday Night Football and probably high af when the late, sometimes-great blowhard sports reporter Howard Cosell told America that John Lennon had been shot and killed. Like 9/11, the Challenger explosion, Michael Jackson’s murd…er, tragic death, and learning that the sweet, adorable, wholesome-seeming, All-American gal I worked with and had a massive crush on was fucking a smelly, skeevy, obnoxious bugman nobody liked, the John Lennon assassination is one of those moments I’ll always remember where I was and what I was doing when I got the bad news.
So that part sucks, but that’s not what this is about. Most so-called “Conspiracy Theories” are dark and suck, too, but occasionally there are some upbeat fun ones. To (de-?)constructively commemorate John Lennon’s death four-plus decades ago, let’s try spinning one of those at 33⅓, just for the secret society gags.
Among my favorite fringe "Conspiracy Theories" that I don't particularly believe but enjoy entertaining the remote possibility of actually being true, is the informed speculation that John Lennon faked his death to get out of the fame rat race (and away from [screeeeeech] vvitchy Yoko Ono?) and disappeared under a new identity and mild cosmetic surgery into remote North America.
People were saying such bizarre things about Lennon’s violent and traumatizing death even way back in the late 90s/early 2000s, to the point where the Village Voice (I think; not sure I remember correctly) wrote a scathing mockery of anybody who would have the gall to suggest it.
Personally, I never bought into it. Nope, never, until…until....
In 2009, during the off-and-on height of the “mockumentary” (fake documentary) craze that followed The Blair Witch Project, there was a movie causing seven hives of buzz on the independent film festival circuit called Let Him Be.
Let Him Be was about a couple of film students who found an old VHS tape of a guy who looked and sounded a lot like an aging John Lennon, singing at a kid's birthday party in a small rural Canadian town. The pair of protagonists try to track him down, and discover....well, I won't give the whole thing away, because I want you to watch it.
I was really looking forward to seeing Let Him Be once it got a general release or went direct-to-DVD, except...it vanished. After winning a bunch of film festival awards, it stopped appearing at indie film festivals. Or anywhere. The IMDB entry disappeared. Trailers on YouTube were no longer there. It was as if the movie never existed.
That was the first time I thought there might actually be something to John Lennon faking his death. Why try to bury this indie film that was obviously a crafty (ahem) work of fiction unless maybe, just maybe, it either wasn't a work of fiction OR was a work of fiction that hit too close to home?
About five years later, Let Him Be started to trickle out into the public domain again. First the trailers re-appeared on YouTube and the movie got re-listed on IMDB. The best song from the movie ("I Was There") popped up on YouTube and a couple other places. Finally, a rough print of the movie got shared on a few Torrent/Pirate sites; though I never, ever pursue piracy in Law of Inversion Land, I made an exception here and bootlegged a copy. It was good, the songs especially. The original music compositions legit sounded like an older Lennon: His voice, his guitar, the sly clever lyricism of his songwriting. Actor Mark Staycer and songwriter Peter McNamee nailed it.
A couple years after that, the movie became available for purchase. Now, you can acquire Let Him Be yourself, but only via the film’s website; best I can tell, there is no other way to view the independent movie. None of the streaming services offer Let Him Be to watch or to buy. There is no corporate-affiliated DVD. There is no marketing or advertising for it. You either stream it or buy the DVD from the one, lone website, or you almost surely don't even know the movie exists.
All this, of course, exactly fits the pattern of how these allegedly Illuminated types roll: Make the Truth available and open to the public, but make it hard to find. The presumption is that "those with eyes to see," will be guided by their inner light to find the things they need to know, while the cattle/chattle/muggles will trudge on, bamboozled and unaware, circling the abattoir before their betters finally decide to lower the boom. “The Culling” or “The Harvest,” as our Occultocracy calls it.
Conversely, however, this is ALSO how psyops work: Take awareness and turn it against itself. So I'm not saying Let Him Be is a genius creative magician's Revelation of the Method, telling you exactly what happened. I'm just saying there are forces working to make people like me (and hopefully now you) consider the possibility.
True or false, I got legit entertainment value out of the not-dead-Lennon psyop. The movie is well-done, if a little slow in spots, and has a bang-on twist at the very end. The songs are good and remarkably Lennon-like. The guy who plays the character who may or may not be John Lennon looks a lot like what a guy who had mild cosmetic surgery to not look exactly like John Lennon would look like.
If you've got a day to dig into this odd tale, you may enjoy the rabbit hole, especially if you're a Beatles fan and especially today.
I watched that doco/movie sometime back, certainly made me wonder. Nothing surprises me anymore.
My late friend Clark Johnsen was the first one who turned me onto the theory that the Dakota doorman, old buddy of Poppy B from the Bay of Pigs days, gunned Lennon down. Yoko walked ahead to be safely inside, possibly to avoid the setup, thanks to Chapman being the distraction.
Curious how all that might fit the faked death theory. But the doco was certainly believable.
Clark's writeup is a bloody good read anyway.
https://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue22/cjdiaries_lennon.htm