 Ads heard during the podcast that are not in my voice are placed by third-party agencies outside of my control and should not imply an endorsement by Weird Darkness or myself. Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and is intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised. The 1960s were strange and heady times for popular culture. Mind-expanding music, films and substances were spawning some crazy ideas and none were crazier than the story of a legendary musician and the mystery surrounding his true identity. Paul McCartney has been one of the most famous people in the world for over 50 years. First as one-quarter of the greatest pop band in history, The Beatles, then for a successful 40-year solo career featuring a string of hit singles and albums. The Beatles' expansive music and surreal lyrics had always inspired theories and speculation amongst their fans. But by the height of their fame in the late 60s, a weird rumor was beginning to move from college campuses to the mainstream media. The band's bassist and joint songwriter Paul McCartney was dead. This came as news to Paul McCartney himself, who in 1969, when the stories of his death reached fever pitch, appeared to be walking around alive and well. But what was the man going by that name truly the same Paul McCartney who first charmed film-goers with his fellow bandmates John Lennon, Ringo Starr and George Harrison in 1964's classic A Hard Day's Night? Was the man walking barefoot across the Abbey Road crossing in the most famous album cover ever produced really the same man who wrote pop classics like I Wanna Hold Your Hand and Yesterday? Apparently not, as far as the conspiracy went. I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained. Coming up in this episode, it's one of the strangest conspiracy theories ever created by Mortal Man. Was Beatles legend Paul McCartney killed in 1966 and replaced with a look-alike? We'll look at the evidence for and against this bizarre rumor. If you're new here, welcome to the show. While you're listening, be sure to check out WeirdDarkness.com for merchandise, my newsletter, to win our contests, to connect with me on social media. Plus, you can visit the Hope in the Darkness page if you're struggling with depression or dark thoughts. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the Weird Darkness. The central tenet of the Paul Is Dead theory was that sometime in late 1966, McCartney was killed in a tragic car accident. Determined not to end the most profitable and successful band in history, the management drafted in a look-alike to masquerade as the deceased Beatle and keep the money-making juggernaut intact. As weird as it may have sounded, proponents of the theory managed to find dozens of inexplicable references in the Beatles' songs and album covers following Paul's supposed demise that appeared to be hinting that something really had happened to the bassist. Was Sargent Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band a coded confession of the truth? Did the walrus from I Am The Walrus, who John identified as Paul in his song Glass Onion, represent death? And why, if you played the White Album's track Revolution Nine backwards, could you hear the words, turn me on dead man? Whilst some of the musical analysis looks fanciful, according to believers, the photographic evidence clinches their case. The McCartney of the late 60s, they argue, of Sargent Pepper and Abbey Road fame is clearly not the same man of the early and mid-60s, the era of please please me and help. Paul certainly does appear to look different in some photographs between these two parts of the 60s, but were these differences merely the natural changes in a young man's face as he fluctuates in weight and grows older, or something more sinister? Advocates of the Paul Is Dead theory maintain that the photographic anomalies are because we're looking at two different men, one of the original Paul of the early 60s and the other is replacement, a McCartney lookalike named variously William Campbell, William Shepard and Billy Shears. The first rumblings that something may have happened to Paul began in December 1965 when he was involved in a much publicized moped accident whilst visiting his family in Liverpool. The injuries sustained in the crash, especially Paul's broken tooth, are clearly still evident in the videos for Rain and Paperback writer filmed in May 1966. Another accident occurred on the 7th of January 1967 when McCartney's black mini-cooper was written off in a crash on the M1 near London. However, the official story was that the car was being driven by a student named Mohamed Hajji at the time, not McCartney. It seems these two relatively mundane incidents were becoming mangled across multiple retellings, spawning the far more sensational rumor that Paul had actually died in a car accident. Shortly afterwards, Beatles Monthly Magazine attempted to squash the gossip by issuing a false report about the latter accident, dismissing any notion that there had been a crash at all and stating that not only was Paul alive and well but his mini-cooper car was also perfectly intact. Was this false story designed to hide the tragic truth that Paul had really died? Whatever the truth, the Beatles story always unfolded in fast forward and the two episodes were quickly forgotten amidst a torrent of other tabloid stories about the exploits of the fab four. Apart from the odd piece of drug-fueled chatter during swinging London parties, the rumors about McCartney did not reemerge again until 1969, when the whole idea that Paul was dead took off in sensational fashion, gaining such credence in the mainstream media that it even spawned an extraordinary mock trial on American television prosecuted by famous attorney F. Lee Bailey. Much of the initial credit for the Paul is dead theory belongs to a student at Michigan University called Fred LeBour. LeBour began to write about the idea in late 1969, initially inspired by a program on local radio where a Beatles fan named Tom Zarski had phoned in claiming not only that Paul McCartney was dead but that a sinister clue to this was hidden in the White Album Track Revolution 9. Following the caller's instructions, the ducky at Michigan's WKNR FM Russ Gibb played a portion of the song backwards live on air, stunning his listeners by revealing the apparent secret message, turn me on, dead man. The Bower's subsequent article for the Michigan student newspaper, McCartney Dead, new evidence brought to light, cemented many of the key facets of the legend. Detailed were Paul's death in a car crash during the recording of Sergeant Pepper in late 1966, the clues left in the album covers, the backward messages in the band's songs, and the imposter William Shepard. From here was born the whole feverish Paul is dead craze of 1969, which prompted obsessive dormitory analysis of every second of the Beatles' music from more clues, more speculation in the press, and the aforementioned TV trial of the incredible theory on American TV. Paul himself was even put into the Kafkaesque position of being called out in the national media to prove he was alive. As is necessary for any good conspiracy, suspicious death events were also added to the brew, with the untimely early demise of such prominent Beatles-related figures as their manager, Brian Epstein, Roddy Mal Evans, and even John Lennon himself, all linked to the plot. Were they taken out to prevent them revealing the dark truth about Paul? Of course, most sensible people dismissed all of this as wild nonsense. The band had already admitted to deliberately putting gibberish references in their songs to tease fans and mind-bending theories about the increasingly psychedelic and cryptic output to musicians like the Beatles was rife throughout the 60s. Such ultra-speculation, critics argue, was the inevitable consequences of fandom and press desperate for any scrap of news about the Beatles. Once the real news ran out, the temptation to start inventing new news must have been overwhelming for journalists knowing anything fab-for-related would sell more papers. Some even suspected the Beatles themselves were behind the rumors, deliberately concocted as a way to bolster album sales. Although, as the most successful band in history who continually broke sales records, it doesn't seem like they really needed the extra PR. Most of the evidence offered up was so subjective and tendentious that it could prove nothing either way. But what of the incredible claims of two Italian forensic scientists, who in 2009 studied photographs of McCartney during the 60s and concluded the man claiming to be the famous musician post-1966 was not the same fresh-faced mop-top who sang Love Me Do in 1963? Could the most outlandish of 60s conspiracy theories actually be true? Is Paul dead? We'll look at the reasons the conspiracy might be true next on Weird Darkness. Sometimes you feel a bit nutty, especially if you're a weirdo. If that feeling transfers to your taste buds as well, I've got some great news for you. Weird dark roast nutty mummy coffee. Wrap your taste buds around this medium dark roast blend with shrouds of almond, honey, and chocolate. Each bag of nutty mummy is exclusive to Weird Darkness and is roasted to order, then bandaged, I mean, bagged specifically for you to ensure a maximum freshness for you, your mummy, and anyone else you share it with. Entomb your old coffee and bring your taste buds back from the dead with Weird Dark Roast Nutty Mummy at WeirdDarkness.com slash coffee. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash coffee. Whilst the idea that Paul was replaced with a look-alike sounds like the far-fetched plot of a comic book, there is in fact a long documented history of the use of doubles and politics, espionage, and entertainment. Hitler and Stalin employed multiple doubles, both as a decoy in case of assassination attempts and simply to do the mundane legwork of a busy dictator in the era before mass communications. Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein took the idea to a new level, routinely utilizing look-alikes to disguise his true whereabouts, especially as his paranoia grew in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War. By the time he, or perhaps one of his doppelgangers, was captured by US troops in 2003, it's thought he may have used more than a dozen look-alikes in the preceding decade. Perhaps the most famous case of a double in modern times involved British World War 2 general Bernard Monti Montgomery. Soldier M. E. Clifton, who bore a strong resemblance to Montgomery, was recruited by British intelligence to act as a decoy for the general. Clifton then made trips to Gibraltar and Algiers in the guise of Monti, specifically to be seen and trailed by German intelligence so as to mislead them about the Allies' invasion plans. In the sphere of entertainment, impersonator Michael Clayton bore such an uncanny resemblance to comedian and actor Robin Williams, he was able to successfully pose as the star and attend events and gigs using Robin Williams' identity. By 2005, Williams would be forced to sue Clayton in order to stop the deception. In 1968, hundreds of excited Andy Warhol fans attended his much-publicized speaking tour of American universities. What most of them didn't realize until the hoax was exposed after the fact was that it was not Warhol they had paid to see, but an actor and official double, Alan Midget. In the world of music, a homeless man named Christopher Dickinson successfully passed himself off as former kiss drummer Peter Criss for a time in the 1990s. Dickinson was living on the streets in Santa Monica where he began claiming to be Criss, convincing a string of prominent celebrities and kiss fans to rally around him and get him back on his feet. This came as a surprise to the real Peter Criss, living happily with his wife and daughter and somewhat taken aback at the rumors he had fallen on such hard times. Criss would later have a memorably surreal confrontation with his imposter on the Phil Donahue show where he asserted his bona fides as the genuine kiss star. In the light of these and many similar stories, is it really so unlikely that the Paul McCartney we see today is an imposter? Of course, such a prospect would far outstrip all other documented examples of doubles in history, both for its duration and the intense scrutiny it has had to withstand. This fake Paul would now be in his mid-70s, meaning he has spent far longer in the part than the original Paul McCartney ever did, all the time as one of the most photographed, filmed and studied men in history. Is there any evidence amongst this vast catalog of documentary evidence to back up the incredible theory? There were many thousands of photographs taken of McCartney during his 1960s heyday in the Beatles. If the rumors that he was replaced with an imposter in 1966 are really true, then there must be evidence for it in at least some of these images. Paul is dead theorists point to late 1966 and early 1967 as the first appearance of the fake Paul, or fall, as they call him. During this time, McCartney seems to rapidly lose the round slightly chubby face he had in the early 1960s and sport a longer, slightly gaunter, more angular visage. Was this too many late nights partying and taking drugs, catching up with the singer, or an obvious indication that he had been replaced with William Shepard, a lookalike who was thinner than him? Other details appear to set the two eras of McCartney apart. The 1967 Paul had thinner lips and a longer, thinner nose, as well as flatter, less arched eyebrows. Most tellingly, the latter McCartney seems to sport detached ear lobes, whereas the earlier models are attached. Barring some unknown surgical procedure or accident, it's not clear how this could be the case. Proponents of the theory also point to other photographs showing the 1967 Paul to be noticeably taller than his predecessor. Pictures taken of the singer with his long-term girlfriend Jane Asher in 1967 appear to show Paul several inches taller than Asher. Similar side-by-side shots of the pair from before 1967 show Paul to be much closer in height to the actress. Amateur photo analysis is, however, a dangerous business. People can look very different in different pictures for a whole variety of entirely natural reasons. Countless other factors, such as the lenses, lighting, perspective, and cropping, can also make a photo look unusual and anomalous. For this reason, Paul's dead advocates point to the startling conclusions of two Italian forensic scientists to bolster their claims. In a 2009 Wired Italia article, Francesco Gavazzini and Gabriella Carlesi conducted a biometric analysis of images taken of the Beatles both before and after 1966, for what was originally intended to be a piece debunking the conspiracy theories. To their surprise, the scientists found measurements of the shape of the skull and jaw, the curve of the jaw, the ear, palate, and teeth displayed marked differences between the Pauls, leading them to conclude with a high degree of probability that they were, in fact, two different men. The mandibular curve between the two sets of photos showed a discrepancy of over 6 percent, well beyond the threshold of error, but there was more before 1966, each side of the jaws composed of two curves. Since 1967, it appears to be a single curve, the article explained. Gavazzini and Carlesi outline several other significant morphological differences in Paul's lips, eyes, nose, and teeth. Too many, they say, to be down to the natural fluctuations you would expect between different photos of the same person. As convincing as this may seem, there are some major caveats. Whilst Carlesi is a specialist in craniometry and odontology, Gavazzini is actually a computer scientist with no special qualification in facial anthropology. Forensic science itself is somewhat of a misnomer. It's not a hard science, but a highly subjective one, heavily dependent on the interpretation of the individual specialist. Any high-profile murder trial will have two teams of forensic experts testifying to often tangentially opposite conclusions based on the same evidence. Clearly, at least 50 percent of them must be wrong. Of all the evidence offered for the Paul is Dead theory, perhaps what has most captured fans' imaginations since 1969 is the analysis of the various clues that appear to be hidden in the Beatles' music and album covers. From secret messages that can only be heard when the band's songs are played backwards to cryptic references in the album covers, theorists have pointed to dozens of subtle and not-so-subtle hints in the Beatles' output that seem to be suggesting something terrible had happened to Paul. The first record alleged to feature the replacement McCartney was 1967's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band, said to contain a plethora of clues and references to the original Paul's recent death. Much heralded as one of the first successful concept albums, it saw the Beatles taking on the guise of the eponymous Sgt. Pepper band. Was this a direct reference to them leaving the old Beatles, featuring the now dead McCartney behind? On the album's cover, the new Beatles, and their psychedelic outfits, can be seen standing in front of what looks like a grave with the band's name depicted in flowers. Alongside the name is a wreath in the shape of a left-handed guitar, the same orientation the original Paul famously played. Directly below the central figure of Paul is the word Hearts written on a bass drum. When a mirror is placed horizontally dividing this word in half, it reads, He Die. Could this really just be a spooky coincidence or the product of overactive imaginations? And what to make of the reverse cover of Sgt. Pepper, with the image of the four Beatles and their elaborate costumes with only Paul of the band standing with his back to the viewer? There's no obvious reason why only Paul is singled out like this, but as we shall see, it would become a recurring theme in future releases. Beyond the cover, Sgt. Pepper makes extensive use of studio technology to create complex soundscapes using multi-tracked vocals and backward masking. Whilst it was not uncommon for musicians of the era to use backwards vocals, the Beatles themselves used them before on singles like Rain. Fans believe Sgt. Pepper marks the start of a whole series of specific references to Paul's death in the band's music. Does John Lennon's track, Strawberry Fields Forever, have him backwards singing cranberry sauce, as the official biographers tell us, or eye-buried Paul, as Paul is dead theorists maintain? The closing track, A Day in the Life, is often regarded as Lennon and McCartney's finest collaboration, but does the lyric he blew his mind out in a car reference Paul's decapitation in a fatal crash during the album's recording? 1967 proved to be incredibly fruitful creatively for the Beatles, with or without the real Paul, and their success continued with Magical Mystery Tour later in the year. Originally released as both double EP and a Christmas holiday TV special, the surreal psychedelic work has reaped rich rewards for Paul is dead proponents in search of more evidence for their theory. John Lennon's I Am the Walrus, with its nonsense Lewis-Carol-esque lyrics, was always rife for interaction, and Paul would quickly become identified by fans with the walrus of the title. Lennon playfully encouraged such rumors on his follow-up track Glass Onion, in which he teases, here's another clue for you all, the walrus was Paul. It's frequently cited in the Paul is dead conspiracy theories that this was a dark hint about Paul's fate, as walruses are often used as symbols of death in folklore. Whatever the case, Paul became so identified with the animal that he would be invited to play one twenty years later in the video for George Harrison's When We Was Fab. The video for Paul's song Your Mother Should Know contains what would become a running theme in the Beatles remaining albums, the singling out of Paul as somewhat different to his fellow bandmates. In the video, staged as an old school song and dance number, John George and Ringo are in tuxedos with a red rose on the lapel. Somewhat incongruously, Paul sports a black rose instead, a flower more closely associated with death. What's interesting about this particular clue is that Paul went out of his way to specifically deny it had any significance at all. In a 1969 life interview, he dismisses the strange disparity with a mundane explanation. During filming, they had simply run out of red flowers, so he had to use a black one. For some reason, as yet unknown, it looks like Paul's lying about this. McCartney was actually the uncredited director of the entire sequence in which he is clearly seen being handed a huge bouquet of red flowers whilst sporting the discordant black flower on his lapel already. He could not therefore be a shortage of props, as he claimed, only a deliberate choice. There wasn't much for fans to dissect on the cover of their next release, 1968's The Beatles, with its all-white cover, but the sprawling double-album features several more instances of backwards vocals. Revolution 9, much mocked as the most skipped song in music history and perhaps the only track played more often backwards than forwards, seemed to be the Rosetta Stone of Paul's dead mythology. While Stitt admittedly takes some imagination to hear, one segment of Revolution 9 played in reverse does sound very much like Turn Me On Deadman, which to fans looked like a reference to Paul, who famously sang, I love to turn you on, in A Day in the Life, the previous year. Another song on the album, Lenin's I'm So Tired, ends with a piece of spoken gibberish that theorists believe says Paul is a dead man, miss him, miss him, when played backwards. Whilst the rare self-penned Ringo effort Don't Pass Me By has the drummer singing about a lost friend who died in a car crash, just as Paul was said to have done. Moving on to 1969, the band released Abbey Road with its iconic Lane McMillan photograph of the musicians crossing the street near London's Abbey Road Studios. Coinciding as it did with the growing rumors about Paul's death reaching critical mass, fans voraciously scoured the cover for more clues. As was becoming customary, Paul is again depicted different to the other Beatles, being the only one of the four walking across the road barefoot. Was this, as many suggested, a reference to the traditional practice in many cultures of burying the dead barefoot and another hint from the band that Paul was in fact dead? Further to the idea, in the background of the shot is a parked VW Beetle car with a number plate containing 28IF. Could this be another hint from the band about Paul, the Beetle who died in a car crash and it would have been his 28th year if he had lived? To complete the theme of death, McMillan frames the man in a way that resembles a funeral procession with Ringo even dressed uncannily like an undertaker for added measure. The album cover of Let It Be, the band's final release in 1970, again singles out Paul for special attention. Whilst John, George and Ringo are all looking leftwards on a white background, Paul is staring directly at the viewer, framed by a red backdrop. Is this yet another reference to the bloody demise of the original McCartney in 1966? Many Beatles fans love to play armchair detective about all of this, without ever really believing it. Beyond treating the musician's output as a series of puzzles to be solved, how credible was the scenario, really? If Paul had been killed in an accident, could they have replaced him with someone who not only looked just like him but had the same musical talent? Was there such a man waiting in the wings, ready to take over and pass himself off as the real Paul? Well, here's another clue for you all. In the early 60s it was common for session musicians to exploit popular acts by quickly recording cover versions of their songs and releasing them in the guise of fake bands. The Beatles, with their massive international success, suffered from this more than anyone. One such fake band, the intriguingly named Billy and the Pepperpots, released a couple of Mersimania albums in 1964, three years before Sgt. Pepper. The albums were a mix of Beatles covers and Beatlesque original songs. The author of these original songs, Juan Bill Shepherd. When Weird Darkness returns, we'll look at the reasons against the Paul is Dead conspiracy. Up next. To what lengths will someone go in order to survive? Does the survival instinct override their conscience and allow them to commit not only murder but also the taboo act of cannibalism? What happens when a person crosses the line from dark fantasy to real-life acts of brutal rape, murder, and cannibalism? Are these people driven by a desire so insatiable that they're incapable of controlling it? Murderous Mind's volume three stories of real-life murderers that escape the headlines is the latest offering in a series that takes you inside the lives of killers who committed cold-blooded murder for a glimpse at events that drove them to kill. Authored within a historical context, each chapter is an unbelievable venture inside the dark and twisted world of real cannibal killers whose names and crimes might not be familiar to you. By weaving a tale in which dark fantasies become reality, this audiobook invites you to see life from a perspective few ever witness, from that of the killer. Along with a historical look at cannibalism through the ages, these stories beg the listener to answer the question, was the murderer committing cannibalism because he was incapable of resisting the urge to kill and consume or is the explanation simply pure evil? Murderous Mind's volume three, written by Ryan Becker and Curtis Giles Vasey, narrated by Weird Darkness host Darren Marlar. Hear a free sample on the audiobooks page at WeirdDarkness.com. Although now chiefly associated with the internet, the phenomenon of fake news and celebrity death hoaxes is by no means new, with classic era stars as diverse as Charlie Chaplin, Frank Sinatra and Doris Day subject to unfounded reports of their death at one time or another. In 1966, the year the first Paul is Dead whispers emerged, his contemporary, Bob Dylan, was at the center of a very similar story that he had died in a horrific motorbike crash and replaced with an imposter less critical of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. The origins of many of these rumors are obscure. If not a mix of garbled, misreporting and Chinese whispers, then perhaps somebody's idea of a joke. And in almost all cases, they quickly fizzled out after it had become apparent the star in question was indeed alive and well. What sets Paul is Dead apart is how enduring it has proven to be. Even today, subjects of hundreds of YouTube videos and internet articles, many of them produced by people who weren't even born when the speculation first spread like wildfire through college campuses in 1969. Crucially, it also differs from most of the earlier rumors by having a very clear provenance. We can trace most of the Paul is Dead stories back to their source and by doing this, see an obvious urban legend being constructed. The canonical version of the story that during the recording of Sergeant Pepper in late 1966, Paul McCartney died in a car crash and was replaced by a lookalike was largely made up by a 21-year-old student journalist at Michigan University called Fred Labour. Labour had been amused by talk on local radio about supposed backward messages hidden on the Beatles' records and decided, as a creative exercise, to run with the idea and spin out the whole incredible tale. Little did he know what he had intended to be a joke would become one of the greatest conspiracy fables of all time. Most of the purported facts in Labour's October 14th Michigan Daily News article weren't even rumors that he heard but things he simply invented to add more color to his article. It was Labour who devised the idea of a lookalike named William Campbell, Bill Shepard in other versions of the story, replacing McCartney, and Labour who invented the much-repeated idea that the walrus, as in, the walrus was Paul, is a Greek symbol for death. Outside of the writer's imagination, it isn't. The young writer was astonished when his little spoof quickly exploded out of the confines of his student paper and started being covered as a serious story by national media giants like Time and Life. Labour had inadvertently created a monster which was now trampling its way around the global press. As the frenzy erupted, Labour was invited onto the RKO TV special in which the theory was subjected to a mock trial led by lawyer F. Lee Bailey, but by this point he had become somewhat daunted by how his joke had seemingly taken on a life of its own. I told Bailey during our pre-show meeting that I'd made the whole thing up, Labour told Michigan Today in 2009. He sighed and said, well, we have an hour of television to do, you're going to have to go along with this. I said okay. Labour remains philosophical about the fact many of the things he'd made up as a college student 50 years ago are now reported on the internet as fact. Like it or not, the rumor will be with us as long as the Beatles are with us. All four of the Beatles repeatedly rubbished any idea that they had put these secret references in their albums, putting it down to the overactive imagination of their fans. Paul himself still has to regularly field questions about whether he is dead or not, including an appearance on the Letterman show in 2009 where he laughed off the theory as down to the fame and the craziness. Lenin, whose lyrics are central to many of the Paul is Dead theories, admitted on many occasions he was simply making it all up. I threw the line in, the walrus was Paul, just to confuse everybody a bit more, he explained in a 1980 interview with Playboy. I was having a laugh because there'd been so much gobbledygook about pepper. Play it backwards and you stand on your head and all that. Some of the Beatles' own denials might best be taken with a pinch of salt, however. John is also on the record as saying his Sergeant Pepper track Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds had nothing to do with LSD, despite its initials spelling out the word and its content sounding decidedly influenced by the drug. It's difficult to imagine a more unlikely place to keep a secret than the music scene of the late 60s, especially one as mind-boggling audacious and elaborate as switching one of the world's most famous men with a double. Unlike the other Beatles, Paul spent the height of the swinging 60s living in central London and was a regular fixture at hundreds of nightclubs, concerts, and art happenings. During this time, his social and professional circle was vast, from a plethora of other musicians, celebrities, and artists to countless peripheral associates and hangers on. Despite the near endless supply of words written by those who had a brush with the various Beatles during this time, not a single person has ever come forward with any suspicions that McCartney was anyone other than who he was claiming to be. Not even those that saw him virtually every day for years, friends, family, or professional colleagues, has ever vouched the slightest suspicion that the person they knew well had suddenly become someone else. Anyone who genuinely knew McCartney and suspected the switch would be assured vast sums of money from the tabloid press for their story, many before them had for far less sensational tales of the Fab Four, yet nobody ever did. It would take some immensely complex operation, involving thousands of people under lifetime secrecy agreements for this conspiracy to still be intact today. And to what end? The Beatles broke up nearly 50 years ago, a beloved part of our popular culture but no longer any kind of active outfit. What difference would it make now if it came out that they had replaced their basest with a look-alike in 1966? There is, however, a far more sinister variation on the conspiracy theory. Is the continued cover-up about Paul's death because it was a psi-op of some kind perhaps designed to steer our popular culture in a certain direction or shape young people's attitudes to drugs? If that is the case, then the abilities of the dark forces that create our reality are all-encompassing. If they can replace prominent public figures and keep an airtight cover-up about it for 50 years, then it is a truly scary prospect as to what else they might be doing to manipulate our perceptions of the world. There aren't many artists in popular music who could rip through a throat shredding rock-and-roll song like She's a Woman as well as Paul McCartney. Fewer still had the vocal delicacy to do justice to love songs like Here, There and Everywhere, and how many could also have written those songs. Both were recorded before Paul's alleged death in November 1966 and they're regarded as classics of popular music. This Paul's skills as a vocalist, writer and multi-instrumentalist are widely heralded. It was always the most fantastical part of the whole theory that the conspirators were able to produce someone who not only looked exactly the same as the now deceased McCartney, but improbably possessed the same high level of musical talent as well. If Paul really is dead, then the man belting out the later Beatles tracks like the rip-roaring Oh Darling from Abbey Road or whose lilting vocals lent Hey Jude and Let It Be So Much Of Their Power is at least as equal. Paul's highly distinctive bass playing so influential on generations of subsequent musicians is also perfectly mimicked by his replacement. Do you need to be a Beatles fan to appreciate how absurd this is? Everyone who ever fell in love with the band from those giddy early days in 1963 to their bitter breakup in 1970 feels like they know the fab four like family. Almost every second of their lives in that seven years of concentrated fame was recorded on film or recorded for us to endlessly analyze. Beyond the inherent far out nature of the Paul is dead theory, true fans know in the hearts that the Paul of She Loves You and Hard Day's Night is the same Paul of Let It Be and Maybe I'm Amazed. It doesn't matter what esoteric references and obscure clues appear on the internet. The personality, the music, the voice, it's undoubtedly the same man. To entertain the idea that it's an uncanny double is to enter a far more surreal world than anything the Beatles themselves conjured up even at the height of their psychedelic period. The Beatles themselves often reflected on the metaphysical and that's a suitable place to end this magical mystery tour. Whoever the man is who continues in his mid-70s to entertain millions of people around the world in exhausting three-hour concerts is the real Paul in any sense that really matters. At one McCartney concert during his U.S. tour of 2002, a man in his 40s can be seen openly weeping at Paul's brilliant rendition of All My Loving, a song he wrote way back as a 21-year-old in 1963. Like all great music, it had triggered evocative memories of the man's past, his loves both present and lost. This is what Paul's music means to millions of people around the world. There is nothing fake about this man's tears, nor McCartney's performance. The singer's voice may now be diminished by age, but what remains so beguiling about McCartney's music is the fact we know this still vital old man before us is the same bright light that lit up the world all those years ago in the dark days following the assassination of President Kennedy. Paul is dead? Not at all. Paul is very much still alive. And, like all the Beatles living in dead, he always will be. At WeirdDarkness.com, Darren is D-A-R-R-E-N. WeirdDarkness.com is also where you can find all of my social media, listen to free audiobooks I've narrated, visit the store for Weird Darkness T-shirts, hoodies, mugs, phone cases, and more merchandise. Sign up for monthly contests, find other podcasts that I host, and find the Hope in the Darkness page if you or someone you know is struggling with depression or dark thoughts. Also on the website, if you have a true paranormal or creepy tale to tell, you can click on Tell Your Story. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com. All stories in Weird Darkness are purported to be true unless stated otherwise, and you can find source links or links to the authors in the show notes. Nowhere, man, the Paul McCartney death conspiracy was posted at the Unredacted. Weird Darkness is a production and trademark of Marlar House Productions. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. Proverbs 17, verse 13, If you repay good with evil, evil will never leave your house. In a final thought, it's easy to make an idol of routine, finding security within the boundaries you build around your life. Although each day contains 24 hours, every single one presents a unique set of circumstances. Don't try to force fit today into yesterday's mold. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness.