Harry Potter – Snopes

Paul-is-Dead and Other Wild Conspiracies

Sara Korash-Schiff

Paul McCartney died in 1966 and was replaced by a look-alike imposter. He never played the half-time show at the Super Bowl. He was never knighted by Queen Elizabeth. And, he never married or fathered his four children. Actually, the remaining Beatles members covered up his death to keep their band together and on the rise, or so crazed conspiracy theorists believe. These theorists point out that the remaining Beatles started hiding hints in their music that the real Paul was dead. They believe every song on the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album is full of clues suggesting Paul’s death. In this album, The Beatles had assembled a new band with an imaginary member named Billy Shears. Believers of the conspiracy think that this fictional member was named for Paul’s beatles replacement. In the song “A Day in the Life,” the lyrics say: “he blew his mind out in a car.” When you play the song “I’m So Tired” backwards, you hear the lines “Paul is dead, miss him, miss him.” At the end of “Strawberry Fields Forever,” John Lennon sings, “I buried Paul,” though he later claims to have said “cranberry sauce” and “I’m very bored.” Believers in the Paul-is-dead conspiracy also find their proof in the backwards loops of songs and on album covers, which show things like raw meat and doll limbs (1966’s Yesterday and Today). Finally, on the cover of the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, there is a yellow wreath of flowers in the shape of a bass guitar, which believers think stands for a memorial to the real Paul McCartney.

This famous conspiracy was developed in the 1960s but resurfaced after several websites claimed that Ringo Starr admitted to hiding Paul’s death in a recent, secret interview, according to United Kingdom’s The Mirror. Other prestigious publications, Time magazine being one of them, have published articles on this famed conspiracy. When I hear about things like this, I wonder how people find time to comb over everything Beatles in search for proof that today’s Paul McCartney is actually one lucky phony named Billy Shears. Apparently, because the Paul McCartney on the cover of the Beatles’ album Abbey Road is barefoot, means that he had died three years earlier.

Think these Paul-is-dead believers are off their rockers? Beatlemania sparked some even crazier conspiracy theories over the years: All of the Beatles died and were secretly replaced—except for Paul McCartney, several different imposters have acted as the real Beatles over the years, and my personal favorite, the illuminati formed the band in attempt to hypnotize youth listeners with subliminal messages advocating drug use which would alter their personalities. Others believe that the band members murdered their original drummer, Pete Best, and that the band has several songs that they’ve kept hidden in the event that they ever need more money,

Reading up on the madness that surrounds Beatle conspiracy theories, I began to wonder, are there any equally wild conspiracy theories about what we consider “classic” literature? So naturally I typed “literary conspiracy theories” into a Google search and not shockingly came across about 683 thousand results about classic literary characters, plotlines, settings, authors, and just about anything else you could think of.

According to Norwegian filmmaker Nine Grunfeld, J.K. Rowling, author of the beloved Harry Potter series, does not exist. Grunfeld believes that no average working mom could become this idolized author, who published seven novels in ten years and sold over 250 million copies internationally. According to Grunfeld, there is no possible way that a nobody of an author could accomplish what “J. K. Rowling” has accomplished. Instead, the face we all know as the author of Harry Potter is just an actress who is the face for an entire team of writers.

Some theorists believe that J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, two of the most famous fantasy authors of all time, were both members of the Occult and were using their fantasy novels to prepare the world for the New World that was coming. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series is claimed to have been an adapted version of a Wiccan text called The Book of Shadows. And Lewis, whose famous lion character Aslan is often called a Jesus-figure, is actually alluding to pagan deities. Theorists argue that in order to practice witchcraft, one must read all of C.S. Lewis’ works.

It’s only fitting that nobody knows how Edgar Allan Poe died. He arrived in Baltimore on October 3, 1849 wearing someone else’s clothes and acting delirious and strange. He mysteriously died four days later. One of the most widely-believed theories surrounding Poe’s death claims that Poe was kidnapped during election season. The kidnappers beat him and got him drunk, then took him to the polls and forced him to vote for their preferred candidate multiple times. The kidnappers then swapped around all of their hostages’ clothes so that none of them would be recognized and jailed for rigging the elections.

Finally, and most interestingly, some people actually believe that author Stephen King murdered John Lennon. In a book called Stephen King Shot John Lennon, author Steve Lightfoot argues that Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan hired King as their henchman to kill John Lennon and end his peace protests once and for all. According to the conspiracy theorists, Mark David Chapman, the man who was blamed for killing John Lennon, was just an actor who was paid to take responsibility for the murder. There is a famous picture of John Lennon giving his alleged murderer, Chapman, his autograph mere hours prior to his murder, which is one of Lightfoot’s biggest supporting arguments. Lightfoot says that he has received multiple threatening letters from King to keep him from spreading information about the murder.

Conspiracy theories are mind-boggling and make me wonder how people come up with these crazy ideas. In the end, however, I guess you could ask the same question of fiction writers because, as I found in my research, reading about these conspiracies is like reading a flash-detective story, where all of the clues are laid out to justify the outcome of the mystery.

–Emily Flippo

Sara Korash-Schiff is a senior English and journalism and mass communications major at Washington and Lee. She has served as an intern for Hachette Book Group in Nashville and a reporting intern for The Springfield Republican. After graduation, she plans to travel throughout Europe and attend a graduate creative writing program in fiction.

Read it Again, Sam

Griffin Cook

Looking through my bookshelf is effectively viewing a timeline of my life thus far as a reader. Some of the “chapter books” I began savoring as a first grader sit, collecting dust, not reread since I discovered Harry Potter. Then there is, of course, the Harry Potter series, all seven books, the companion books written by JK Rowling, and an extra copy of the third one, because it was my favorite book for at least five years. There are Babysitters Club novels, Agatha Christie mysteries, and Lee Child thrillers. Among the middle and high school-assigned readings are the ones I read the obligatory time, if even that, and the ones that became instant favorites on my shelf. The ones that I loved but haven’t touched since and the ones with pages falling out from use. Two books have severe water damage—a young adult novel that a friend borrowed and then returned after dropping it in the bathtub, and one that I’ve cried while reading so many times over the years that it may as well also been plunged into a full body of water.

Dedicated readers have a few books on the shelf that they just know: exact scenes, chapters, pages, even lines that have stuck with them for years. They can select a familiar spine, feel its familiar weight in their hand, and flip almost effortlessly to their pages of choice. Rereading may be a guilty pleasure of sorts, but it also offers a lot of novelty and value. Just ask any English teacher.

My parents used to hate that I reread books. They wanted for me to keep expanding my library and literary education. I distinctly remember being “caught” rereading a book and receiving a bizarre chastisement from my mother. She argued that there was no merit, no growth, from reading a book more than once. Fast forward to high school English classes, where standard procedure involves reading a book twice, annotating, highlighting, bookmarking key passages, skimming notes for themes and motifs, and close reading certain pages.

Clearly, this exhibits that there is value in rereading; it is simply not expected that someone will glean all the information a book has to offer from just one go through. An article published on bustle.com illustrates a similar mindset to mine—the author is in love with second and third and tenth readings of her favorite books, and with a mother who simply “can’t” do it. She links to a bbc.com article that deems rereading a “guilty pleasure” and a “security blanket.” Revisiting a childhood library probably corresponds more with this idea. You probably will not discover a profound literary statement reading From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. Rereading a novel assigned in middle or high school though, with added years and a broader vocabulary and just a different perspective, can totally change a person’s perceptions of a book. In some ways, rereading a book is also more challenging because the surprise and novelty is gone. While a second read offers the comfort of familiarity, it also grants the reader a chance, even a dare, to look further and think more deeply.

I have read each of my favorite books time and time again, with new interpretations and observations and life experiences coloring the way they are read. Just like children like to hear their favorite bedtime stories, I will always love flipping through Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. The plot, the characters, and the magical setting are of course, captivating for young readers, but only in a more mature rereading do themes and motifs, even hidden meanings, begin to surface. For example, Prisoner of Azkaban draws strongly on themes of innocence and justice among many different plot lines. It is also wrought with symbolism in character names and animals. Until the book is experienced through the lens of a reader who knows to think more deeply and critically, it’s just about a bunch of kids on brooms and an escaped murderer. Just like a film enjoyed by people of all ages, or a work of abstract art, many of the more intricate nuances go unnoticed by a young or unfamiliar viewer. A second impression reveals a deeper look, guided by the knowledge that comes from age and learned approaches to viewing and reading. Would you debate the merits of listening to a piece of music more than once, or seeing a famous Van Gogh more than once? Would anyone question the merits of rereading, say, the Bible?

Revisiting a piece of writing certainly provides a different experience then the first read-through and creates an exciting mix of familiarity and new discoveries. So the question is, how many times have you read your favorite?

— Emily Danzig

Best Book of the Year

Nick Smith

by Bella Zuroski

This Christmas, my family all packed into the car and ventured three hours east through heavy Western New York snows to spend the day with my dad’s side of the family. After dinner, I curled up in front of the woodstove with Mona, my Aunt Ellen’s sleepy pit bull. After about an hour or so of typical after-dinner conversation, my cousin Gena’s husband Derek asked me if I had my pick for Best Book of the Year yet. I had no idea what he was talking about, and experienced a slight panic – was this a thing I should know about? Gena looked at me expectantly. She is an English professor, so I was sure she expected her English major cousin, a senior in college, to know about it.

Best Book of the Year was not the big, official “thing” I had imagined. It was a tradition started by my Uncle Greg (Gena’s dad), who passed away last spring. It’s simple: at the end of each year, he and his friends would all get together to discuss the best book they had each read that year. This was the first year that would come to a close without Greg at the helm, and I could sense that Best Book of the Year had gained extra significance because of that.

When I tried to come up with my pick, I felt embarrassed. Sure, I could name a heap of books I had read for class. But had I read anything else on my own outside of the brick walls of Payne Hall, Washington & Lee’s English building?

I will never forget the rainy afternoon when Greg handed me my first copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, or the bright summer day when he sat down next to me on the old concrete stoop by the front door and gave me Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I read those books day and night with no regard for sleep or any other apparent priorities. I had no cell phone buzzing in my pocket or plans to make – just the pure, unbridled delight of more pages to turn. As I struggled to come up with a Best Book of the Year that hadn’t been assigned on a syllabus, I realized how much I missed the little girl who used to get lost for hours, days, even whole summers at a time in the pages of a book.

As our lives get hectic, it is easy to forget how to take the time to get lost in a book. It starts to feel like there is no time for anything outside of our daily routine. Are you a college student, tired parent, professional, and/or someone who has to read a lot for your job or in your daily life? If you are, I am sure you know how flipping on the TV or playing another round of Candy Crush often seems easier than opening a book.

There is magic in language that cannot be found anywhere else. In the hustle and bustle of life, this magic can be easily forgotten. Greg was the person who really showed me what it means to be a reader. I think we all have our own Greg – not necessarily the person who taught us how to read the letters on the page, but the person who helped us to see the magic. Recently, I saw a post on his Facebook page that said, “Book of the year just isn’t the same without you.” When I clicked on this woman’s profile, Facebook told me that she lived in Seattle, Washington. Missing Greg, my heart swelled in bittersweet happiness when I thought that somewhere, somehow, he had crossed paths with this woman and shared that same magic with her. This Christmas, I received a very well timed reminder to never let that magic go.

Next year, I promise to have my pick for Best Book of the Year ready. Will you?

Nick Smith is a senior English and History Major and Creative Writing minor from Alexandria, Virginia. Nick loves all flavors of literature, but he has always had a fondness for science fiction and fantasy, especially when paired with comedy.

When “Young Adult” is too “Adult”

Lauren Starnes

R.T. Smith’s most recent post got me thinking about various books that are considered Young Adult fiction and the controversy that surrounds them. Often there seems to be a gray area between books that are considered appropriate for children and young adults and those that are geared more for adults.

Every Christmas I return home mentally exhausted from the last few stressful weeks of the semester, which were primarily spent in the library writing papers and studying for exams. Thus, it has become a sort of holiday tradition that I dedicate a large portion of my break to relaxing and reading “fun” books. Usually I pick these so called “fun” books based on my eleven year-old brother’s knowledgable reccommendations of books that he read and enjoyed. For instance, last Christmas I read the entirety of Rick Riordan’s popular series Percy Jackson & the Olympians. The Percy Jackson books describe a fantastical world where Greek gods still exist and it clearly falls in the YA category. However, this Christmas I deviated from tradition and chose a book that my brother had not yet read. My mother asked me to read the first book in Suzanne Collins’s best-selling young adult trilogy, The Hunger Games, in order to determine if it was appropriate for my little brother. The Hunger Games is a fictional portrayl of a post-apocalyptic country called Panem, which exists where the countries of North America are located today. Every year in Panem, one girl and one boy from each of the 12 districts are selected by a lottery system to compete in a televised battle, in which only one child can survive. Although the writing in The Hunger Games is simple and straightforward, the content is a completely different beast. The story involves complex political, social, and ethical issues and also centers around children being forced to kill other children. I read and enjoyed The Hunger Games, but I concluded that my impressionable younger brother was not mature enough to read it.

What is your take on The Hunger Games and other young adult fiction? Are there other novels that fall into this gray area? What about the Harry Potter series, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, or The Giver: where do these books fall in the spectrum?

Senior at Washington and Lee University. Originally from Chattanooga, TN. Majoring in English.