Elvis Presley Tried to Take Away the Pain of a Woman in Labor

Elvis Presley was a talented performer who captured the hearts of millions of fans with his songs. He had a highly successful career, but he yearned for greater achievements. Elvis grew fascinated with finding his purpose in life, which he believed would lead to spiritual fulfillment. He even believed he held certain metaphysical powers. He once used these to try to take pain away from a woman in labor.

Elvis Presley tried to help a woman in labor

In 1975, Elvis and his girlfriend, Linda Thompson, visited her brother, sister-in-law, and their new baby in the hospital. While they were there, Elvis noticed a woman in labor entering the hospital. 

“The next thing I know, Elvis has stopped the emergency charge toward the delivery room and starts talking to the lady,” his bodyguard Dave Hebler said in the book Elvis: What Happened? by Steve Dunleavy. “Here she is in labor, but Elvis comes along and she starts flipping out despite the pain.”

Elvis believed himself to be a spiritual healer, and he told the woman he was going to try to take away her pain. Hebler was typically highly suspicious of Elvis’ claims he could heal people, but the woman seemed to believe the singer was taking her pain away. 

“Anyway, as he sees her in pain, he lays his hands on her stomach, and he starts saying serious in a sort of mystical way, ‘Now, there, it won’t hurt any more. It won’t hurt any more. Everything is going to be fine. You’re not going to hurt any more,’” Hebler said. “He’s laying on the hands and taking the pain from her. Well, that might sound pretty ridiculous for a woman in labor, but the funny thing was she is saying, ‘You’re right, the pain is gone, you’re right.’ Well, the doctors there are doing flips. They want to get this lady into delivery, and Elvis is doing his psychic healing.”

Elvis then requested to join the woman in the delivery room. While the doctors ultimately refused, the woman pleaded with them to let him join.

Elvis Presley often tried to heal his friends’ ailments

Hebler didn’t find this scene in the hospital all that surprising, as he had seen Elvis try to heal people before. Another bodyguard, Red West, avoided talking about his persistent back pain for this reason.

“Whenever he knew I had the pain, he would ask me to sit down in front of him, and then he would lay on his hands, telling me over and over that the pain would go away, that he was drawing out the pain,” West said. He would then tell his boss that the pain had gone away just to appease him. “He would give me one of those little secretive smiles that told the world that he had these powers, and he would walk away pleased with himself. I would walk away and my back and neck were still hurting like hell. It was a case where I didn’t want to tell him that he was kidding himself, because he really had the best of intentions, but he was convinced that he had fixed me up.”

In some instances, Elvis’ insistence he could heal injuries could have done more harm than good. Once, one member of his entourage fell while skiing, and everyone worried he had broken his leg. Elvis tried to mend it.

“Then old psychic healer Elvis comes along. He starts laying on the hands and grabbing the leg. Poor old Dean is nearly passing out with pain,” bodyguard Sonny West said. “But Elvis is convinced he is fixing the leg. Now, as it turned out, it wasn’t broken, just a very bad bruise, but if it had been broken, Elvis’s fooling around and grabbing it could have got it worse.”

Priscilla Presley firmly believed he held healing powers

While Elvis’ bodyguards did not believe in his healing powers, Priscilla Presley did. She said Elvis fixed her headaches on multiple occasions.

“He was capable of spiritual hearing,” she wrote in her book Elvis and Me. “One touch of his hands to my temples and the most painful headaches disappeared.”