Velvet painting of Elvis weeps real tears over Lisa Marie, begs for food, too

By DEREK CLONTZ
Your World Report

Marybelle McKindly says the velvet painting of Elvis Presley she bought from a roadside vendor begs for food, says “Thank you very much” - and weeps real tears.

And paranormal researchers who are investigating the strange case say there is “compelling evidence” to suggest the longtime Elvis fan isn’t imagining things - she’s telling the gospel truth.

“I’ve got no reason to lie about it - I wouldn’t sell my painting of Elvis for any price and I’m not trying to get on TV because I have no desire to go on Jerry Springer or Oprah and make a fool out of myself,” McKindly, 52, of Belle Glade, Florida, told me exclusively.

“All I know is that Elvis is here, in this room, in this painting - not in the flesh, but spiritually. Sometimes I’ll talk to it like it is Elvis in the flesh, and sometimes it talks back.

“I know that sounds crazy, but I’m not a nut. As God is my witness, my painting of Elvis talks.”

And cries. According to McKindly, who works as a secretary in a church, the haunting image of The King breaks into tears “pretty much at the drop of a hat. I can’t even watch the celebrity shows on TV anymore because if Elvis hears something about Lisa Marie, the tears flow like they’re coming out of a faucet.

“He must really love that girl. She was his only child.”

And it’s the salty residue scraped from the velvet painting and analyzed in a laboratory that’s got paranormal experts Drs. Paul and Margaret Landner believing there is a verifiable connection between the painting and the spirit of the tormented superstar, who died of a drug-induced heart attack in 1977 in what should have been the prime of his life.

“The residue contains all the elements you would find in human tears,” says Paul Landner, of Miami.

“But the clincher is a comparison of DNA taken from the tears with DNA lifted from a scarf that Elvis used to wipe sweat from his brow during a concert in 1977, a few months before he died.

“We get a 97.7 percent match that, in the realm of DNA testing, is a solid match. Let’s put it this way, in a murder trial that would be enough to convict a man and sentence him to death.”

McKindly says she found the velvet painting of Elvis at a “starving artists sale” that had been set up in a vacant lot a few miles from her home. She also picked up two other “classic velvets” - dogs playing poker at a kitchen table and a cherubic little boy with golden locks peeing on a tree.

The paintings retailed for $49 each. But she says she “talked the salesman down and bought the three-pack” for just $99.95.

“I knew the Elvis painting was special as soon as I hammered a nail in the wall and hung it up in the living room over my TV,” says McKindly. “There’s something about his eyes that look so real.

“It’s almost as if he follows your movements, and sometimes he seems to be watching you like a hawk. Everybody who sees the painting agrees with me.”

The woman says the first time she heard the painting talk you could have knocked her over with a feather.

“Two days after I bought it I was in a playful mood and I said something like, ‘Elvis, you really do brighten up this room,’” she recalls.

“To my surprise, I heard a man’s rich, deep voice say, ‘Thank you. Thank you very much.’ And I’d know that voice anywhere - it was Elvis.”

McKindly says she “knew instantly” that she wasn’t imagining things. But when she tried to coax more words from the painting by asking it, “Elvis, is that you? What do you want? Where are you?” - it broke down and cried.

“I was trembling - I’d never seen anything like it,” she says. “It wasn’t like Elvis was sobbing or bawling. But I saw three very distinct tears.

“The next time I heard him talk, I was eating homemade apple pie and reading a magazine while sitting on my sofa about 10 feet away from the painting. He said, ‘Give me some pie, darling. I want a Pepsi.’

“I was flabbergasted. I didn’t know what to do. I know it sounds dumb, but I walked over to the painting and held the pie up under Elvis’s nose and then rubbed a little of the filling on his lips.

“He actually thanked me for it. He said his famous line, ‘Thank you. Thank you very much.’ I couldn’t tell if his lips were moving or not. I think they were, but I’m not sure.

“I didn’t know what else to do but say, ‘You’re welcome. I’ll get you some Pepsi when I go to the store.’”

Later that day she went back to her magazine, trying not to “drive myself crazy thinking about Elvis talking to me through the painting.” And in what she calls “a major coincidence,” there was a story on the Landners and their work with paranormal phenomena.

The brother-and-sister team are headquartered just a two-hour drive from her home.

“I got their phone number from directory assistance and called them,” says McKindly. “They asked me a lot of questions trying to figure out if I was a nut case or for real.

“Finally they said they’d like to drive down and see the painting. I told them they didn’t have to knock when they got here - just come on in.”

Margaret Landner says she and her brother have heard the painting speak one time “and what we heard was a two-syllable grunt that sounded like ‘thank you’.”

“We also noticed some dried-up pie filling stuck to his lip,” she adds. “So we knew something strange was going on because MaryBelle had been trying to feed it.

“We were able to force two tears from its eyes by talking about Lisa Marie’s short and unhappy marriage to Michael Jackson. I know it sounds cruel, but the end justified the means. It was those two tears that matched the DNA we got off the scarf.

“First thing next month, we’re setting up microphones, video cameras and tape recorders so we can get more evidence that other researchers can analyze independently and corroborate, and then we can begin work on some theories to explain all this.

“I’d like to set things up right now. But we have to give Marybelle some time to prepare for us. We’re going to be camping out in her living room with a camera crew and recording specialists for at least two weeks and maybe longer.”

McKindly says she’s willing to endure any inconvenience to help the experts figure out how and why her painting “acts like it’s a human.”

“Elvis still has a lot of fans out there,” she says. “I owe it to them to get to the bottom of this. This might be his way of letting his fans know that even though he’s gone from earth, his spirit lives on.

“And who knows? Once he gets used to talking through the painting, he might have more to say. He might even sing a new song.”

Copyright © 2009 4-Page Media, Inc./Your World Report. All rights reserved.