Paul McCartney Died in 1966 and Was Replaced by a Lookalike

The appeal is the thrill of being the one who noticed: the backwards messages, the barefoot Beatle on the Abbey Road cover, the grave in the Sgt Pepper flowers. Each clue feels like a door opening. Each clue is the human brain doing the one thing it does best, finding patterns in noise. Play any record backwards for long enough and you will hear a message, because you are listening for one. McCartney gave interviews, kept touring, married, and recorded for the next sixty years. He is alive today. The hoax began on American college radio in 1969, and McCartney has spent the decades since as the world's most cheerful piece of counter-evidence. He even named a 1993 live album Paul Is Live, which is the closest a man can come to laughing at his own funeral.