Lisa Marie Presley was just nine years old when her father, the King of Rock and Roll, passed away in August 1977. But even at such a young age, she seemed to understand something profound was happening.
According to multiple accounts from her and those closest to her, Lisa Marie had a strong sense that Elvis wasn’t going to survive much longer – and on the final night she saw him alive, that feeling intensified.
By the late 1970s, Elvis Presley’s health had significantly deteriorated. The rock icon was suffering from a long list of health problems, many of which were exacerbated by his heavy use of prescription drugs.
He had been diagnosed with glaucoma, high blood pressure, liver damage, and an enlarged colon, and was often described as being bloated, exhausted, and in chronic pain.
Reports from Graceland staff and friends in his inner circle all painted a similar picture: Elvis was isolated, heavily medicated, and increasingly reclusive. Lisa Marie, though still a child, was more observant than people gave her credit for.
Speaking in Alanna Nash’s book The Colonel, Lisa Marie recalled a moment that occurred not long before her father’s death. “One night when I was five or six, we were watching TV,” she said. “I looked up at him and said, ‘Daddy, Daddy, I don’t want you to die.’ And he just looked at me and said, ‘Okay, I won’t. Don’t worry about it.’”
In 2022, Lisa Marie’s daughter, actress Riley Keough, revealed even more haunting details in An Oprah Special: The Presleys – Elvis, Lisa Marie and Riley. According to Keough, Lisa Marie had an unsettling intuition on the final night she saw Elvis alive.
“She said goodnight to him, and I think she knew, saying goodnight, that she had some kind of sense,” Keough told Oprah Winfrey. “I think she had a sense many times that he wasn’t OK. You know, she would tell me that sometimes she would find him in his bathroom looking kind of out of it or holding onto the railing to stand up straight. And she also wrote these letters when she was little, saying, ‘I hope my daddy doesn’t die.’ So there was some kind of sense there.”
Just hours later, Elvis was found unresponsive on the bathroom floor at Graceland on the morning of August 16, 1977. He was rushed to Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis but was declared dead within the hour. The official cause of death was ruled as cardiac arrest, although the role of his long-term prescription drug use has been widely documented and debated ever since.
After his death, Lisa Marie stayed at Graceland with her mother, Priscilla, and extended family. But according to the family’s longtime maid, Nancy Rooks, Lisa Marie largely avoided the upstairs of the mansion – the place where Elvis had died.
Rooks wrote in her book Inside Graceland: Elvis’ Maid Remembers, “I noticed a change in her, however, whenever she came to the house after his passing. The only time I remember her going upstairs was one time, several years after he had died, when she asked me to go up to his bedroom with her.”
“She got very quiet as we entered the room, and stopped, looked around for a few minutes, and then went over and got a black and white ballcap from his closet and walked out of the room with it,” Rooks said. “I think that just knowing that her father had died up there was too much for her. I guess it would be for most children her age.”