Johnny Cash:
The Man in Black’s
Colorful Paranormal Legacy
No one did more for country music than Johnny Cash. Even though, sometimes, the world of country music appeared to turn its back on him. As he neared the end of his life, he continued to write and perform, but Nashville wasn’t buying it—or recording it. They had moved on to younger, softer, and more mainstream acts.
But Cash—as some called him—refused to go down without a musical fight. In the end, an entirely new generation of music fans from an entirely different genre found him and, through him, discovered country music. Recorded by rock producer Rick Rubin, Cash cranked out “American Recordings,” an eclectic collection of originals and works by some of the greats such as Leonard Cohen. It was his eighty-first album, and it tore back up the charts and the videos from the album were picked up by video music channels.
The album was a fitting way to close out a historic career. Johnny Cash didn’t leave a mark on country music; he burned a swath a mile wide down the corridor of one of America’s most cherished art forms. It’s no surprise to many fans—and especially ghost hunters—that Cash has refused to relinquish his spot on the earthly plane with the tenacity that he clung to the charts. What is surprising is where he chose to do so. Fans might equate Johnny Cash with the rural south, the hard-working, hard-living south of his childhood and the psychic center of so many of his famous hits. But, according to several witnesses, Cash’s ghost is catching the warm rays and enjoying the laid-back vibes in the Caribbean clime.
Cash’s home-away-from-home was once part of a plantation that most refer to as Cinnamon Hill in Jamaica. (The island paradise, I should point out, is full of mysterious activity and is considered the most haunted place in the Caribbean.)
The property has what most islanders consider the most beautiful view of Montego Bay, an idyllic stretch of Jamaica’s most famous shoreline real estate. But things weren’t always so idyllic in Jamaica, nor were things so peaceful in the home where Cash retreated to for a little rest and relaxation. The tension and tragedy that is part of Cinnamon Hill and Jamaica’s history makes several ghost-hunting groups who investigate the haunting think that if Johnny Cash’s ghost is still haunting the property, he may not be alone.
Several paranormal research teams, including famous television paranormal group members, have investigated Cinnamon Hill and revealed the estate’s paranormal—and often painful—past. Slaves worked on the plantation and, often, were punished by confinement in the dank basement of the property. It’s better described as a dungeon, according to most of the visitors to the property. Bear traps were hidden on the plantation’s borders to keep slaves from running away.
This fear and pain seems to be embedded in the home that Cash called his home-away-from-home. Investigators have picked up evidence of the haunting and lots of Cash’s friends and family members that visited his island retreat have reported run-ins with ghosts. Cash also reportedly witnessed some of this paranormal activity and wrote in his autobiography, Cash: the Autobiography, that “Cinnamon Hill has its own spirits, presences, and very personal memories.”
He carefully delineates between the odd but explainable things that happen in the old house with the odd but unexplainable events that occur there.
“There are ghosts, I think,” Cash writes. “Many of the mysteries reported by the guests and visitors to our house, and many that ourselves experienced, can be explained by direct physical evidence—a tree limb brushing against the roof of the room in which Waylon [Jennings] and Jessi [Colter] kept hearing such strange noises, for instance. But there have been incidents that defy conventional wisdom.”
One of the events that rests in that “defy conventional wisdom” part of the spectrum happened as Cash was hosting a group of friends and family at his house. He says that a woman appeared in front of six people in the dining room. The woman—who, guests agree, looked like she was in her early thirties and wore a full-length white dress—walked through the kitchen door and toward the double doors on the opposite side of the room. The doors were shut, but that didn’t matter to the ghost. She walked right through them.
Seconds later, the shocked group heard crisp knocks. Cash says it sounded like “rat-tat-tat. rat-tat”—on the other side of the door.
Patrick Carr, who helped Cash write his book, had something similar happen. While staying at Cinnamon Hill, he heard that same distinct rap—“rat-tat-tat. rat-tat”—one night, but quickly fell back to sleep. It was just the ghosts, he thought.
Cash, too, felt comfortable with the spirits and, even though the ghostly appearances could be unsettling, never felt threatened by their presence.
“We’ve never had any trouble with these souls,” writes Cash. “They mean us no harm, I believe, and we’re certainly not scared of them; they just don’t produce that kind of emotion.”
Cash says the family’s paranormal encounters on the property also included a strange event that happened as he and his wife, June, escorted their young son through the old family cemetery, another haunted feature of the property. Cash said that as they walked through, his four-year-old son, also named John, suddenly piped up that his brother, Jamie, was buried there. June was mystified by the statement, but when she leaned down and searched the well-worn headstone in front of them, sure enough, the grave marked the final resting spot of a man named James. He died there in the 1770s, Cash wrote.
Cash also heard about other ghosts who haunted the Caribbean island, many not to far from his Cinnamon Hill Great House. One of the most infamous was the Annie Palmer story. He even recorded a song about this White Witch of Rose Hall, a woman who reportedly killed her husbands and tortured her slaves in one of the island’s most terrifyingly haunted properties, a plantation called Rose Hall. Palmer, the legend goes, was raised in Haiti, the voodoo-infused Caribbean island. When her parents died, her Haitian nanny not only raised her, but taught her voodoo and other forms of witchcraft. She later married a wealthy man and moved to Rose Hall. Suddenly, her husband—and numerous male slaves—began to disappear. Eventually, a slave—or slaves—killed her, but many islanders believe her spirit, a spirit that was too evil even for hell, lives on.
Visitors to what is now one of Jamaica’s top paranormal tourist destinations have testified that they witnessed a range of supernatural activity on the property. Some have said that they have seen bloodstains appear on the walls and floors; others have reported hearing footsteps and a baby screaming.
A paranormal team from Ghost Adventures, a Travel Channel television series, explored the paranormal side of both Rose Hall and Cinnamon Hill. They used a range of high-tech equipment, including electromagnetic field (EMF) detectors and electronic voice phenomena (EVP) devices, to verify the haunting more scientifically. Another device checks on variations in temperature along with EMF swings, the team said.
The EMF and temperature readings, for instance, spiked whenever the team crossed on the floor above the infamous dungeon where slaves were punished. They asked the guides on the tour if there could be natural reasons, for instance, wiring problems in the floor that were causing the odd readings. The guides said there was nothing below them—except the dungeon.
Unexplainable noises interrupted the investigation on several occasions. When the team checked, they couldn’t find any reason for the noises.
By using copper dowsing rods, the team supposedly came in contact with another entity on the property. However, one of the strangest findings during this research trip indicates that Cash has joined the citizens of the Jamaican spirit world. According to the team members, when they reviewed the recordings they noticed an anomaly. Someone at some point during the investigation says, “I do.” The team instantly recognized that voice.
It sounded like Johnny Cash.
The singer may be joined again with his wife in the afterlife, too. The team gathered for a flashlight session to contact other spirits on the property. By unscrewing the lens of a flashlight so that the bulb is just barely connected to its battery source, the light will flash on and off when it is exposed to subtle vibrations. Ghost hunters say that a spirit can create vibrations to respond to the questions posed by the researchers using the device. In this investigation, the entity identified itself as June Carter Cash. The impromptu interview may have revealed that June is still deeply connected to her former vacation home, or possibly some of the items she left behind. In fact, there were still pillows in the mansion that were crafted by Cash’s wife, as well as some of her favorite pieces of furniture.
The team was convinced that even though Rose Hall and Cinnamon Hill are travel destinations, enjoyed by thousands of tourists, one of country music’s most famous couples may be among an elite group of permanent residents.
Telekinetic Cash
Most people who have attended a Johnny Cash concert would tell you that the singer had something special, a personal power. Charisma? Star Power? Maybe. But people who knew him personally said he had a spiritual power that was just as warm and just as magnetic as his stage personality.
Cash was steeped in spirituality. Just as he used music to explore life and relationships, Cash delved into religions and belief systems to explore the spiritual realm. As we will discuss, his buddies Johnny Horton and Merle Kilgore were instrumental in the development of the country legend’s spiritual—and often paranormal—powers, according to Steve Turner’s biography on Cash, The Man Called CASH.
Sometimes, those supernatural powers were a little too potent for even Cash to control. In one instance, Cash went to meet with the Kilgores at their home. Cash seemed really taken by the couple’s music room. Album covers and gold records adorned the walls of the room and it just had, apparently, a good vibe for Cash.
Cash always felt at peace and centered in the place. He felt so much at home that he asked the Kilgores for a special and perhaps—unless you knew Johnny Cash personally—weird favor from the couple. He asked them if he could have some time alone just to meditate in the room.
They obliged the request. Kilgore’s wife brought Cash a cup of coffee and the singer closed his eyes and began to meditate. There’s no information about how long Cash was in this meditation, or how he was meditating. All the couple said is that at some point they heard a loud “POP”!
Kilgore and his wife went to the room and looked up to the ceiling. They noticed that a crack had formed in the once pristine ceiling!
The loud noise also roused Cash from what must have been a deep and intense meditation. He, too, looked up, saw the destruction and said, “Oh. I’m sorry. I just ruined your new music room.”
“How did you do that?” a stunned Merle Kilgore said.
“Just meditating,” Cash replied nonchalantly. “I got the power too strong.”
Johnny’s Paranormal Partnership:
Johnny Cash, Merle Kilgore, and Johnny Horton
Johnny Horton was known as one of the best saga singers in country music and rock and roll. It was a category that he kind of created for himself.
Once a rockabilly star, Horton carved his own niche in between country and pop music as the rockabilly craze started to fade. Saga songs, in contrast to the quick, biting beats of rockabilly, featured a big, bold sound combined with epic lyrics, usually drawn from the pages of history. He created sensations with songs, including “The Battle of New Orleans,” “North to Alaska,” “Sink the Bismark,” and “Johnny Reb.”
All those songs were big hits for the singer. The last one that was mentioned—“Johnny Reb”—was not only a million-seller, but it was special for Horton for another reason: the song stood as an auditory monument to his collaboration with one of his best friends and a fellow spiritual seeker, Merle Kilgore.
Kilgore was—and is—regarded as one of country music’s best songwriters. He cowrote “Ring of Fire” with June Carter Cash for Johnny Cash, which became one of the legend’s biggest hits, as a matter of fact. Cash later said that the famous horn section of “Ring of Fire” came as a result of another paranormal power of his: he had the ability to dream hits. He said shortly after hearing a demo of this song, he went to sleep and had a dream that he was singing the tune with a backing of a mariachi band. The distinctive sound of the hit, many country music experts believe, set it apart from other country song arrangements and allowed the tune to transcend from yet another country hit to a musical masterpiece.
Kilgore was no stranger to the occult forces that shaped musicians’ careers either. Kilgore’s wife claimed that he dreamed a song into existence for his buddy, Johnny Horton.
According to the songwriter’s wife, she was sleeping and Kilgore woke her up at about 3 a.m. (I’ll point out that many paranormal experts believe that 3 a.m. has unique spiritual properties that allow the spirits—creative and otherwise—to flow through.) She said he was writing a song in his dreams. When she told her husband about the incident, Kilgore had no idea what she was talking about. She went to the reel-to-reel tape recorder, insisting that Kilgore had, perhaps in some type of somnambulistic trance, recorded the tune he had dreamed. The songwriter, however, was still in the dark.
He turned on the reel-to-reel and, just like his wife said, there was the song that would become—with only a few changes—“Johnny Reb,” made famous by his bud, Johnny Horton, just a short time later.
According to Cash, Horton paid that favor forward when he used his own supernatural songwriting gift to assist the Man in Black with recovering a mysterious tune. Cash said that he had a dream that fellow country pioneer Webb Pierce was singing one of his songs, but when Cash woke up he couldn’t remember the lyrics. He knew that Horton was a hypnotist, so he had his friend put him in a trance to try to recover the lost lyrics. It worked! The song—“I’d Still Be There”—was a hit, too.
Kilgore didn’t just tap into the supernatural to help him write songs, sometimes he used the supernatural as subject material. He wrote the song “The Bell Witch” about Tennessee’s most famous ghost story. The song references the true story of a family that was assaulted, driven from their home, and maybe even killed by the ghost of a woman who feuded with the patriarch of the family. Kilgore perfectly recounts the main points of the haunting in his lyrics. He also reveals his own understanding of supernatural phenomena. The truth is, Kilgore was an expert on paranormal lore, a trait that fit in nicely with the mystically bent friendship of Cash and Horton.
It was the friendship between Kilgore and Horton that led to one of country music’s most wild ghostly whodunits, a tale that may also offer a piece of evidence that proves there is a bridge between the living and the dead. The story, according to Merle’s son Stephen and some other sources, goes like this:
Both Horton and Kilgore had a mutual interest in the world of the supernatural, as mentioned. They were particularly intrigued by what happens to the soul when a person’s earthly life runs out. They—along with their other spiritual and musical sojourner, Johnny Cash—consulted the same medium named Bernard Ricks. Ricks seemed to have some connections with “the other side.” Stephen said that Ricks had intervened a few times in the lives of Kilgore and Horton, as well as other country stars.
Maybe stories of Ricks’s predictive prowess were in the back of Horton’s mind when he showed up at the Kilgore’s porch clutching one of his prized possessions, a custom-made guitar. Horton told Kilgore he was giving it to him. Kilgore, though, tried to stop him. Not that he didn’t love the guitar; it was beautiful. But he knew it was the guitar Horton performed on during his shows and must not only be worth a fortune but also should remain a keepsake for his friend.
Still, Horton insisted. He wanted Kilgore to have the guitar.
And then Horton dropped a supernatural bombshell on his songwriting-fishing buddy. He said he was going to die. According to Merle’s son, Horton said, “Merle, last night I had a vision that I am going to die, and I am saying goodbye to all of my friends.”
The two friends discussed one other morbid topic. They knew the story about Harry Houdini. The late, great magician had given his wife a secret code so that when he died and tried to reach out to her—possibly through a psychic medium—that she would know the message was legitimate. Horton and Kilgore devised their own code, a code that they would share with no one else.
Sadly, the prediction of Horton’s death was accurate and his death, like his life, would be tinged with occult weirdness. The story, according to numerous sources, indicates that Horton had a bizarre phobia. He was afraid of intoxicated people and became worried that he would meet his end because of a drunk person. Before a show in Austin, he didn’t want to go on stage. He became convinced that if he went near the stage or the bar that a drunk would kill him. Despite Horton’s misgivings, the show went on without a hitch. Horton and some of his crew jumped into his Cadillac and headed toward Shreveport. As the car began to cross a bridge near Milano, Texas, when Horton saw, to his horror, that an approaching truck was driving wildly, smashing into one side of the bridge and then the other. The truck smashed into Horton’s car, killing him and injuring his passengers.
When the police checked on the driver of the truck, they reported that he was intoxicated. Horton’s bizarre fear of drunks was realized and his dire prediction came true.
Kilgore was devastated. For Johnny Cash, the death was even harder to take. He had refused a collect call from Horton just before the crash. It was a decision the singer regretted all his life. But, while Horton wasn’t able to reach out to Cash at the end of his life, he did pop in to say hello after his death.
A few versions of the story exist, but, according to Kilgore’s son, his dad was visiting a radio station and chatting with his friend, a radio announcer. Bob Lockwood was covering a baseball game and, probably hoping to chew up some time, decided to introduce his songwriting friend to the audience and play his new tune.
Before he started the record, Lockwood announced: “I have with me a great singer-songwriter, Merle Kilgore. Here is a brand-new song that Johnny Cash has just recorded, a song that you and June Carter wrote together. Merle, tell the listeners what’s the name of this song?”
Kilgore said that the title, of course, was “Ring of Fire.” As the record played and Kilgore and the DJ chatted, a phone call came in from a woman who said she was a psychic who attended a weekly meeting of psychics and people interested in mediumistic phenomena. They had met the night before and received a strange message when the group attempted to contact spirits through a Ouija board. As the hands of the mediums began to glide effortlessly across the board it appeared to rest on several letters. The letters, the mediums noted, appeared to spell out two names.
M-E-R-L-E and K-I-L-G-O-R-E
The problem was, because nobody in the group was a big country fan, the name was basically meaningless. They certainly wouldn’t have been able to predict—by normal means, at least—that Merle Kilgore would have appeared on the radio the next day. Remember, Merle’s appearance was pretty much an accident.
It wasn’t just Merle’s name that crossed the spiritual transom. The psychics claimed a message—and a weird one at that—came through. Letter-by-letter, the psychics pulled the following sentence from the Ouija board: “The drummer is a rummer and he can’t hold the beat.”
Kilgore was flabbergasted.
This somewhat strange and meaningless message for the psychics was the very code that Horton and Kilgore agreed on to prove that one or the other had successfully crossed over.
Horton apparently did.