Riley Keough knows the 'real reason' behind the 'Presley family curse'.

This post deals with miscarriage and suicide and might be triggering for some readers.

It's been over 47 years since the death of Elvis Presley.

On August 16, 1977, one night before he was due to begin a new tour, Elvis died of a heart attack at his home, Graceland, aged 42.

His death sparked mourning around the world. Crowds gathered to honour the 'king of rock and roll'; one of the most significant cultural icons of the 20th century.

Elvis Presley in 1957. Image: Getty.

How did Elvis rise to fame?

In 1954, after years of being influenced by pop, country and gospel music of the time, Elvis began his singing career with the Sun Records label in Memphis. A mere two years later, he was an international superstar.

On May 1, 1967, Elvis married actress Priscilla Beaulieu in Las Vegas. The couple welcomed their only child, daughter Lisa Marie, in 1968, before divorcing in 1973. As is so often the case for ultra-famous families, life was not as idyllic as it may have seemed.

In the final years of his life, the performer divided his time between touring and spending time at his Memphis estate. His health was also in major decline from years of drug misuse and a diet of greasy, fried food.

Image: Getty.

By the time of his death, he suffered from glaucoma, hypertension, liver damage, and an enlarged colon, each magnified — if not caused by — drug abuse.

He left behind Lisa Marie, who was nine at the time of his death.

However, he would not be the only Presley to suffer. From Elvis' stillborn twin to the tragic loss of Lisa Marie's son, Benjamin Keough, there have long been rumours that the Presley family is cursed.

However, Elvis' eldest surviving grandchild, Riley Keough, rejects the idea that the family is prone to bad luck. Instead, she thinks it's due to something else that has been a common thread in her family.

On the final stop of the tour for her late mother Lisa Marie's memoir From Here To The Great Unknown she said: "I get asked a lot on this book tour, 'How did I avoid the curse of the Presleys?' And it's such a weird question."

Keough explained why she thinks it's so strange.

"I think the word 'curse' is used because my family are looked at as this not real mythology or something," she said. "But really it's just very common things like addiction."

"Everyone here has loved somebody with addiction issues or has lost somebody tragically," she continued.

"I mean, the hope is that the future generations of our family aren't going to struggle so much with addiction. Of course, that's the dream."

Her words have a ring of truth, and yet many people around the world subscribe to the idea that the family has had enough uncanny instances of tragedy to suggest they could be cursed.

Here, we look into all the difficult moments the family has had to endure over the generations.

The Presley curse.

Tragedy marked Elvis' life from the very beginning.

A stillborn twin.

He was born on January 8, 1935 in Tupelo, Mississippi. His identical twin brother, Jesse Garon Presley, was delivered 35 minutes before him, stillborn.

Years later, his mother Gladys miscarried another child, which only strengthened the protective and close relationship that she husband Vernon shared with their only surviving son.

In 1958, Elvis was drafted into the US Army. In early August that same year, he was granted emergency leave to visit his mother, who had been diagnosed with hepatitis and was rapidly declining.

Elvis with his parents on the eve of his induction into the army. Image: Getty.

Elvis' mother dies in her 40's.

Two days later, she died of heart failure at the age of 46.

Elvis was devastated. He and his mother were known for their 'baby talk' no one else could understand and he addressed her with pet names.

"I lost the only person I ever loved," he later said.

Elvis battle with addiction.

Elvis Presley was beloved by crowds, but behind closed doors drugs had become a large part of his life.

He had begun to take prescription drugs and was taking everything from codeine to painkillers like Demerol, tranquilisers including Valium and sedative drugs for his insomnia.

Where at one point the drugs may have been to deal with his health, they eventually became something he depended on.

Priscilla said in her book that he never believed himself to be a drug addict — telling himself that the drugs were benefitting his health — and that he didn't see prescription drugs as the same as 'street drugs'.

From an early age, Elvis' daughter Lisa Marie worried about his death, something she even wrote poems about. In one poem, she penned, "I hope my daddy doesn't die".

She describes a vivid memory of finding her father unresponsive in their home. "I saw him lying face down on the bathroom floor. He'd tried to steady himself on the towel rack, which broke, and he collapsed."

Elvis dies, then fans die at his funeral.

Elvis died in August 1977, found dead inside the bathroom of his home. His official cause of death was ruled to be cardiac arrest. He was just 42 years old.

Elvis' funeral was held at Graceland and then was itself the location of further devastation.

Outside the gates, a car ploughed into a group of fans, killing two young women and critically injuring a third.

Elvis and Priscilla Presley with their daughter, Lisa Marie, in 1968. Image: Getty.

In the decades since, the Presley family, including ex-wife Priscilla, daughter Lisa Marie and Elvis' four grandchildren, have dealt with death, drugs, divorce and debt.

A broken home.

After her parents divorced, Lisa Marie lived with her mother and spent periods of time at Graceland with her dad.

In 1993, on her 25th birthday, Lisa Marie became the sole heir to her father's estate, which had grown to an estimated $100 million. (In 2018 court documents, Lisa Marie alleged that her former business manager had whittled her large fortune down to just US$14,000.)

Lisa Marie claims she was sexually abused by her mother's boyfriend.

In a deeply disturbing memoir revelation, Lisa Marie alleged that she was sexually abused by her mother Priscilla's boyfriend, Michael Edwards, starting when she was just 10 years old.

"He came into my room in the middle of the night," she claims. "He said he was going to teach me what was going to happen when I got older. He put his hand on my chest and said a man's going to touch here, then he put his hand between my legs and said they're going to touch you here."

Per the memoir, Priscilla was furious when Lisa Marie finally told her about the abuse, confronting Edwards.

His alleged response was both dismissive and shocking: "In Europe, that's how they teach the kids, so that's what I was doing."

Unlucky in love.

Over the course of her life, Lisa Marie, now 52, has married four times and had four children.

She had two children with Chicago-born musician Danny Keough, whom she married in 1988: daughter Riley, an actress and model, and son Benjamin.

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Twenty days after her 1994 divorce from Keough, Presley married singer Michael Jackson.

When the couple’s relationship went public with Jackson kissing Lisa Marie on stage at the 1994 MTV Video Music Awards, the pair’s union was dubbed by many as "The Marriage of the Century".

Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley in 1994. Image: Getty.

"I am very much in love with Michael, I dedicate my life to being his wife," Presley said in a statement confirming their marriage.

"I understand and support him. We both look forward to raising a family and living happy, healthy lives together. We hope friends and fans will understand and respect our privacy."

Shortly into their marriage, child molestation accusations against Jackson became public.

"I believed he didn't do anything wrong, and that he was wrongly accused and, yes, I started falling for him. I wanted to save him. I felt that I could do it," she later said.

After two years of marriage, Lisa Marie filed for divorce in early 1996, citing irreconcilable differences. It was later claimed that Lisa Marie and her children "rarely" stayed in the same house as Jackson during their marriage.

In August 2002, Lisa Marie married actor Nicolas Cage, who she met at a party. In November that same year, the actor filed for divorce.

She later married for a fourth time in 2006 to Michael Lockwood, her music producer, until filing for divorce in 2016.

During their marriage, in October 2008, Lisa Marie gave birth to fraternal twin girls, Harper Vivienne Ann and Finley Aaron Love.

Riley Keough and Lisa Marie Presley with her twin daughters in 2017. Image: Getty.

A daughter's battle with drug addiction.

In the foreword of Harry Nelson's 2019 book The United States of Opioids: A Prescription for Liberating a Nation in Pain, Lisa Marie shared how she battled drug addiction.

"You may read this and wonder how, after losing people close to me, I also fell prey to opioids," she wrote.

"I was recovering after the birth of my daughters, Vivienne and Finley, when a doctor prescribed me opioids for pain. It only took a short-term prescription of opioids in the hospital for me to feel the need to keep taking them."

She said she was "grateful to be alive today... and to have four beautiful children who have given me a sense of purpose that has carried me through dark times."

The tragic loss of Benjamin.

In April 2020, Lisa Marie's only son Benjamin died by suicide at the age of 27.

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It was a major loss for the whole family, with Lisa Marie saying she has been struggling with the grief ever since.

At the time of his death, she wrote on Instagram: "My beautiful, beautiful angel. I worshipped the ground you walked on, on this earth and now in Heaven. My heart and soul went with you. The depth of the pain is suffocating and bottomless without you every moment of every day. I will never be the same.

"Please wait for me, my love, and hold my hand while I stay to continue to protect and raise your little sisters and to be here for Riley. I know you would want that. You were much too good for this world."

Priscilla also spoke publicly about the loss, calling Benjamin's death "one of the darkest days of my family's life".

Lisa Marie chose to keep his body on dry ice at home for two months, allowing herself time to say goodbye."My house has a separate casitas bedroom, and I kept Ben Ben in there for two months," Presley writes. "There is no law in the state of California that you have to bury someone immediately."

Lisa Marie Presley passes away in her 50's.

On Friday, January 13, 2023, Lisa Marie Presley passed away due to a small bowel obstruction. She was 54.

Days ahead of the release of her memoir, From Here to the Great Unknown: A Memoir, daughter and co-author Riley Keough has shared what she believes to be the reason for her mother's death.

"My mum physically died from the after effects of her surgery, but we all knew she died of a broken heart," the 35-year-old told People magazine, referring to the death of her brother Ben at age 27 in 2020.

"My mum tried her best to find strength for me and my younger sisters [twins Finley and Harper, 15] after Ben died, but we knew how much pain she was in."

In an interview with Oprah, Keough spoke more openly about the loss of her mother, and her immense grief over Benjamin's death.

"There were a couple of interactions with her [where] she just felt detached, in a way...kind of like a resignation," Keough said of the weeks leading up to her death.

She said she seemed 'tired'. But when the end came, Keough wasn't necessarily surprised, "I think there was always sort of an undertone for me...that I was on borrowed time with her."

Featured image: Getty.