WRIGHT CITY, Mo. — For 17 years, an unconventional roadside attraction was dedicated to proving Elvis Presley survived his 1977 death. The Elvis Is Alive museum, housed in a former coin-operated laundry, championed the controversial theory that the King of Rock and Roll faked his own death and entered the federal Witness Protection Program.
Bill Beeny’s museum was no ordinary tribute. It featured a 16-foot rhinestone-belted Elvis sign, a replica Cadillac, and purported FBI files. Beeny claimed to have DNA evidence proving the man buried at Graceland was not Elvis, though details of these tests remained deliberately vague.
Reverend Bill Beeny was a unique character. He was born in 1926 in Madisonville, Kentucky, and passed away in 2022. His remarkable life included founding six churches, hosting a radio program on stations across North America, running for Missouri governor in 1964 and creating unique attractions like the Elvis Is Alive Museum.
The museum closed in 2007 after 17 years. Its contents, including photographs, books, and replica funeral items, went up for auction. Andy Key, a manufactured home salesman from Mississippi, impulsively bid $8,300 on eBay for the contents.
Six months after winning the auction, Key transformed the museum from a Missouri roadside attraction to a new home in Hattiesburg, complete with all original exhibits—including the Elvis toilet paper Bill Beeny specifically requested be maintained.
That museum closed in 2008. But the memory of the king and the wild stop along the highway lives on.