John Lennon’s assassination stunned the world. On Dec. 8, 1980. Lennon was shot by Mark David Chapman outside of his New York City apartment. The world briefly stopped as news broke and tributes poured in from the music community and his fans. While this date lives in infamy, Lennon’s death almost came a few months before, as he was nearly involved in a serious boating accident.
Six months before his assassination, John Lennon started a journey from Newport, RI, to Bermuda. Bermuda became a creative home for him, where he refined many of the songs from his final album, Double Fantasy. However, the journey was perilous as it stumbled across stormy seas.
On the second day of sailing, his boat, the Megan Jaye, encountered a thunderstorm with huge waves and extreme winds. Lennon took the wheel after the captain was teetering on the verge of exhaustion. In his 1980 Playboy interview, Lennon told David Sheff that he was initially struck by fear, but courage took over, and he found himself singing old shanties and cursing at the wind.
“So there I was at the wheel with the wind and sea lashing out at me. At first I was terrified, but Captain Hank was at my side so I felt relatively safe because I knew he wouldn’t let me do anything stupid. After a while Captain Hank wasn’t feeling too well so he went to the cabin below. Once I accepted the reality of the situation, something greater than me took over and all of a sudden I lost my fear. I actually began to enjoy the experience and I started to shout out old sea shanties in the face of the storm, screaming at the thundering sky.”
John Lennon received an eerie warning years before his assassination
While Lennon avoided disaster during his sailing endeavor, tragedy struck in Dec. 1980. While much of the world was devastated and shocked by the news, the former Beatle might have known something was coming. In Cynthia Lennon’s book, John, she revealed that in 1966 he received a letter from a psychic telling him he would be shot in the United States.
The Beatles were gearing up for their final North American tour, and Cynthia said the letter made John paranoid before traveling to the U.S.
“We were both upset by that: The Beatles were about to do their last tour of the States and, of course, we thought the warning referred to that trip,” she wrote. “He had just made his infamous remark about The Beatles being more popular than Christ and the world was in an uproar about it — cranky letters and warnings arrived by every post. But that one had stuck in his mind.”
While all of The Beatles made it home safely, Lennon was still “looking over his shoulder” as the psychic’s words loomed over his psyche.
“When he got home in one piece, we were both relieved,” Cynthia stated. “But the psychic’s warning remained in his mind and from then on it seemed that he was looking over his shoulder, waiting for the gunman to appear. He often used to say, ‘I’ll be shot one day.’ Now, unbelievably, tragically, he had been.”
It’s hard to say that the psychic predicted it since his assassination didn’t occur until 14 years after he received the letter. However, it’s still eerie to receive anything that morbid, especially when he dealt with obsessive fans frequently.
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