It would seem that one of Dylan’s more broadminded views once pertained to an interest in ghosts. Whether it was initially just a passing flirtation with the intriguing spirit world through the dark Edgar Allan Poe stories and poetry that he admired is hard to know, however, as Winwood writes in his memoir, Dylan’s interest soon became a fervent belief owing to a comical run-in in England. (Excerpt from Faroutmagazine)
In 1966 Dylan arrived in Birmingham (guest of the Spencer Davis Group) in need of some escapism at the height of his electric Judas phase. Thus, the musicians all met up and Dylan mentioned his interest in ghosts. The American troubadour for some reason figured that there’d be “some good ones in England,” because, as we all know, there are inexplicably more ghosts from Victorian-era Britain than from any other place or period in the long history of humans dying.
Luckily for the Spencer Davis Group eager to impress the star from the States, they knew of an old, abandoned house nearby, and as fate would have it, the locals believed that it was haunted by the ghost of a dog. Naturally, Dylan was chomping at the bit when he heard this enticing tale and they all hotfoot it over to the typical delipidated spectre abode for a curious poke around its darkened dominion.
At one point during this auspicious evening, they hear a dog bark. “Now this is likely to happen in the countryside in Worcestershire,” he humorously and, indeed, correctly remarks. “But Dylan is convinced he’s heard the ghost of a dog! He was like a little kid running up to you, grabbing you by the arm, going, ‘This is unbelievable!’” Unbelievable certainly being the operative word. As Dylan once said in his own memoir: “We went out to see a haunted house, where a man and his dog was to have burned up in the thirteenth century. Boy, that place was spooky.”
He Napped in Neil Young’s Hearse
In the Neil Young biography Shakey, artist Sandy Mazzeo remembers taking Young’s ’54 Pontiac hearse for a drive. (This is in the mid-’70s.) Mazzeo hears a series of loud bangs. “I’m thinkin’, Oh my God, it’s a ghost.’ I look in the rearview mirror and it’s Bob.” Dylan had, for whatever reason, climbed into the back of the vehicle and gone to sleep. “Dylan was in his turban stage, and he’d slept in his turban and it had come all undone — he looked like the mummy.”
