Step right behind the velvet rope of 1976 Las Vegas, where Chapter 10 of Ginger Alden’s memoir, Elvis and Ginger, pulls back the curtain on The King’s most vulnerable, bizarre, and mystifying moments.

The glittering illusion of Las Vegas shattered on December 8th when Vernon Presley suddenly collapsed in the dressing room right after a show. Rushed to Sunrise Hospital with fluid in his lungs, the terrifying incident stripped away Elvis’s invincible, larger-than-life persona. In a hauntingly vulnerable scene, the undisputed King of Rock and Roll sat quietly weeping in an empty hospital wheelchair, wiping tears away with the back of his hand. Ginger found herself cradling and comforting a superstar who suddenly realized his immense fame and wealth were utterly useless in the face of mortality.

Desperate to save his father, Elvis abandoned modern medicine for the supernatural. He gathered Ginger and his inner circle on a hotel bed, holding hands to actively visualize “healing colors” to cure Vernon. The bizarre mysticism didn’t stop there. When Ginger secretly attempted a solo healing meditation on the bathroom floor to settle her own sick stomach, she never said a word to Elvis. Yet, upon returning to the bedroom, a reading Elvis casually asked why she had been lying on the floor, flashing a chillingly accurate, knowing wink. This impossible intuition cemented Ginger’s belief in Elvis’s heavily guarded “sixth sense” and psychic awareness.

Life inside the suite was a dizzying circus of wealth and weirdness. One moment, Elvis was casually rubbing shoulders in the bathroom with billionaire Prince Adnan Khashoggi; the next, he was playing bizarre psychological games with his guests. Despite flying Ginger’s entire family out on his private JetStar, Elvis ruthlessly separated Ginger from them during his performances. In a wildly uncomfortable power move, he forced Ginger to sit with his ex-wife Priscilla’s family—the Beaulieus—while keeping the Aldens and the Beaulieus entirely separated and unintroduced in the very same room.

Elvis demanded absolute, undivided worship. When Ginger’s sister’s boyfriend accidentally yawned during a late-night karate demonstration in the suite, an insulted Elvis immediately stopped and snapped, “Am I boring you, son?” This diva-like trigger was no joke; Elvis shockingly confessed it was the exact reason he rejected Barbra Streisand’s massive remake of A Star is Born. Aside from refusing to play a character who ends his own life, Elvis killed the deal simply because producer Jon Peters dared to yawn during the movie pitch.

After only a few weeks together, the relationship morphed into an intense, high-stakes obsession. Elvis acted as lover, mentor, and absolute dictator of her image. He dispatched aides to buy her luxury clothes and commanded her to parade in specific white gowns and heavy jewelry, declaring it was “little Ginger’s time to shine” like a prized doll. With marriage already being aggressively discussed after just weeks of dating, Ginger realized she was permanently trapped in a beautiful, overwhelming, and utterly unpredictable new reality.