Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir’s Strange Encounter With Jerry Garcia’s Ghost

When Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir dreamt that he saw long-time bandmate Jerry Garcia backstage at a show, Garcia’s reaction seemed a bit odd and out of character. After Weir woke up, he discovered that his friend, who had recently checked himself into the Serenity Knolls treatment center in Forest Knolls, California, had died of a heart attack in his room.

Suddenly, a new question appeared in Weir’s mind. Was it Weir who met Garcia backstage, or did Garcia meet him from somewhere beyond this mortal coil?

Bob Weir’s Strange Encounter With Jerry Garcia

The Grateful Dead played their last show with founding member Jerry Garcia in July 1995. The band planned on taking a short break before returning to the road, during which Bob Weir embarked on a tour with his other band, RatDog. Weir and his bandmates were staying in Hampton Beach, New Hampshire, on the evening of August 8, 1995, when Weir had his fateful dream.

In a 2019 interview with GQ magazine, Weir described how the memory of his dream began with him walking around backstage at a funk music club he was playing (ever the musician, of course). While wandering in the wings, Weir happened upon a can of what he knew in his dream-like state to be invisible paint. “It was really sticky, gooey, awful stuff. But it worked,” he said.

“So, I painted myself up and started f***ing with people, like you would do,” Weir continued. That’s when he spotted Garcia. “He was looking really splendid. His hair was black again; he was tall. And he had a velour cape on. He had a real sort of intense look in his eye. He looked straight at me and then through me, and then he stepped into me.”

So, Was It Actually His Bandmate’s Ghost?

As is always the case in matters of the otherworldly and supernatural, the true meaning of Bob Weir’s strange encounter with Jerry Garcia in a dream can be categorized into two camps: those who entertain the paranormal and those who don’t. In a literal sense, one could easily make a connection between Weir’s dream and his anxiety about his friend who had just recently checked into a rehab facility.

But one could glean just as much metaphysical symbolism from Weir’s dream if they so choose, which Weir seemed to do in his 2019 interview with GQ, saying, “Jerry came to me pretty directly that night.” Could the “sticky, gooey, awful stuff” be Weir’s mind’s interpretation of hard drugs, like h*****? Could it have been a metaphor for their professional careers that inevitably touched and “stickied” every other aspect of their lives, and perhaps that’s why Garcia wanted no part of it?

Moreover, why did Garcia move through and into Weir? Could this have been a supernatural passing of the guard, encouraging Weir to continue pursuing music and upholding the legacy of the band they worked together to create? Depending on how woo-woo you’re willing to get, there are plenty of uncanny interpretations to take from Weir’s dream.

Scientific or supernatural, the encounter was certainly an unsettling introduction to the news of Garcia’s death on August 9, 1995.

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