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Horror Story: True Paranormal Mysteries and Hauntings

The Musician That Made a Deal With the Devil

Horror Story: True Paranormal Mysteries and Hauntings

Horror Stories

History, Society & Culture, True Crime

4.8833 Ratings

🗓️ 23 April 2026

⏱️ 24 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A failed musician disappears… and returns months later as a master. This is the legend of Robert Johnson, the man said to have made a deal with the devil. Stories of haunted crossroads rituals and ghostly recordings that sound like more than one man playing, all surrounded Robert's life. Together, we'll explore the origins of the myth and the tragic reality behind it. Was it supernatural, or simply the cost of genius?
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Transcript

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0:00.0

It's a smoky and crowded juke joint in the Mississippi Delta in the 1930s, a place for people to socialize, drink, dance, and listen to live music.

0:18.0

And there, we're surrounded by the sounds of blues legends like Willie Brown,

0:22.7

Sun House, Charlie Patton. But among the crowd, there's someone else, a young and excited

0:28.9

young man desperate to join the ranks of these musicians. One of the older musicians goes

0:34.8

out for some air during a break, and Johnson goes for one of the guitars, and he plays, or at least try to play.

0:43.3

Sun Howells described it as such another racket you never heard.

0:47.8

It was so bad that the crowd got upset asking for the boy to stop.

0:53.3

So Sun grabs a guitar away from him, and the boy gets laughed

0:57.6

off the stage. But this boy, this young man, his name was Robert Johnson. He was so embarrassed

1:05.2

and angry at himself that he leaves town, completely disappearing from the music scene. The juke joints he loved so much, and instead he went back to the place where he was born,

1:15.6

to Hazlehurst, Mississippi.

1:18.6

But several months later, he returned to the Mississippi Delta, and he goes back to one of these places, these juke joints,

1:26.6

and he asks to take the stage one more time.

1:30.3

The older musicians, of course, expected another racket, random sounds coming from a guitar, but still, they let them play.

1:39.3

And what happened next shocked everyone in the room.

1:43.3

Robert's hands fly across the strings, complex style,

1:48.4

playing the rhythm and the lead guitar at the same time.

1:52.5

Voices coming from him.

1:55.6

Three people in one.

1:57.3

Or so it seemed, no one can believe it.

2:01.6

Son later said that once Robert finished playing, everyone's mouths were standing open.

2:12.6

How does a young man go from annoying everybody at the place to suddenly becoming a professional

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