The members of Iron Maiden say they witnessed a number of strange and spooky coincidences during the making of their third album, 1982's The Number of the Beast.

As bassist Steve Harris told Metal Hammer during an interview for a recent retrospective on the LP, the band became fairly sensitive to the odd goings-on surrounding the sessions — as did producer Martin Birch, who was even rattled by a receipt for work on his car.

"One weird thing that happened was that Martin went to get his car repaired after it had been in an accident, and the bill came to £666," recalled Harris in the interview. "He was so freaked out that he insisted the garage charged him £667. It must have been the first time that garage had ever come across someone who demanded to pay more."

Whatever supernatural forces might have been at play behind the scenes, they didn't stop The Number of the Beast from going on to become a huge hit. The band's first album with singer Bruce Dickinson, Beast topped the charts in their native U.K. and broke the Top 40 in the U.S., hastening Maiden's rise to worldwide metal domination on the strength of a set of songs since acknowledged to be one of the genre's essential albums. And more than three decades later, they're still going strong: their latest release, The Book of Souls, is in stores now, and they're about to embark on yet another massive world tour.

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