Weekly News: Ghost Dog

I believe in ghosts. My whole career has been devoted to the paranormal and I have never had the least doubt that our spirits live after our bodies have died. I’ve sat at seances, roamed haunted inns and castles, and explored curesed palaces in Venice. I’ve heard the tappings of unquiet spirits and felt the chill of nameless presences.

But I have never seen a ghost. Not with my own eyes, not a real,
visible presence in front of me. Until...

I told Weekly News readers recently that I was choosing the wording for my mother’s gravestone. A rabbi friend, Jonathan Romain, recommended a stonemason in a nearby town, a likeable man named Nigel Johnson. Nigel agreed to drive over to my home with some granite samples, to let me see how they’d look, and when his van arrived at our gates I walked out to welcome him.

We have a long drive, and I don’t often greet callers personally — there’s an electronic security device to let them through — but on this day I felt like the exercise. So I strolled out, and it struck me that the church bells were tolling beside the cemetery where Muti is buried. That moved me.

I was pleased to see Nigel had brought his dog. A man who loves dogs is usually to be trusted, and this mutt was a smasher: a bit collie, a bit corgi, with a streetwise glint in its eye. It reminded me of my first dog, Tsuki, who lived with me and my mum in Tel Aviv.

Nigel jumped out of the van to shake my hand: “I’ve brought the stones,” he said cheerfully. “Open the other door and take a look.” I opened the passenger door, and stared. There were the granite samples, on the seat, just as he’d said. And... nothing else.
“Where’s the dog?” I said.

Nigel looked puzzled, and I repeated the question. “My dog died in the summer,” he said. “But how did you know...”
When I told him what I’d seen, Nigel’s legs started to shake. He wasn’t certain at first that this might not be some kind of Uri Geller joke, with cameras hidden behind the wall. But I was just as shocked. I’d seen my first ghost, and it was a dog!

Afterwards, I realised that this was a sign from my mother. I’m not prone to seeing canine spectres, after all: this is a unique experience. And it makes sense, with the church bells chiming and my mother so much in my mind.
“But why would you see a dog, and not Muti herself?” asked my wife.

There’s an easy answer to that. If the stonemason had turned up with my mother on his passenger seat, I might very easily have dropped dead myself!

My mother’s presence has been felt in other odd little ways. She always wore a beautiful H Stern watch in her later years, a present from the
son of the great Brazilian jeweller himself. It was worth thousands of pounds, and when she went into hospital she was worried about losing
it, so Hanna promised to wear it for her. One evening, after Muti had died, I laid it lovingly in a drawer of watches... and the next morning
it had vanished. I emptied that drawer and serached every crack, then went to tell Hanna the bad news.

She wouldn’t believe me, came to look for herself — and there was Muti’s watch, on top of the pile. That’s teach me not to handle it!

We flew to Jerusalem while Britain was shivering in the December frosts — that’s our British Airways pilot, Ann Brown. I bent a spoon for her
and she said that, as she couldn’t waltz off with a piece of BA cutlery in her pocket, she’d auction it for charity.

In Tel Aviv we met Avraham Grant, the Israeli football coach. He is a great advocate of sports psychology, and we talked intensely about mind training. Avraham confided he was thinking about a move to the Premiership next season, and I’d love to see him working in this
country — Mourinho and Benitez would discover they had an equal in this deep-thinking man, who graduated in psychology from Tel Aviv
university.

I was in Jerusalem on Christmas Day, to accept an award from Magen David Adom, also known as the Red Crystal since its inclusion in the
international federation of Red Cross and Red Cresecent societies. As president of the friends of the MDA, which translates as the Red Star
of David, I was greatly honoured at this citation, and arrived nervously at the 3,000-seater Nations Auditorium.
I’d been there before, decades ago, to do a show — and that set me hunting for something, a sign, a mark... I found it. Across the top
corner of a dressing room mirror, in indelible pen and Hebrew characters, were the words, “Uri Geller 1969”.

I pulled out my marker and signed it again, adding the year, this time in English lettering. I have a terrible habit of signing any piece of
public property — I’ve even done taxis before now. It’s got me into plenty of trouble... but it’s worth it when I find myself coming full
circle.