My Father the Mentalist
Uri Geller
For the last forty years, Uri Geller has straddled the line between magic and mysticism. In the 1970s, he rose to fame for his seeming ability to bend metal spoons using paranormal powers. Since then he has worked as a psychic, entertainer, television personality, and mineral dowser. Born in Tel Aviv, Israel, in 1946, Geller lived in Cyprus, the United States, and the United Kingdom before returning to Israel in 2015. He and his wife, Hannah, have two children, Daniel and Natalie.
Daniel (age four), Natalie (age three), and Uri, 1985
though i was born in new york, I spent my childhood in Sonning-on-Thames, a small village forty miles west of London, in a big riverside property with my father, mother, younger sister, uncle Shipi (who was my father’s manager), and grandmother, whom my father looked after. My father wasn’t a disciplinarian, but he was strict when he had to be. He was very big on manners and insistent about etiquette, which was especially important since so many famous visitors—including Mohamed Al-Fayed, Michael Jackson, and various members of Parliament—often came to our house. He was also adamant that my sister and I be aware of how privileged we were. His childhood in Israel and later Cyprus was nowhere near as charmed as ours. We traveled the world with my dad, often staying in immense luxury, but he often took the opportunity to walk us through the slums so we never lost perspective.
Of course, growing up as the son of the world’s most well-known mentalist had its own peculiarities. The paranormal world was very much a part of my childhood. Soon after we moved to England, when I was five or six, a thumb-size crystal fell out of a glass cabinet in the living room. My father and I were standing in the kitchen when we heard the noise. We rushed to see what had crashed. There was the crystal on the floor, yet the glass doors of the cabinet remained closed. The crystal must have teleported.
The next incident that sticks out happened a few years later. My father had received a request for a personal consultation. He did this sometimes, visiting the homes of both the famous and the nonfamous. Often he’d bring me along. “Come on, Daniel,” he’d say. “It’s going to be fun.” This time his client was an English actor named Sarah Miles who was convinced that her home was haunted. We hopped into Dad’s Cadillac and headed over. Sarah greeted us at the door, and we began climbing these creaky stairs. We walked over to a windowsill in a sitting room. She began to tell us the significance of a jewelry box in the room, which I have since forgotten. My dad said, “Let’s see if we can call up the ghost.” He began to talk to the ghost, asking it to give us a sign if it could hear us, and the jewelry box slowly began to ascend into the air. Sarah and I watched wide-eyed. Dad didn’t seem as surprised. There was no rational explanation for what had happened.
Both the teleportation and the poltergeist were the kinds of paranormal things that surrounded my father and that I witnessed. Dad took me along often to visit random strangers who claimed to be possessed by demons or other supernatural beings, too. I was never scared by them. Rather, I enjoyed the adventures.
In some ways, Dad’s fame and the reason for it were a curse. As I said, I went to school in a small village where everyone knew who my father was. (It was impossible not to know—one day he had driven my sister and me to school in his Cadillac, which he had turned into a sculpture made of bent spoons.) I endured no small amount of abuse, both physical and verbal, much of which centered around my father. They called him a freak and me the son of a freak. But in countless ways, my father’s gift has been a blessing. Once, I lost a library book and Dad used his energy to locate it. (It had fallen behind the cupboard.) Later, while I was at university, he’d send me positive energy, which I felt as I was sitting at the exam desk. Once, it even saved my life. It was the night of my dad’s birthday, sometime in the late 1980s. My sister and I were playing in the marble foyer of our house, a big area with a massive crystal that my dad had acquired and installed on a pedestal. Natalie and I were sliding down the banister that ran from the second to the first floor. As I was sliding, I fell down onto the marble floor below from rather high up. There was a thud, and I began to bleed profusely. I could have been badly hurt or even died, but as it turned out, the only injuries I sustained were cuts on my chin and lip, from when my knees hit my chin.
The next morning, my father descended the stairs and came upon a ray of light being refracted through the crystal, sending rainbows through the room. This was December, and no sun shone in the sky. Something—or rather someone—must have been producing that ray. My father surmised that it was the energy of the crystal. He said that this energy had saved my life. I didn’t argue. I was, in fact, alive and relatively unhurt. Plus, I had no reason to disbelieve my father.
But, of course, the debate as to whether my father is truly a mentalist or a magician cannot simply be banished from our doors by the loyalty and love occasioned by familial bonds. I distinctly remember as a child being curious about whether what he does is a power or a talent. My father never told my sister and me—the topic was taboo—and after thirty-seven years, I have still never asked. Years ago, I told him, “Please never tell me the truth.” No good would come of either posing or answering the question. I know what I saw. And I know that my father is a wonderful parent who gave me both a super and a normal childhood.