Israeli psychic buys Elvis' house

Celebrity psychic Uri Geller said he got a sign from Elvis Presley, and the message was loud and clear: "Don't worry, you'll have my house."

Photo: Israeli psychic buys Elvis' house

Geller, who had the winning bid of $905,100 (Ђ702,608) for a house Presley lived in as his career was taking off, said he was traveling to London in the closing moments of the eBay auction Sunday when the radio began playing, "Love Me Tender."

He said he knew then that it was a done deal.

Presley bought the four-bedroom, 3,000-square-foot (270-square-meter) house in 1956 with his early song royalties. The singer, his parents and grandmother lived there for 13 months before moving to a two-story colonial house already known as Graceland, the house that Elvis would make famous.

Geller, an Israeli who lives outside London, is buying the house with two partners: Peter Gleason, a New York attorney and retired firefighter, and Lisbeth Silvandersson, a jewelry maker who lives in England.

They plan to restore the four-bedroom home it to its original splendor and bring sick children from Palestine, Israel and America to see it. He hopes for permission to make it into a museum, reports AP.

During the process he was approached by dozens of people wanting to go in with him, he said.

He chose two, New York lawyer Jim Gleason and Lisbeth Silvandersson, a Swedish-born jewellery maker who lives in England, as equal partners.

He had set a ceiling price of $US1.11 million ($A1.44 million), said Geller, who acknowledges a paranormal fascination with the number 11.

"As the clock closed on the bidding yesterday," Geller said, "I felt intuitively I got the price. I was text messaging Gleason and it was exactly 11 on my mobile phone and suddenly the radio started playing an Elvis song. That was Elvis telling me we got the house!"

Geller met Presley in Las Vegas in the 1970s after the King of Rock and Roll asked him to perform his spoon-bending trick for him, he said. Since then he has amassed a large collection of Presley memorabilia, he said, informs The Age.

O.Ch.