Kelvin Cruickshank - Listen to Spirit

His name was Raymond Stirling, but to his family and friends he was known as Curly. Although our paths had crossed when I was a child, I have only a very vague memory of him. He was a butcher, and I can recall when I was about four visiting his shop and the nice man in the stripy apron handing me one of those bright red sausages. I could never have known back then that Curly would one day change my life.

In January 2018 Curly, then 84, vanished from his Hamilton house. Hed just returned from spending a week on holiday at Cooks Beach, on the Coromandel Peninsula, with family members. A widower, and by all accounts a hell of a nice guy, Curly had mild dementia but was still living independently in his house.

When a support worker arrived to see Curly the day after he got home, there was no sign of him. The alarm was raised, and a search launched to find the much-loved father, grandfather and great-grandfather. He was quite frail, so the search team didnt think he could have gone too far. His house was fairly close to the Waikato River, so when he wasnt found after the first few days the fear was that hed gone in the water. Boaties joined in the search but turned up nothing. Over a thousand people looked for Curly, from police and members of the Land Search and Rescue team, through to his family and friends, and local people who hadnt even known him.

The official search was suspended after the eleventh day, but the family refused to give up. His son Glenn devoted every moment he could to the search, including spending many hours on the Waikato in his kayak. But the searching turned up nothing.

Curly had vanished without a trace.

At the time, I had no idea any of this was happening. I was recovering from surgery on my back, which Id seriously damaged when I fell off my boat, and so all of my energy was being channelled into getting better. Eventually, I was able to go back to work, and my first shows were in Hamilton, in the middle of February.

On the second night there, shortly before I was about to go on, my crew member Gemma came backstage and told me that the family of a missing man was in the audience. She knew that at that time I wasnt keen on dealing with missing persons cases because of the pressure they put me under. I found it hard because the desperation from the family was often so strong that it put me on edge and made it difficult for me to get the information I needed from spirit. I had also been involved in a few cases where, when Id got details from the person who was in spirit, the messages I had passed on were ignored and not followed up. There were times when I felt I wasnt trusted, which was really frustrating. As a result, I was going through a phase of wanting to avoid missing persons cases if I could.

That night I went out on stage and started the show, and, although I hadnt planned on saying anything, I found myself telling the audience: Look, I know there is a family here of someone who is missing, and I am sorry guys, but it is really hard for me to do these kind of cases, so I wont be able to help. Is the family here?

A woman in the audience said, Thats us. It turned out to be Jo Stirling, Glenns wife and Curlys daughter-in-law. And as soon as she spoke, Curlys spirit was there with me and it was all on. So I ignored my qualms, and did a reading for her. I couldnt help it: he was coming through loud and clear.

With Curly missing for four weeks by then the family had pretty much come to terms with the fact that he was dead, but it still must have been hard for Jo to hear me talking to him, because that confirmed he had definitely died.

And Curly was coming through really strongly, and making it clear that he wanted to be found so he could come home.

Youre supposed to help me, he said to me.

He had his wife Margaret with him, and I started getting information that validated it really was them. There were some things that initially didnt make sense for example, Curly showed me that he had been in the military, and Jo didnt know anything about that. But she checked later, and found out he had been in the territorials.

He showed me a beautifully made bed in the style you learn in the army and that really struck a chord with Jo. When Curly disappeared, his bed had been made like that, which was unusual. Margaret had always been the one who made the bed, and after she died Curly didnt make it neatly like she did until the morning he vanished. The fact I knew the bed had been made so precisely was stunning. Other than the police, only the family knew that detail.

The reading with Jo was starting to take over the show and I needed to move on to other people, so I asked her if I could have a chat with her afterwards. We sat down for 15 minutes once I had finished signing books.

Curly had shown me what had happened to him, and it all made sense. What I saw was that he had gone to bed that night as usual, then woken up in the early hours of the morning. Because of his dementia, hed become confused, and he thought he was a young man again. He got up and made his bed like he had when he was in the territorials, and then, because he didnt remember that Margaret had died, he decided to go in search of her. He left behind his glasses and his walking stick he thought he was a young, healthy man who didnt need them and toddled off looking for the love of his life, his beloved wife.