LIZ JONES: My eerie premonitions that prove many of us have REAL psychic bonds with beloved animals we have lost

Eating lunch before I headed home from the country-house party, we got to talking about my love of animals. My fellow guests had been shooting, then to church – a mismatch of beliefs as strange as my marriage.

We got to talking about my reasons for being vegan: I believe every animal has a right to a life free from confinement and violence. A fellow guest said that she and other family members were psychic and that a visiting aunt had recently said to her, ‘Oh, you have a rabbit at your feet.’ My fellow guest had lost her rabbit when she was little.

When I’m driving, I always feel Gracie, the collie I lost to cancer, on the back seat. As she was so chewy, she couldn’t be left, so accompanied me everywhere.

Two years ago, I had to leave super-early to catch a train to Bath to give a talk to third-year journalism students (one asked me, when I was regaling them with stories of my interviews with film stars, ‘What does sycophantic mean?’). There was thick snow, I was worried about catching the train and so I asked my neighbour, from whom I rent the stables and 26 acres, if she could make sure all the horses had their heads over the stable doors; Nic, my assistant who looks after them, would have still been asleep at home a few miles away. As I boarded the train, my neighbour sent me a photo and an urgent message. ‘I’ve just checked them. Quincy [Nic’s horse] is on the floor. He’s breathing, but he can’t get up.’

I had never, ever asked her to check them before.

I alerted Nic, who raced to the yard at 80mph and, with a vet, managed to get her horse to his feet. We don’t think he has laid down since, due to loss of confidence. Horses who get cast can panic, get a twisted gut and die.

Another time I was walking my dogs late and I thought, I really need to check the gates to the paddocks. To my horror, one was wide open. Oh my god! Using the torch on my phone, I raced into the field to check the horses were still there while phoning Nic.

It turned out thieves had stolen our quad bike, wheeled it through the fields and, after cutting the chain, left the gate wide open. The police weren’t interested.

My mum was psychic. She woke one morning convinced my brother had been in a fight. She went to his room and, yes, her vision was right: his pillow was covered in blood. One day, a man came to our door and told her that her daughter (my sister) was being followed by evil spirits. My sister died of alcohol-related disease, having lost her son to leukaemia. She was never lucky in love, despite being sweet and beautiful.

After my dad died, my mum said she would see him in the hallway, handsome, young, impeccable in his Army uniform. Suffering from dementia for a decade, she would plead with her carers to let her join him.

‘I want to be with Robert,’ she would say. The carers had no idea this was her late husband’s name.

‘There is no Robert!’ they would say, trying to calm her down but only adding to her confusion.

There is a storm here in the Yorkshire Dales and Nic has just texted me to say she was checking the fields before turning out the horses – Quincy, my ex-racehorse Swirly and Blue Cross rescue pony Pocket – for the night now it’s calmer.

‘I was walking around in the dark, checking the fences, and I felt Jac, Benji and Dream walking beside me.’ We lost her palomino Jac on Halloween 2024, my ponies Benji and Dream a few years before. ‘They were escorting me across the field, it felt really strong. And then I spoke to my mum – I didn’t mention what had happened – and she said she had a dream last night that she was in the field with Benji and Jac, who were standing next to each other. How weird is that?’

I really hope Gracie doesn’t know she’s dead: she’s too small to cope with that, would panic if her breakfast was late. But I’m certain she knows she was loved.

Have a very merry Christmas. Hug your loved ones close.

JONES MOANS… WHAT LIZ LOATHES (ABOUT CHRISTMAS) THIS WEEK

• Trying to find the end of the Sellotape roll.
• Anyone who gifts a poinsettia, a bulb-growing kit (me: ‘It’s a pot of soil’), says of The Holiday or The Family Stone, ‘I’ve already seen it’ or utters the sentence: ‘You’re so difficult to buy for…’
• Almonds in shells.