Karina Machado is a journalist, host of the Spirit Sisters podcast and the author of Spirit Sisters,
Where Spirits Dwell and Love Never Dies, a non-fiction series exploring the extraordinary experiences of ordinary people. Now, on The Ghost Files podcast each week, Karina will introduce a guest who’ll share their personal encounter with the spirit world.
Watch: Mysterious shadow rolls past domestic CCTV camera
THE GRINNING GHOST
If someone experiences something out of the ordinary, it’s easy for that person to second-guess themselves and wonder if perhaps they were dreaming or imagining things.
Of course, if two people see the same thing, it’s much harder to doubt. And if three people see it?
That’s rare. In all of my years researching these encounters, I’ve rarely come across it. Yet that’s exactly the story Faye tells on this week’s highly entertaining (and a little creepy) episode of The Ghost Files podcast.
I loved speaking with Scotlandborn Faye, who has a lifetime of extraordinary experiences behind her. Faye was living with her mother and teenage son in Queensland when she woke up to find herself face-to-face with a boy with dark, curly hair kneeling by the side of her bed.
Faye is used to seeing ghosts but even she was startled. One thing in particular troubled her – the grin on his face. She jumped out of bed and scolded him about it.
When she turned back to the bed, he’d vanished.
Even if the story ended there, it would be a good one. Except it doesn’t because Faye was not the only person in her house to see the ghost boy.
In my book Spirit Sisters, I interviewed a sleep-disorders expert who suggested some ghost sightings can be attributed to hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations – these occur when someone is going into and coming out of sleep, respectively. However, this seems less plausible in Faye’s case, with multiple witnesses to the same apparition.
There’s also a sad twist in the tale, which made it hard for me to get the ghost boy out of my head.
I’ll let Faye tell you about it herself on The Ghost Files podcast. Her Scottish accent makes it all the more intriguing! Only the fireside was missing …
For more, see this week’s New Idea – out now!