THE ghost FILES KARINA MACHADO

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.

TRAVELS IN TIME

There is a novel I treasure called A Traveller in Time, by Alison Uttley. First published in 1939, it tells the story of a little girl called Penelope, who goes to stay at her aunt’s ancient farmhouse in the English countryside, where she finds herself mysteriously plunged into Elizabethan times.

Interestingly, the novel is based on the author’s own experiences at a farmhouse she visited as a child, a place where, “I sat on the stone walls in the sunshine of other times,” as she writes in the foreword.

These events are known as ‘time slips’, and I’ve been fascinated by them since I read about two friends who visited the Palace of Versailles in 1901, and somehow stumbled upon a scene from the past, Marie Antoinette and all. Have you heard about the Roman soldiers of York? In one of my favourite spooky tales, Harry Martindale, 18, was installing heating in the historic Treasurer’s House in 1953, when a trumpet blared. In strode a Roman soldier astride his horse, trailed by around 20 exhausted foot soldiers, all visible only from the knees up. (It later emerged that they were following an underground Roman road). Harry fell off his ladder in shock as the troops filed by.

“Not one of the soldiers looked in my direction,” Harry recounted in an interview not long before his death in 2014, having never wavered from his astounding account of the moment he peered through a tear in the veil of time. Once asked if he believed in ghosts, Harry, who’s not the only one to have seen the soldiers, shrugged and said, “I only believe in what I saw.”

As we farewell another year, these stories give us much to ponder. Have you ever had a time slip? I’d love to hear about it.