Visits from the other side
Karina’s lifelong passion has led her to document some fascinating stories about the afterlife
Standing in the doorway was a man in military regalia, his medals gleaming on his broad chest.
I was eight and it was my first experience with the ‘other side’. Four decades later, if I close my eyes, I can still see him.
When I told my family, they didn’t doubt me, and he came to be known buy all of us as ‘the Colonel’.
My mum Sylvia had a sixth sense too, and I grew up hearing her stories, including the time that, as a young woman frying pastries at home in her native Uruguay, she blurted, ‘Turn off the radio. Uncle is dead.’
The words made no sense. Her healthy, rugged 44-year-old uncle, Americo, a dead ringer for Errol Flynn, had been helping her dad build a room out the back.
He’d only just returned next door to his house, keen to watch a bullfight on TV.
When his wife began calling for my grandfather, her voice calm at first, then ever shriller, my mother and her parents rushed over.
There lay Americo, felled by a massive heart attack.
How did my mother know her uncle had died? And where had ‘the Colonel’ come from? I wondered.
My curiosity about the unknown has led me to interview hundreds of people over the years, documenting their spiritual experiences in books and podcasts.
One of these stories was told to me by Naomi Kalogiros, of Sydney, NSW.
At 11pm each night without fail, an apparition would appear at her house – a man in a black coat and a big wide-brimmed hat, walking his Pomeranian dog.
‘He would appear out of the wall and disappear straight into the bathroom,’ Naomi told me. Over the five years they lived there, her husband never saw the man, who she presumes was a rector.
But one other person, a friend of the couple, did see him, and described exactly the same thing – without any prior information from Naomi.
Amy Shepherd also shared her hair-raising experience, which happened when she was seven and living in Wellington, NSW.
She was having a sleepover at her friend
Martha’s house when she received a huge shock.
‘A family of three – a mother, father and a little boy – appeared, dressed in their Sunday best. And they just stood there, staring at me,’ she said.
All were dressed in what appeared to be the fashion of the early 1900s; the males in dark-coloured suits, and the brunette woman in a long-sleeved dress.
‘Eventually the mother bent down and whispered something to the little boy and he nodded, then came over to my bed. He reached out to my leg and went to touch it. That’s when I freaked out and threw the blankets over my head.’
Amy’s never forgotten what she saw and what happened to her that night.
Neither has Judith Parker of Melbourne, who was staying with her cousin in her 1850s home in
Beechworth, Vic.
‘Her husband has a really off-beat sense of humour, so when I woke up at 5am and someone was shaking my hand really hard and saying ‘Good morning’, I said, ‘Oh John, it’s really early!’
Then Judith realised it wasn’t John but a ghost.
‘He was looking straight through me, as if he was shaking someone’s hand in his world, not mine.
‘Then he walked through me as though I didn’t exist,’ she explained.
It was almost as though she was a ghost in his world.
That echoed the sentiments of Rhonda Rice, 69, also from Sydney.
When she was in her 50s, she began waking to the alarming sight of strangers in her bedroom.
Once, a woman and a teenage girl, both wearing bonnets and colonial clothes, walked right past her bed.
‘I saw them just strolling through the room, laughing and talking as though out on a street,’ Rhonda told me.
They then vanished through the wall, as if she wasn’t even there.
Retiree Yvonne Saunders from regional Victoria shared with me her fascinating near death experience.
‘I died on the operating table in 1993,’ Yvonne told me. ‘I was floating in a dark tunnel but was not game to venture further.
‘When I realised that I must have had a cardiac arrest during the operation, an immense fear came over me and I just sang out aloud for God to help me.
‘Then all I remember was a swoosh, then doctors covering me in foil blankets. I did not regain awareness for another 16 hours.’
The experience must have opened a door to the other side because ever since that time Yvonne’s deceased parents have appeared to her several times – visits she cherishes as proof life goes on.
Experiences like these bring me hope and joy.
Far from being macabre, I find the stories offer peace and healing – and also undeniable proof that our souls don’t perish when we pass.
The 10th anniversary edition of Spirit Sisters by Karina Machado, published by Hachette, is available in bookstores and online. You can also listen to Karina’s podcasts Spirit Sisters and The Ghost Files.