THE ghost FILES
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.
MY LITTLE BOY IS A MEDIUM
Sheridan knew something was not right in her home. First, there was the eerie sense of a presence in the bathroom when she was showering. Then, came the migraines and constant arguments with her husband, which baffled the formerly happy couple. “We were falling apart,” Sheridan tells me in the latest episode of The Ghost Files podcast.
At that point, Sheridan was not aware – though she soon would be – that discord in the home is a symptom of a haunted house. It was only when her 9-year-old son became “petrified” of sleeping in his bedroom that she began to think there could an unwelcome visitor (or two) beneath her roof.
“There are people in the doorway and faces in my cupboard,” said the little boy. “I don’t want to sleep at night because that’s when they come.”
Startled, Sheridan took her son to a psychologist, who found nothing amiss, and yet his distress persisted. After 18 months of unsettled nights, he declared he would only sleep in the lounge room. That’s when Sheridan
sought help from a clairvoyant, who confirmed the house was teeming with spirits.
“I can’t get rid of them,” she said, to Sheridan’s alarm. “But I know someone who can.”
Meeting this woman, who’d become her mentor, launched a complete life overhaul for the mother of three from NSW. What began as a tentative exploration of the spirit world in order to restore peace to her home and better support her gifted son, has led to the flourishing of Sheridan’s own gifts.
“Spirit is everywhere,” she says. “So much is here that people don’t see.”
Today, her boy is 14 and still seeing ghosts as clearly as flesh-and-blood people, but it’s something the family keeps quiet about. As Sheridan says, “We want him to just enjoy being a teenager.”