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.
BOOK FROM BEYOND
As a little girl, Jacqueline Scott-robertson loved Enid Blyton novels, but never imagined that she too would one day write adventure stories for children. A ghostly encounter on December 7, 2017, changed that. “My grandad came to me, he smiled and said, ‘When you wake up in the morning, I want you to write down everything I have told you. You will get it published,’” recalls Jacqueline, 72, who wrote to tell me how his “silvery” form appeared and dictated the entire plot for a children’s book. “I said, ‘I will never remember it all!’ He said, ‘Yes you will, I will help you’.”
The next morning, Jacqueline spent the day faithfully recording the tale of a trio of children who discover magic and intrigue in the woods. The Londonborn grandmother of 10 says family and friends “loved it”, but a member of a local writers’ group told her, “You have Buckley’s chance.”
A disheartened Jacqueline then remembered her grandfather’s advice – “Go to where you were born” – and discovered Londonbased Austin Macauley Publishers, who, to her great joy, released her book, The Uppity Wuppity Witch, in February.
“Grandad always told me, ‘I will look after you,’ and he has,” says the newly minted author.
For Jacqueline, whose family emigrated to Australia when she was 12, life has involved grief and trauma; her mother left only a year later, and Jacqueline dropped out of school to take care of her four siblings. She married at 16 and gave birth to the first of four sons.
Decades later, experiencing her grandfather’s support from beyond the veil has brought light into her world. “I feel very blessed because I do know that for a spirit to come back to the earth plane is very hard,” she reflects. “Only a great love could do that.”