On the publicity trail
It’s been a week since Where Spirits Dwell landed in bookstores, and I’ve spent a productive few days doing radio and print interviews. As well as that, I’ve had the good fortune to have had extracts featured in several publications, and online. Here’s a little round-up of Where Spirits Dwell in the media:
Megan McAuliffe’s story of decades enduring paranormal activity, before eventually coming to terms with her abilities, is in marie claire‘s September issue. Nell Jones’s spooky account of being haunted by the past in her historic home, a former general store, in Newcastle, NSW, was in last week’s issue of Who (with Kim Kardashian’s wedding on the cover) and the segment about Tudor travelling with my sister, Natalie, is featured on her excellent website, On the Tudor Trail. Thanks to all of those publications for their support.
I’ve also become something of a regular at the ABC Radio’s Tardis Booth at their Ultimo HQ in Sydney, doing interviews with presenters from Western Australia to Launceston. Click here to listen to my interview with Caroline Davey from ABC Radio Australia… So far, so good, especially when I see my book in shops. Was at Big W today, en famile, when we spotted WSD in the mind/body/spirit section. It’s always a thrill (and a tad surreal) to spot that familiar cover on the shelves.
Out of the cold
The cover of my latest book.
Apologies. It has been seven months since my last post … that sounds somewhat confessional, and in a sense, it is. I hate that I’ve neglected my website, and would like to put an end to that, starting now.
It’s a wintery Sunday night in Sydney on a long weekend, the perfect time to read one of my stories, and I’ll be opening one of my books as soon as I’m done writing this post. I have the glass of cab-sav in hand, the only thing I’m missing is the open fireplace … since moving out of our home of 11 years last November (probably the biggest culprit for my lack of posts) we have had to make do with an electric fireplace. Yes, we are no longer living in the sweet little 1924 Californian Bungalow I’ve described in both my books, where my husband saw the shades of a mournful lady in a red nightgown and a sepia-toned little boy. A lovely new family is filling its spaces now, and I wish them no end of love and happiness.
Much has happened in the last seven months, especially one major development, which I’ll go into in a moment. I’m always delighted when feedback arrives from fans of WHERE SPIRITS DWELL. I’m very proud of the book and thrilled that it continues to draw in new readers, many of whom were not familiar with my first book, SPIRIT SISTERS. I’m heartened that Hachette, the publishers of both of those titles, believes enough in WHERE SPIRITS DWELL to enter it into several Australian literary awards. Regardless of the outcome, it’s encouraging, and I so appreciate their support.
Back to what I’ve been up to for the last half a year, I’ve spoken at Cronulla library (you can watch it here) and was interviewed by the NSW Writers’ Centre (see it here). It was so rewarding to do both. Thanks to everyone involved in making those things happen. In November, I’ll be speaking at the Sutherland Shire Writers’ Festival, which is exciting.
And now to the news. I am starting work on a third book, what I’m envisaging as the last in the SPIRIT SISTERS series. This one is going to focus on the very personal and moving experiences of sensing the spirit of a loved one. Each of my last books has featured a chapter each dedicated to this phenomena, which I find endlessly fascinating and touching—and hopeful. For my next book, I’m concentrating on these experiences. Have you ever sensed the spirit of a late loved one around you? If you’d like to share your story, please drop me a line and tell me about it.
And now, time to lose myself, once more, in one of my interviewees’ astonishing experiences. I’ll shut down the laptop and pick up a book. The weather calls for it. Will I fish out one of my favourites from WHERE SPIRITS DWELL, or delve back into my beloved SPIRIT SISTERS? As I do, I’ll be thinking about a quote by Australian director James Wan, who helmed the chilling haunted house homage Insidious. In an interview last year, he sagely said: “We all live in a space that is our sanctuary, our fortress. The concept that you cannot control it is scary.” I’ve spoken to many people who’d be nodding their heads to that, their eyes turned inwards in remembrance of sanctuaries undone.
Something for Halloween.
Halloween night. It’s a tad chilly in Sydney (which I don’t mind) so I’m tucked up under the blankets thinking that this is as good a time as any to update my blog, after a bit of a self-imposed break from my work. (Apologies to anyone who’s contacted me via this page, it was lovely to read your messages and I’ll be getting back to each of you shortly.)
I’ve been thinking all day about which extract to post, but have decided not to go with one of the scariest stories in Where Spirits Dwell, rather I’ve chosen one that encompasses—and celebrates—the idea that a lot of the stories my interviewees have shared are neat little mysteries (which may never be solved.)
So if you’re not all “Halloweened out,” sit back and enjoy this extract from Where Spirits Dwell. It’s called “Dropping in.” Oh, and while it’s not the scariest story in the book, I don’t want you to get the idea it isn’t the least bit spooky. I wouldn’t want you to get that idea at all …
DROPPING IN
“There was an old man in my room this morning”
“I wouldn’t say it was a haunting, it was just an experience.” So Daniel Lightman prefaces his ghost story. He was only 14 when it happened, but the “experience” hangs in a corridor of his mind like a life-size portrait, its edges and contours frozen in time. For 13 years, Daniel thought he knew everything there was to know about that distant moment, but today, he’s prepared to examine it with fresh eyes, to face anew the man in the frame.
In the late 1990s, Daniel and his father were living in a relatively modern ground floor apartment in a Northern Sydney suburb. “It was very dark, it never really caught much natural sunlight, it just had a dark sort of feel about it,” recalls Daniel, adding that it was common to walk into a room and have the sense that something or someone in there was scurrying away into the shadows. That is the only unusual thing Daniel recalls about his former home. Certainly, there was nothing to prepare him for what took place one weekday morning at about 6:30 am.
It was a school morning and Daniel was savouring the last hour of sleep before the alarm sounded. To his surprise, he was suddenly awake, as alert as if he’d splashed his face with icy water, and he was no longer alone. Says Daniel: “He was standing at the entrance of my room.”
His bed faced the doorway. The visitor, who seemed to be in his sixties, stood barely three metres away. “He had a hat on, a small-brimmed hat, and he was reading something, I don’t know what it was exactly, it could have been a newspaper,” says the 28-year-old sales executive. “I was freaking out, it just made all the hairs on my arms stand up on end, and I was looking, rubbing my eyes, thinking, ‘What the hell is this?’ and he was there for, I don’t know, maybe a couple of seconds?”
The man wore “an older-style suit in a dark khaki colour,” he says. “And I just remember his little hat. It wasn’t rigid like the hats businessmen wore in the 1960s, it was more an old man style of hat; crease in the middle, with a really small brim.” These details were branded onto Daniel’s memory through some process that had nothing to do with him—uppermost in his mind was the sheer shock. Ghost? The word never entered his mind. The man looked utterly lifelike. “I thought there was someone standing in my room, I almost jolted back in my bed.”
Daniel didn’t scream for his father, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t afraid. He heard someone gasping, trying to retract and melt into the wall, snatching even the breath back, back in and away from the man—and realised he was responsible for the raggedy sound. As he stared, trying to process the incongruous scene, the man registered the boy’s presence. “He stopped reading and then looked up and smiled.”
“That was it,” says Daniel quietly. “It was almost like he was there one moment, then gone the next. It wasn’t a fade away.” For the next few minutes, Daniel didn’t move. “I was trying to get my marbles together, I didn’t know what was going on. I definitely didn’t spring out of bed, I was just sitting there thinking, ‘What just happened?’ ”
Later that day, he told his father. “I said, ‘There was an old man in my room this morning. It freaked me out.’ He was pretty open to that sort of thing. He wasn’t horrified and he wasn’t disbelieving in any way.” Daniel’s dad suggested that the visitor was the ghost of their recently deceased neighbour, Mr Mumford—“Mrs Mumford used to always say he was still around and would visit her”—coming to say hello. Though this explanation has suited him just fine for over a decade, today Daniel concedes that he and Mr. Mumford were not really that close, in fact, he’d never exchanged words with the older couple, and that there were physical discrepancies too. “Now that I think about it, I don’t know that it was him, what I remember seeing versus what I remember him to be. It could have been somebody else.”
Who?
Daniel casts his mind back to what his life was like then, back in year nine of high school. “I had been through a pretty strange patch actually,” he offers, after a pause. “I was kind of misbehaving a bit. I didn’t do anything really naughty, but I was getting into a bit of trouble at school and just being a bit of a rat, I guess. I wasn’t a criminal, but I wasn’t the best boy, so to speak.”
The eloquent young man keeps to himself the details of his mother’s absence from the home, and I don’t pry, but I wonder about the role of grandparents … grandfathers, in particular. “Now that we’re talking about it, what I described does sound similar to my grandfather on my dad’s side, Pop, who I was pretty close to when I was younger, between the ages of three and five,” he says, sounding intrigued. “We used to spend quite a bit of time together.”
Though he’s since passed away, Pop was definitely alive when the ghost appeared, but had been estranged from his son and grandson: “He’d had a bit of a falling out with my dad and they hadn’t spoken in years.” When Daniel mentions this, something else occurs to me. “Have you heard of apparitions of the living?” I ask him. Paranormal literature is bursting with stories of people who’ve seen and interacted with apparitions of people who are living, but often geographically distant. Sometimes, the apparition is of a person on their deathbed who comes to say farewell, but in other cases, the phantom is of a person who is alive and well and unwittingly projects his or her image to a loved one, usually because they’ve been thinking of that person. The process is essentially telepathic and involuntary, according to the late paranormal researcher Hans Holzer.
It’s possible that Pop had heard about his grandson’s minor trouble at school and that one day, sitting in his favourite chair at home, the newspaper on his lap, he dozed off as his thoughts drifted to the boy he hadn’t seen in years. That is potentially all it took—a grandfather missing his grandson. It’s also likely that both the patriarch and the boy had more psychic ability than average folks.
The puzzle of his identity aside, Ben is certain the man meant him no harm. When he looked up and smiled, “it came across as a peaceful gesture, not threatening or uncomfortable,” he reflects. “He was wanting to let me know that he was okay.” And perhaps, that he would be, too.
From Where Spirits Dwell, by Karina Machado.
Meet the Authors Night
Meet the Authors Night – Thurs., Nov. 10
Come and meet me—and some other fabulous authors: Nikki Gemmell (With My Body, The Bride Stripped Bare), Packed to the Rafters actress Merridy Eastman (There’s a Bear in There, How Now Brown Frau) and blogger Kerri Sackville (When My Husband Does the Dishes …)—in a fundraiser for Vaucluse Public School’s Stephanie Alexander program. The plan is for a fun night out with refreshments, lucky door prizes and I’ll be signing books, so feel free to rope in friends, workmates and family. Tickets $10 prepaid, $15 at the door. For more info click here or contact Deb Grunfeld: 9371 5276 or [email protected]
Where Spirits Dwell … a sneak peek.
Only ten days left until Where Spirits Dwell is in the bookshops! To celebrate, here’s the first of a series of sneak peeks I’m going to be posting over the coming week. This excerpt is from a story about an exquisite period home in Melbourne, where a gentle ghostly resident felt herself to be very much a part of the family. Hope you enjoy it.
BABYSITTER
The sky had poured its wet fury over the city all day, but inside Elizabeth Clifford’s home, it was as serene and dark as a cathedral at midnight. Her living room was a den of shadow and torchlight since a blackout snuffed out the neighbourhood lights and hushed its televisions, but it was so soothing to sit there, cut off from the world and its constant chatter and glare, that Liz almost wished it would happen more often.
When lights glowed again in their neighbours’ windows, Liz and her husband, David, looked at each other, a bit disappointed that their retreat was coming to an end. They waited, but the room stayed in darkness. Frowning, David went into the hallway to call the electricity company, but Liz just sighed and got comfortable. Curled up on the couch, she sipped wine and gazed out the window, where embers of the day still brightened a corner of the sky.
“What’s wrong with the kids?” asked David, stepping back into the living room. He’d been on the phone for about thirty minutes.
Liz stared at him. “What do you mean?”
“You were in there talking to them.”
“No,” said Liz, with the sense of an insect beginning to crawl slowly up her spine. “I’ve been sitting on the couch the whole time. What did you hear?”
“I heard a woman,” said David, his mouth
A storm over Melbourne. Source Alex Coppel, Herald Sun
opening just enough to let the words out. “I heard a woman saying, ‘It’s okay, everything is going to be okay, relax, turn over and go to sleep.’ All the things a mother would say.”
For three years, Liz had suspected that her family was sharing their home with somebody else, somebody who adored the house as much as they did. Now she knew it.
—Edited extract from Where Spirits Dwell, by Karina Machado. Available August 30.
