My extraordinary journey with Shylo changed the way I saw so many things. Yet when I look back, I can see how it also helped make sense of a series of unusual experiences I’d had as a child. Like many, I’d learnt early I was different from others—different from my family too, which isn’t an easy experience to deal with, as we all long for acceptance and belonging. Yet as Shylo’s visitations became more constant in my life, I began to realise that being a bridge between worlds was a role I had been playing all my life.
I was a creative and sensitive child, who loved to escape into my piano playing and ballet dancing, as they helped me deal with the disharmony and chaos that’s often a part of family life. It wasn’t just my emotional sensitivity that left me feeling different. I’d been able to sense those in spirit from quite a young age. While playing, I’d often feel the presence of someone watching me, and would suddenly stop and feel overwhelmed by a creepy familiar knowing. Someone else was there. Someone I didn’t know. Yet when I slowly turned my head and dared to look, everything was normal. The eleven-foot ceilings, the antique Victorian grandmother and grandfather chairs with their quaint tapestry footstools and the tall antique vase on the mantelpiece proudly displaying my mother’s flower arrangement from our garden were all in their usual perfect places.
Yet I knew there was more.
This ability to move between worlds can be really hard for children, as they rarely talk about such things or know how to deal with them. So they’re left trying to navigate their unusual gifts alone. It was those moments, when I found myself alone in the family home or later at night when activity slowed and my sensitivities increased, that I found the most challenging. I often felt scared of being on my own in the dark, with the distinct feeling some unseen presence was watching me.
One particular night, I suddenly opened my eyes to see and hear all the objects in my room shuddering and shaking. As it turned out, my town was being hit by a violent earth tremor. More disturbingly, as I looked around my room I discovered people dressed in early settler clothing, standing at the foot of my bed. As they stared at me, they knew I could see them too. I could feel it, sense it. They knew there was something different about me. This was the most unnerving thing of all.
There were some places where I played that felt more intense. The spare land behind our family home was always a source of childhood fascination and fear. Whether I was playing with friends on the old cartwheel in the middle of the empty land, or sitting alone on my back gate that led into this area, I would sense an eerie foreboding as I looked across to the back of the house from there. My legs always pedalled faster when riding my bike past a particular old home on the hill.
Years later, I discovered that this home was designed by local architect Edmund Cooper Manfred as his grand Victorian mansion. It was built on the infamous ‘Gallows Hill,’ once used as a flogging post and gallows. A particularly significant public hanging took place in November 1831. Two convict servant men were hanged for the murder of a local man. Suspended in a gibbet and chained in iron hanging cages, they were left to die.
Another grand Victorian house with high ornate ceilings and large formal rooms, just several houses from mine, was the home of my best friend Sally. One day when she and I were alone playing together upstairs in Sally’s bedroom, we both began to sense something in the room that we couldn’t explain. There was a distinct feeling that someone else had entered the room. Standing still, we looked around nervously. We were no longer alone. In the very next moment, the blinds on the windows began to tremble. It was enough to make Sally and I run downstairs to the safety of the ground floor.
When I reached the bottom of the stairs, I looked back up to the landing. Standing there was an elegant woman, her hair tied back neatly in a high soft bun. She was wearing a long skirt and long-sleeved, high-collared white shirt, her hands gently clasped one over the other. I stared at her, struggling to comprehend what I was seeing and the terror it created.
Sally and I took refuge under the table tennis table in the large playroom at the very back of the house. Within moments, we heard the piano playing. Sally yelled out to her older sister Jane, who she presumed had returned home and was now playing the piano, but got no response. Back we ran to the front section of the house, past the staircase and into the dining room where the piano was located.
Everything seemed so still, as if the very objects were watching us. The music had stopped. But our relief turned to terror when we realised Jane was not playing the piano. No-one was playing the piano. We were all alone in that grand old house.
Screaming, we ran as fast as we could into the corridor, past the grand staircase and small kitchen, and back out to the playroom. Once again we took refuge under the large table tennis table, until moments later Sally’s mother and several of her siblings walked through the back door, laden with groceries. Sitting perched on the high brown kitchen stools, we shared our story with Mrs. Dixon, who was unable to give us any explanation as to what had really occurred.
It didn’t seem to matter whether I was visiting other local houses or was in my own family home. Any moment could suddenly become a confronting one. Entering the front section of our old late Victorian home at night took a great deal of courage. I’d slowly make my way towards the dark hallway, aware of a foreboding presence there.
Later, my older sister told me of her nervousness entering the front hallway at night. More recently, my mother shared her own disturbing experiences of that very same hallway as a teenager. On several occasions, she clearly heard piercing screams from what sounded like a terrified woman. Her mother also had similar experiences, but no-one had any explanation.
My grandmother was clairvoyant, and would often give tarot readings for friends seeking guidance. She would also read teacups. Eventually my mother threw her tarot card deck in the fire, believing the cards had something ‘evil’ about them.
Throughout my childhood, my mother would regularly talk about her prophetic dreams, her strong gut feelings, and other strange experiences that fascinated me. Yet when I shared my own unusual experiences, my mother would dismiss them as imagination.
Many years later, I came to understand that this was her attempt to allay my fears. If what I saw wasn’t real, then I would have nothing to feel afraid of. Mum would regularly quip: ‘It’s not the dead you need to be afraid of, it’s the living!’