I’m something of a sceptic when it comes to people describing supernatural encounters. I have experienced only one myself and, prior to now, I have only told two other people.

In 1999 I spent many hours researching my family history. I focused on my great-grandparents Edward Gorey and Sophia Evans, and their children.

The project involved trips to Melbourne, Whroo, Rochester, Shepparton and Echuca. Whroo is a haunting place, a former gold mining district where hundreds of people died, especially children.

Edward Gorey had a farm near Whroo and spent some time gold mining himself.

Before Edward and Sophia moved to Whroo they lived at Corop on the other side of Rochester. Their eldest daughter Margaret, my great-aunt, was born there on March 1, 1876.

This article tells the tragic story of her short life and premature death before she reached her third birthday. I scoured newspaper articles, read the coroner’s report and I visited Margaret’s grave at Rochester.

During the winter of 1999, before I had finished the book, I was asleep one night at our home in Porepunkah when I woke up sensing the presence of a small girl in the room.

I thought it was Kathleen, who at the time was five years old. I tried to get up and see what she wanted but I was frozen solid. The child came close to me. She was affectionate and I wanted to reach out to her, but I couldn’t.

Something clicked in my brain that it was Margaret. When that happened I unfroze and the child was gone.

On another occasion I had a vivid dream, which I believe involved Margaret. I saw a happy, pretty child in a dusty farm yard. It was a hot day. The building and fences were all made of roughly hewn timber.

The child was about three years old. She had very long brown hair. She was wearing a long, heavy dark green dress. I can’t say for certain what the material was, but it was something like corduroy. I thought it odd that she was wearing a dress like that on such a hot day.

Unusually for me, I remembered all these details clearly when I work up in the morning. Something registered with me that the child was Margaret. Certainly the setting fits with what I came to know of her life.

The dream can be explained rationally, of course, as an understandable sub-conscious reaction to material which was circulating in my conscious brain.

The “physical” presence of the child in my bedroom is harder to explain.

I named my second daughter Margaret and felt some relief when she passed her third birthday last December.