It turned out it was her long-dead great grandmother.

“I was staying at my grandmothers and I was probably seven, maybe going on eight, and I woke up and I remember very clearly the door of the bedroom opened and woman walked in,” she said.

“To me she looked like she was wearing a old fashioned white nightgown and she looked at me, smiled and left.

“She was a very, very old lady, but with very gentle face.

“I was freaked out because I could see it with physical eyes and not just an internal knowing it was there.

“I yelled out and my grandmother came in and she got me to describe her.

“What I described was my great grandmother and she then showed me a photo and it was definitely her.”

The Hepburn Shire resident has continued to harness her psychic abilities over the years and now works as a clairvoyant at The Readers in Daylesford.

She is currently working on a series of publications called Silver’s Threads.

“The first one came out in July last year and this one was just released in December,” Mrs Reilly said.

“And I’m still to have a book release for both of them, hopefully next month, I’m just working on dates.

“They’re classified as urban fantasy but they actually hold a little bit of my philosophy in there with regards to how the world operates.

“But it’s easier for me to know what is known as the western mystery traditions in story form in the old ways of story telling rather than just the straight text book teaching.

“So it’s a part of what I teach but it’s hidden in a story line.”

Mrs Reilly is also a teacher of creative and psychic awareness.

“It’s about teaching people how to use their brains differently.

“Because everyone has latent skills and abilities.

“As a child you’re a lot more sensitive and open and then it all gets squished because we’re told don’t fantasise, don’t day dream, it’s all in your head you just have a vivid imagination.

“However, there is a part of the brain that we can access more readily when we balance left and right brain hemispheres.”

Mrs Reilly said she was born with the ability to “just know things, sense things, see things.”

“I was lucky enough to have two grandmothers that supported me and didn’t try to make me close it down,” she said.

Mrs Reilly remembers visiting a graveyard when she was a young child and telling the story of a child who had died in WWI.

“I was looking at all the really ancient gravestones and I just happened to touch one and I had a rush of imagery and knowledge for that person who died and I hadn’t read the text or anything,” she said.

“I remember telling a little story ... and anyway the data was verifiable and that was the beginning.”

?– Hannah Knight