ZAK BAGANS CLUB

Last night my son Ivan went to hang with his best friend, Lance, for a weekend of.....yes, you guessed it....PLAYING PS2 GAMES till they keel over.

Now, Lance lives in a house that was built on the hill of Perridgevale, Port Elizabeth back in the 1940's. Lance's mom told me one night how the house came with a creepy cellar and when I told her the corridor creeps me out, she told me its because there is a frail, but relatively pissed old lady in black who haunts the corridor. She stands in front of Lance's room, wringing her hands nervously.

But apparently she had been like a guardian to Lance since he was a baby. His mom told me that when he was a fresh melon, she once asked the ghost to cover him if his blanky fell off. This happened a lot. And one night she actually watched the blanket move up over the baby's shoulder, as if he was being covered!

So my son told me that they were playing a game in Lance's room yesterday and Ivan suddenly became aware of a burning sensation on the back of his shoulder and neck, but thought nothing of it in the heat of TEKKEN 5.

When they went outside for lunch at 12.00 midday, he felt it burning immensely and when Lance took a look, he counted the deep scratchmarks on Ivan's neck and shoulder!!!
I thought he fabricated it when he came home, cause well, I don't always just believe teenagers.
He told me he had just joined the Zak Bagans "scratched-by-ghosts-club", and I laughed it off.....
Then he showed me!!!

And we got a picture too!!!


The two boys and Lance's dad were the only people in the house and Lance took this pic.
Either Lance's dad has small nails or this was Lance's guardian ghost, scratching Ivan for kicking his ass on the game! BWAHAHAHAHAAH!!!!

The Whisper by the Door

KIRKWOOD, 2010


One night while my kids and I were still staying with my parents in the old farmhouse, my son and I encountered something very cool.

The room, according to my daughter Nush, houses a female spirit that stares at her constantly. Nush can "see" and I can "feel", so together we usually have a great time in a haunted house :-)
Nush asked me to sleep in the same room with her many times because even when she tries to turn her back on the staring 20-something with the dark, unhappy eyes and the bop-hairstyle, the apparition re-appears in front of her no matter where she turns.

I myself may have seen her one night. I opened my eyes to an outline of a chubby woman standing right in front of the window. Then it faded.

Nush was away to visit her dad in Johannesburg for 2 weeks and Ivan and I slept in this room. One night Ivan was very restless. I'd wake up several times during the night from his tossing and turning on the other wooden bed that stood horisontally at the foot of my bed....in a T-shape.
Man, he kept rolling, tugging at the covers, sighing....but I was very tired from farmwork that day and was too tired to bitch.

The following morning I woke up very early and sat up in bed only to notice that Ivan had NEVER SLEPT IN THIS BED that night!!!!!
I only realized that when I went to the living room and found him still sleeping on the couch with his blankets and pillow!!! Fuckin' hell!!!

That is the background of the room I am talking about....

A few days later, Ivan and I chatted in the room. I was sitting on my bed with my laptop, writing a story and he had brought me coffee. As he left, almost at the door we both heard a loud whisper : "HEY"

I tought it was Ivan, until he turned around, walked back to me and said : "Yes, Mommy?"

Astonished, I told him I had not said anything. He said neither did he!
For a moment we just stared at each other and then, as the chills set in, we started smiling.
Then Ivan ran out the room and made it clear that he needed some very strong coffee....and maybe some rum with it!

I still can't see the girl who lives in the room, but hey, at least the bitch SPOKE for once. LOL!!!

Big Knockers

For the time being we are residing in a family's maid's quarters, a small room with a toilet, basin and shower.
The one wall is part of the garage, so we have to go through the garage to enter the back door of the house. So we share a wall with the garage.
So, when we want to get nto the house, we enter the garage through one door, and then its about a meter from another door which takes you into the house.

The family has three dogs. Two little ones who are very chilled and a big bitch, similar to a Bull Mastiff, who has perpetual PMS and wants to eat anything that moves.
She makes CUJO look like a lapdog.

Anyway, we have noticed a lot of noises coming from outside at night and assumed it was the dogs, until we realized the noises came from the garage at between 12.30 and 2am, every night. You could set your clock by it!

The first two or three nights we noticed that there was knocking on the door that we use to enter the garage. We laughed it off as a creepy entertainment, but later we notced that the knocking happened every single night at the same time!
A rapid cluster of about 7 knocks, like you would knock on someone's door. None of that 1-2-3 shit ghosts apparently do.

This shook us a bit, because we were the only strangers in the back, so why would any of the family knock on the back door to go into the garage?
Then I tried to debunk it as the dogs, maybe wagging their tails against their wooden boxes, making it sound like a knock. But the dogs do not have tails!
Also, when we heard it, we sped out the door of our room, where we can see the garage's door in plain sight, and its still shut with nobody, man or dog, there!

The other night both my kids went into the garage on a dare, and watching too many GHOST ADVENTURES episodes, with their cell phones' voice recorders on.
Every ten minutes they'd come speeding into the room --- once because Luma (the Cujo Bitch) discovered they were outside, and the other times, because they actually captured some scary EVPs on their recorders.
They left their phones in there and we went to collect them after 10 minutes.

They picked up a female voice that cries softly, and taps on their phone speakers....like Morse Code. Nush claims that it sounded like someone picked up the phone an inch off the floor and dropped it again.

Remember, all this we did while the family were asleep inside the house at 2am.
Then the fun really started.
I still wake up from the sound of the dogs bowls being dragged outside, but I actually stand in the doorway, looking at the bowls at the time and they are completely inanimate. Plus, the sound seems to come from inside the garage.
Aother thing I hear on the other side of our wall, aside from the knocking that starts it all off, is a lot of shuffling, as if the place is being rearranged and faintly you can hear people talking.

I have sprinted out into the garage when this happens, and nobody is in there....and the door to the inside of the house is far from where the family is. You have to pass from a room, lobby and corridor before you get to the living room and kitchen, so it is definitely not the voices of the family in the house.

When the lady gave us the room that first day, she remarked that one of her daughters occupied the room for a little while. Now she stays in the house. Gee, wonder why she does not sleep here anymore?
Could it be the serenade of the Midnight Knockers? :-)

THE FLEETING GREETING

Brackenfell, Cape Town, last night,

Nush slept over at a friend's house last night and when she came back today, she didn't even greet me.....she opened the front door and the first thing she told me was to sit down cause she HAD to tell me this.

At about 30 past midnight last night, the two girls got the munchies and proceeded downstairs to the kitchen. While they were looking for snacks, Nush told her friend she is just going upstairs to blow her nose. She has a bad cold.

See bathroom above.

Nush came up the stairs to the bathroom and as she was about to enter, she heard two distinct knocks on the bathroom door!!! She thought someone was behind the door, so she went in anyway, but as she shut the door, she realized that there was nobody in the bathroom.

She quickly exited the door, closed it behind her. As she did so, her friend's bedroom door shut and the door handle was pressed down to click it shut!!!
Just before it clicked shut, she heard a faint disembodied whisper clearly say :"Goodbye"

She flew downstairs like a rocket, needless to say, shared the story with her friend, who then refused to sleep in her own bedroom.

PISSING PARTNER

Castle of Good Hope,2009
I have told this one before briefly, but it was my latest experience and such a wonderfully obvious haunting, it was awesome. It was at the Good Hope Castle here in Cape Town when we went to see the historic wonder for the first time. In the center is a big courtyard and in one of its 5 corners was a tiny, dark little entrance wherein lie the restrooms. I had a very serious pee and had to find the elusive toilets. I entered the dark doorway and realised that the toilets were not there. What there was, however, was a long-loooooong corridor of old stone from the 17th Century, winding ominously into the bowels of the old fort.

Dark, not just the weak-lighting-dark of the mineshaft style lights lining the sides of it, but a darkness that drifted subliminally through it and whomever might be caught in its snaking maze. The kids decided to "stand guard" at the entrance, as they always do when scared shitless in their cowardly way :-)) I started down the corridor, around one corner, long straight in the soft yellow light that made the stone look orangy and it was as if I was back in 1669, because not a sound from the courtyard or the children at the entrance followed me.



All I heard eventually was the running overflow of the toilets and I was very happy that relief was in sight. Take note, I was not in the least thinking about ghosts. At all. I was in wonder over the age of the building I was in and the way it was built, immune to weather and artillery alike. I reached the end of the tunnel and it flanked to the mens, and ladies restrooms, respectively. The only sound was the hypnotic water running continually.

I found four cubicles and picked the third, as they were all empty. I wanted to make it quick because there were many tourists who were bound to find out where the toilets were and I hate the awkward feeling of coming out of a toilet and confronting an audience who I always imagine are thinking : "We know what you just did." LOL!!

And so I got to leaking and to my dismay, I heard one of the fuckers come into the cubicle next to me. I literally rolled my eyes at being discovered, and rushed to finish and leave before the chick next to me came out of her cubicle. I first wanted to call out to Nush, but realized that if it were her, she would have said HI. I heard the sound of urination and a hearty throat clearing. So I thought I'd not embarrass myself and kept my mouth shut. I finished, flushed and briskly rushed out of my cubicle to wash my hands before she came out.

As I got to the taps, I glanced in the mirror and noticed that the cubicle next to mine was EMPTY!!!! I swung round, thinking the reverse view might be confusing me, but all four stalls were empty. I was alone! I was more puzzled than anything, but as I left the restroom, quite swiftly, I realized that I had just shared a restroom with something supernatural and a tingle ran up my ass, prompting me to quicken pace.



I ran-walked back down the corridor, making damn sure there is nobody else who may have been in there with me, but its a single file corridor that runs uninterrupted to the front entrance and I was alone in there. As I walked away I could hear a soft snickering behind me and I made it to the entrance in record time, hoping the kids were playing a trick on me. But how could they have? They were in the doorway, chatting loudly so that I could hear them well into the corridor. I asked them who else came in or out and they replied that nobody had entered since I did!!!

After I told them why I asked, I dragged them into the corridor with me and sure enough, when we got to the toilets, we distinctly heard a woman clearing her throat. We freaked out and made our way back out, now shamelessly running. According to the plaque there, the corridor was the oldest part of the fortress and was used to store weapons, gunpowder and artillery right after the fort was built in 1666. Go figure. I would love to be locked in there overnight with a camera. Maybe I should invite a few friends from Las Vegas ;-)

My first house and its "other" inhabitant

Heidelberg (yes, again), 1993

After I got knocked up and married to get my parents off my back, I rented a house in Heidelberg, where I had finished school a year before. I would love to have that little house NOW.
It looked like a doll house on the outside, similar to the house I was staying in now, but on the inside it was HUGE!!!

The landlord was a friendly Afrikaner who owned an electrical store next to the house and when we had a look at the place (myself, my husband and my parents), my dad asked what kind of deposit we should pay, etc and the guy said something to the effect of how he knows newly weds need their money and such, and that he does not require a deposit. The house rent was ridiculously cheap, even for a low income person as myself (I was just out of school and at my first job), but I saw it as the old man wanting to help us out.

I loved that house. It had wooden floors, a stoep (porch) and three bedrooms with a kitchen full of beautiful dark brown wooden cupboards. The kitchen was massive. You actually traveled from one side to the other and it had a look-through in the wall. I don't know the proper word for it, but its like a diner window that you can pass food through to the next room?
You know what I mean ;-)

I was 8.5 months pregnant at the time and commuted to Johannesburg daily, an hour's drive there and back. My parents literally FORCED my husband to work (he was a total deadbeat, which is one of the biggest reasons I dumped his ass that very next month) for a security company, because he had not graduated from High School and it was the only job he qualified for.

So I'd leave for work at 6am and come back at 7pm, and my husband, Paul, would leave for his evening shift at 6pm and come back at 5am. So we hardly spent any time together in the house.
One night he was out on duty again and it was raining hard. Now, I love rain and thunder. Baby, I am straight out of the Addams Family, so I love that kind of weather. It was still dusky and I sat on the porch with some tea, admiring the demonic wind and hammering rain. Bliss.
Until I had to go back in the house.

The town was known for power outages, as Gauteng province lies on the Highveld, which has severe electrical storms in the summer. (See why I'd love to have that house again?)
The power went out as I walked through the front door into the living room, which was the size of a soccer field!!! :-)
Waddling uncomfortably through the pitch dark of the living room, listening to my own footfalls, I felt a terrible feeling of alarm. As if there was someone in there with me, following me very very closely. I dared not turn around and now and then, the lightning would briefly illuminate the room and I prayed silently that it would not reveal anything that might make my heart stop.

I felt my way along the walls to my bedroom for a candle and hopefully some safety, and again almost prayed out loud that I would not touch someone against the wall. It felt like an eternity, getting to my bedroom door and just before I got there, I got what I refer to as the "Hellraiser" effect ---- my skin pulled so taut from gooseflesh, that it felt like I had hooks to my face, tugging back so hard that my skin would split!!! Something was trying to keep me from getting past the threshold and at once I felt like I was walking in one place and not getting any closer to my room. My heart was pounding and I felt warm tears well up in my eyes. Tears from sheer terror.
I felt distinctly how someone was breathing behind me and it took all my energy to get through my door, which I immediately closed behind me.

I ran to my bed and as my room did not have a key, I sat in the picth dark of my bedroom, occasionally seeing my shut door in the flashes of light from outside. I knew I had to watch the door, but I did not want to see.
As I sat staring wide-eyed at my door, the fucking thing creaked open and stood ajar for a minute or so, revealing the vast blackness of the living room and I could feel my baby kicking in anguish as I shook from fear. Then it opened a bit more and I kept telling myself it was the stormy wind that came through under the kitchen door that caused it. Who knows.

I knew I had to shut it again, but I could not move. I was paralysed, wishing my parents would come check on me, alone here in the power failure, but no-one came. The air was filled with static, and not just the weather's. Whatever was behind that door, was malicious and I could feel it as clear as crystal. It was watching me and made no secret of it.
On my way to the door, I sang out loud, and moved deliberately slowly, as not to let the thing know that I knew it was there. I acted like a true skeptic.
My voice was drowned by the occasional snaps and crackles from thunder of epic porportions which had me screaming in starts ever now and then. You know when thunder sounds like Aramgeddon and suddenly cracks its demon whip right next to you? Those.

I got close to the door and noticed a milky figure born right in front of my face!! With every inch of power I could muster, I reached out and shut the door hard! Wham!! I could feel the energy through the door. It was PISSED!!! A hot, evil vibe seeped through to me and I jumped back, hiding behind my baby's crib, but I could not hide from the fear as I heard the angry, heavy footsteps pounding the wooden floors rhythmically into the living room. You know, I have had many many encounters, but this was one of m worst nights ever.
I sat crouched on the floor until my husband came home that morning and when I told him, he just laughed and said :"Oh good, I thought I was going crazy" !!!

Sometimes in the kitchen, I would be convinced that Paul was standing in the living room, staring at me throught the window thingy and I would talk to him and then he'd come through the back door and I would realize I was talking to someone else.

One night we sat alone watching TV. It was Paul's TV. An old type, with press-in knobs to switch on and off. You push the button in and it would swicth on --- and then push it in again and when it comes out, it switches off, right? We heard someone clearly walking from our bedroom, pass us and walk staright to the TV, switching it off!!!! We looked at each other in astonishment, but more amused than afraid. Paul got up and switched it on again. He sat down and true as nuts, it walked loudly past us again, and switched the TV off.

Now it was just plain funny. We laughed out loud, telling it that we wanna watch TV and we won't take any shit from anyone. Paul went and switched it on. Then he walked to our bedroom and got some isolation tape and taped the knobby thing IN, to stay ON. He had not even sat down yet, we heard the footsteps to the TV and we were like two kids waiting for someone to ignite our cherry bomb.
"Click"...we scoffed....."click, click", but the knob would not come out, cause it was taped down. It was HILARIOUS!!! Paul laughed out loud, twirled round and flipped it the bird all over, wherever it may have been in the room. It was the funniest thing how we used good old school tape to thwart a haunting.
Sometimes it can be amusing if you can get past the fear.

In Broad Daylight

Heidelberg, Transvaal, 1989


I was 16. It was a Saturday afternoon at our 3 bedroom house in Heidelberg, near Johannesburg and I was in my room, as always, drawing. My Metallica was not too loud, as I needed to concentrate on what I was drawing and in the next room the rugby was starting.

My parents were big rugby fans, like 95% of the country and it was apparently some big match semi-final or something, so the TV was loud in the living room. It was about 2pm on a sunny day and my curtains were wide open so I would have proper light for drawing.

The sun rays fell in thick streaks over my mattresses (I did not have a bed. I was allowed to decorate my own room and I wanted to sleep on the floor) as the match wore on and I could hear my parents cheering in the next room. Occasionally my dad would scream profanities at the ref, which pretty much told me how the match was progressing.

I switched off Metallica to catch a catnap, as the concentration on the drawing's detail was fatiguing me. I walked over to my cupboard to put away the drawing pad and suddenly felt like I had no energy in my entire body. The air in the room felt really heavy and I felt like I was moving under water. But I just thought I might be tired form drawing.

I sat down on my "bed" and sorted my tape collection because I had tapes lying everywhere on my bed. I was still busy reading the names on the labels, when I could have sworn my bed shifted an inch. My whole body went ice cold with adrenaline and I tried really hard to put it out of my mind, but you know sometimes you are so scared that you can pretend to read labels all you like, but your brain keeps saying "There is a fucking ghost in here" :-))

Again, the bed shifted and I heard the next kick-off in the living room. Then, the bed MOVED. It moved so powerfully, that I was almost thrown off and I clutch both sides of the mattress with my hands, my heart exploding in fear.
With all this, all that was going through my mind was how I was being cheated in the rules of the supernatural....I kept thinking how unfair it was that this was happening in broad daylight and how impossible that is supposed to be!!! I knew my room was iffy at best, but this shit is only supposed to happen in the dark, man!!!

My dad screamed at the referee again and my mom laughed heartily, as the bed propelled across the room with me on it, IN THE BRIGHT HAPPINESS OF THE SUNSHINE outside! I was terrified, and hearing my folks in the room right next to me, was just cruel. I tried to scream at the top of my lungs, but not even a whimper came out!!!
My scalp was so taut from goosebumps, that I thought my face was gonna tear in two, the hair on my arms and legs stood on end as if an electric current went through me. Still I screamed in mute panic, trying to stay on the violently shifting bed which moved completely to the other side of the room.
I was right next to the window where the bright sun light was and the irony still confounded me.

My mom suddenly knocked loudly on the door and came in. The bed stopped shaking at once and there I sat, my eyes like saucers in my head, next to the window. She looked at me, quite unfazed at the obvious terror in my face and said : " Oh nice, you moved your bed. I always told you you need more fresh air in your room," pointing at the open window.

I dared not tell her what really happened, because although she is a believer in the paranormal, she always blamed all the weird shit on my music.
"Yes, its that devil music that you listen to" or "Its the metal that makes you hate your drunk father".......you know, eventually you don't bother anymore.
I wonder what HER excuse was when the things that bump, bumped her! She is a Country Music fan.

My first Poltergeist

This is just a similar looking house and basic set-up of the house in the following story.


Bethal, Gauteng, South Africa, 1980

I was 7 years old when we went to visit my uncle Jan and aunt Lizette on a smallholding in the old Transvaal (now called Gauteng) province. They had just moved there and I'll remember that weekend forever.
It was an overcast day and when we arrived I could not even see the house. It was enshrouded in dense trees and I remember the atmosphere being dark. Like the house was in another dimension.
It felt like time stood still there. The house was painted white and looked a bit run down, but inside it was vast and beautiful. It was virtually empty, because they had just moved from a regular sized 3 bedroom home and did not have nearly enough furniture to fill this huge house. Many of the rooms were empty which just made it feel more melancholy.

Maybe it was the overcast weather, but it seemed very dark in the house, even though a lot of rooms had massive windows with no curtains, so you'd expect a lot of light coming in. One of these rooms were at the very end of the house and resembled a ballroom of sorts. Either that, or it was an extremely large dining room. It had to base walls and the rest of it, were windows, like a giant bay window! The floors, you guessed it, were wooden and some of the furniture were very old, like a few wardrobes and side boards, that were already in the house when they moved in.

I overheard my aunt tell my mom that she hates the house and it scares the life out her, but they did not want to discuss it around me and sent me out to play. My dad and uncle were going out that night to go fishing, leaving the women home all night. There was a loud machine outside among the bushes next to the house and my uncle told me it was a generator, because they had no electricity. The immediate vicinity outside the house was ominously quiet --- no birds or crickets and such, just the horrid generator idling on and on. I stayed away from the various little out buildings, most of them filled with old farm tools and fire wood.

The men left at 8pm or so and it was getting dark, because it was summertime and the sun only set about that time.
This was hands-down the most terrified I had EVER been in my life. And although not much happened to me that night, I wish I could describe the terrifying atmosphere of rage and despair in the house. It was like walking into a wall and you could almost hear the static in the air.

I remember being quite bored, as they just sat in the kitchen all night.
In hindsight, I'd take the boredom over what was to come anytime!

We took baths in shifts, with the other two "standing guard" right by the door. It was a creepy old bath. I dunno what the real name for it is, but it was a beautiful old free-standing bath tub, but I remember it being very cold, like a winter crispness in the bathroom. They put me to bed in a makeshift cot in the ballroom of all places. I remember looking at the black trees outside the windows and thinking there is only glass between me and whatever was hiding out there! But I dozed off later.

I woke up when the generator was turned off for the night, the silence deafening. At once I felt dreadfully alone and listened to my mom and aunt whispering far off in the house. I dared open my eyes and vaguely saw the lamp light of the paraffin lamps they lit, wandering down the corridor to their rooms.

It was quiet. Dead quiet. So quiet that I could never sleep. It felt like time stood still. No stirring of anything.
Then I heard a door open and shut quite loudly and obviously.
My mom scared the shit out of me, coming racing down the corridor in hysterics with her lamp, sweeping me up in her arms and running back to my aunt's room as if the devil was at her back. More than anything I remember the pounding of my heart that night. Even while nothing happened, my heart was racing.

We all got into my aunt's bed together, and I recall the two women were adamant on keeping their lamps on all night. We settled to sleep, feeling as safe as we could. We were all together, in light, so there was a bit of comfort.
My aunt's voice cut the silence like a knife : "It feels like someone is looking at me"
I will never forget that. The words cut through my soul like an ice pick. I tried not to open my eyes as I got the sensation that someone was indeed looking at us and I was convinced that, if I opened my eyes, I would stare into the face of something evil. I opened my eyes slightly and all I saw was a calendar on the wall. The light in the room was yellow and in the mirror I saw my aunt get up briskly to shut the bedroom door off the corridor. My heart almost stopped as my 7 year old eyes caught sight of Lizette's shadow on the wall, distorted by the lamp's fire light, swiftly sliding along the old walls of the room like a witch intent.

She closed the door and literally ran back to the bed.
At once it felt like we were now fair game, as if we just made our presence known to whatever it was and it was on!
And it was on!

I listened to Lizette and my mom whisper hysterically to each other and Lizette kept saying : "It's him!!! It's him!!!!"
Apparently a farmer who owned the house shot himself when his crops failed a few years before.
Her high pitched hysterical whisper was hardly done when we heard a door slam so hard, as if it was coming off the hinges from the force!!!! They screamed next to me and I started crying.
The windows shuddered from the force of the door and my mom held me so tightly that her fingertips dug into my skin!

We could hear heavy boots walk down the corridor, towards the room. I thought I was gonna die when it paused in front of our door, my heart exploding with every beat. Then it continued onward as I listened to my mom and aunt's terrified whimpers.

Then it was quiet for a bit and the women decided to stay awake and chat to relieve their nerves. It comforted me somewhat and I fell asleep. Much later I awoke with a piss like a racehorse......which had been the cause of much of my distress in supernatural situations throughout the years. Many more stories there. LOL!!!!

I found my mom and Lizette fast asleep and did not know what to do. I was relieved to hear some crickets outside while I was contemplating peeing in my pants :-)
Eventually I worked up the courage to wake my mom and break her the bad news.
She was not angry or anything, but I could hear the fear in her voice when she said we should make it quick. We got up and as we neared the door, Lizette whispered :" No way I'm staying here alone" and grabbed her lamp.

Now, going down that corridor was something I will never forget. Just the feeling, the vibe. I had never been that scared since in my entire life! It felt as if Farmer John was following us with his half blown off head and a 12 gauge in his hands. There was that consistent tingling in my tummy as far as I walked. You know when you are so scared that you want to walk INSIDE your companions? You don't wanna be in front. You don't wanna be in the back. You don't wanna be in the middle. Hell, it could grab you from above, for all you knew. THAT is how I felt.
Our hair stood on end as far as we walked and when I finally got to pee, I already dreaded the walk back.

We did a brisk run-walk back to the room and I tried not to see how pitch dark, matte black the corridor was and I tried not to think about what would happen if Lizette's little flame went out from our rush!!!!
We cruised into the bedroom, slammed the door and jumped right back into bed. It was now 3am, I remember as my mom asked Lizette the time. Yeah, 3am......the real witching hour.

Farmer John must've woken up from our minor disturbance. Once more the boots trod down the wooden floor towards the room where I would have slept!! The ballroom with its wardrobes. We held our breath in shivering silence as we listened tot he footfalls going up the corridor, into the ballroom and then we heard him opening the wardrobe doors and drawers, as if to look for something. He was frantically looking for something, slamming the drawers shut and slamming the doors. Then he came thundering down towards the kitchen and proceeded to slam the cupboards violently, and shattering glass, smashing the dishes all over the floor with such violence that my aunt for some reason grabbed her shotgun and pointed it at the door.

It would not have helped, but I guess she was so spooked, she felt that she needed to protect us.
The ruckus continued in the kitchen and then we heard the back door creak open and slam shut, as if to rip it out of its hinges. A loud gunshot shattered the air and echoed away, and it made us jump. My mom and I both looked at Lizette, cause for some ridiculous reason, we thought it may have been her shotgun.

SILENCE.
It was suddenly dead quiet.
Lizette sat with her shotgun, talking to my mom until the sun came up and I felt like my eyes were swollen and my entire body was exhausted. We went to the kitchen because we had to go and switch on the generator for some much deserved coffee. There was no evidence of any disturbance!!!
There were no smashed plates, no open drawers, no broken glass and the door was still LOCKED!!!!
Lizette seemed completely unfazed by the phenomenon and unlocked the door to go out. When the men returned my mom told them of our nocturnal ordeal. My dad, a skeptic, laughed and mocked the "hysterical bitches" all day long, but my unle remained silent and just laughed along, but the look in his face told all who beheld it that he was very well aware of the night we had experienced.

Research and heresay:
Years later my mom called me all excited and told me that she met some people at a party who lived in Bethal for years. They apparently knew about that house from word of mouth. Family of theirs knew the people who stayed in the house and there were stories in town about how the farmer had stashed some money in a secret drawer and apparently his wife took it with when she left him after the crop failures.

When he needed the money and frantically searched for it, and could not find it, he lost all hope and shot himself.

I never went to Bethal again.

Angry soldiers?

Grahamstown rural, 2008

While we lived in P.E., my daughter went to visit a school friend and I was told her parents were "loaded" and had a farm near Grahamstown, where I usually have my films screened at the Arts Festival. So this is what she told me after she returned two days later, quite spooked and excited. It is a desolate farm, flat and empty with red soil, save for the dry bushes and thorn trees, typical of the Eastern Cape climate and plant life.

Nush was told that the house is haunted, but she dismissed it as fun small talk....until she saw it. It was a typical old farm house, huge and cool with a stoep (porch) that goes all round the house. Inside the ceilings were high and intimidating in its majesty. The corridor ran high and long into the bathroom at the end. And this is where the girls had their first encounter that Saturday night.

Lizbe, Nush's friend, decided to take a bath and asked Nush to keep her company. Now, I raised my kids very privately. We never share baths or come in when someone is peeing or bathing and such, so she thought it odd that this chick did not mind her parking her ass on the toilet lid while she was taking a bath. But she kept her friend company, nonetheless.

Now we know why...... The tub was filled and the tap closed. Lizbe stripped in the corner and Nush parked on the toilet. As Lizbe was about to get in the bath, both girls were astonished to see an invisible hand run strongly up and down through the water!!!! Like someone was testing the water.

They bolted out of the bathroom and ran straight into the guestroom, which was apparently the worst thing they could have done, because it was the most haunted room. After composing themselves and trying to find some rational reason for the water disturbance, they each had a bottle of Coke and chilled out on Lizbe's bed. There were two single beds in the room, but they both sat on the one bed.

As they were chatting, the bed started rattling a little, stopped, and then slowly began to slide. They thought....or shall I say HOPED....it was maybe a slant in the floor that made it slide under their weight, but then the bed violently shifted and ploughed into the other bed!!!! They squealed and sat dead still, as not to piss it off. All calmed down.

They started talking about what to do, as Lizbe's parents did not believe her before and they dreaded the night ahead. While they talked, Nush's Coke bottle flew off the dressing table and crashed against the opposite wall, sending the two girls screaming down the big corridor and they took refuge in the small TV room, where two lamps were shedding very welcoming light. They watched TV for a bit and every few minutes the room would turn icy cold. Every time the cold spots came, the TV screen would show static.

They decided to try and brave THE ROOM again. As they left the TV room, both lamps died simultaneously!!! Needless to day, the girls decided on an all-nighter.

Another blatantly creepy thing that happened earlier that evening: The girls were all over the farm with quad bikes. All afternoon. At dusk, they made a move to the house, as it was "not wise to be outside after dark". Lizbe knew the roads much better and sped ahead of Nush, leaving Nush pretty much alone on the ridge, at dark dusk.

Nush told me that she was driving really slow, because she could not see the road and ditches very well in the dark and did not want to speed on unknown terrain. She looked ahead to try and find Lizbe ahead of her, and then she saw a sight that made her blood run cold.

All around her, like an old camp site, she saw light grey shapes take form into what looked like soldiers from a forgotten era. Anushka did not know anything about Grahamstown's history at the time, so that is how I know she was serious. She saw soldiers take shape and walk around as if they are in a military camp, surrounding her completely. The fear numbed her legs and she was unable to call out to Lizbe. At once, her adrenaline kicked in and she revved her quad bike into action, jolted out and sped down the black road she could hardly see.

I did some research on the area around Grahamstown and lo and behold, there it was!!! This farm was part of a military post in the 1800's !!! Anushka was not impressed :-))

"In 1812, the Colonial Office in Whitehall received a dispatch informing them that Graham had succeeded in his task by using “a proper degree of terror”.

The war of 1811-1812 was in fact a very nasty and bloody conflict, unlike the earlier skirmishes. Stockenstroom was killed and Graham was lucky to escape with his life.

Before the action in which Stockenstroom died he and Graham were scouring the countryside and looking for a place where they could establish a military base.

They came across an overgrown and abandoned Boer farm called the Rietfontein which seemed to be a most ideal spot, and the military base began to grow. The tree which they sat under is now marked by a plinth in High Street. Cuyler named it in Graham’s honour and called it Grahamstown."

My brush with African Black Magic

The wonderful thing about this event, was that we only realized that it was supernatural in nature after it was over. At the time, all I felt was awe and excitement, as I usually do when something unexplained happens to me. After re-running the chain of events in my head, fear hit me like a ton of "what-ifs"......

It was Barberton, 1999.
I had been retrenched from my well-paying job in Pretoria and had to relocate, against my will as always, to my parents' house on a farm where my dad worked at a meat processing plant there.

Barberton is a very old town in the province of Mpumalanga ("place where the sun rises"), the old Eastern Transvaal of old South Africa, situated in the north-east of the country and known for its incredible beauty. Mountains and forests stretch as far as the eye can see, and the area is known for forestry, mostly. The atmosphere reminds me a lot of what I imagine Santa Fe must be like, without the desert ---- motorcycle rallies are held throughout a myriad of small old miner towns that all have their own appeal of old world charm. A very laid back, faerie kinda place.

Now I'm not big on research when it comes to things and places I know, so what I am about to tell you about the entity in question, is just what I heard from the local Black people throughout the years, and if you Google it, you might find something slightly different. I prefer to know what I hear from the peoples whose culture this thing belongs to. That's enough for me.

On the farm were resident workers who lived up the ridge from where my parents' house was. Among them a matriarch called "Betty"......her "White" name. A forward, loud old Black woman who adored me and the kids and constantly stopped by to help us in the garden and such, but she was sometimes a bit of a nuisance and over-zealous and when my mom politely told her off, you could see her demeanor turn dark. Betty was known as a practitioner of "muti"....the dark version of New Orleans "hoodoo" and then some ;-)

One night, my mom, dad, children, and a few friends were hanging out in the living room. It was about 8pm and as always, we were jamming on the guitar and they were drinking and chatting. Somewhere during the conversation, we heard an unbelievable noise in the ceiling. We all kept quiet and listened. It sounded like something big dragging itself along the length of the house. We were used to having cats and snakes in the ceiling so we weren't too alarmed. We figured it was a big cat and we continued our conversation.
The sound became much louder, as if to drown out our voices. It dragged so heavily in the roof now that we looked at each other in amazement, guessing amongst ourselves what thing THAT BIG could have gotten into the ceiling in the first place.

Then it started dragging chains. At one point we actually thought whatever it was dragging would come cutting through the ceiling boards and fall on us. It now moved overhead, stunning us with its apparent size and weight. It was as if there was a horse up there, dragging a multitude of iron chains and spikes behind it. But no distinct footsteps, just the leviathan dragging sound, deafening us!!!

My dad went to call King. King was a teenage boy from the settlement nearby and we always had him round to take bees nests out of the ceilings. He seemed to be immune to bee stings.....and to fear, at that! King crawled up into the ceiling for us and we could hear him walk from the entrance to where we were in the living room. All was silent. King's footsteps covered the whole length of the house and back and his muffled voice announced that there was absolutely nothing in the roof....not even cats. He was alarmed when we told him what the disturbance was, but I will not disclose it at this point.

He left and the party continued. Chatting, laughing, sounds of the kitchen kettle.......and BANG!!!!!! It started again. Right above our heads, the clanging of the chains, almost slamming into the ceiling boards, as if the thing had grown angry. Like a fucking HORSE!!! I was just waiting for the ceiling to cave in on us. We decided to ignore it and my dad asked me to sing.

Now here is the weird part:
You know how they say that music soothes the beast? I expect that's true, cause as soon as I'd start singing, the sound would die down and eventually cease. The moment the song is finished, the banging and dragging would become exceedingly violent, and we'd hear giant nails scratching at the roof, as if it was clawing its way through!!!

I'd start a new song and it would die down again......quietly listening to my voice. Dead silence. Not a twitch while I sang. Even without the guitar I would sing and nothing was there. As soon as I'd stop the ruckus would continue. This went on until 10pm or so and it became an amusing experience for all of us. A kind of game.
"Lets see if he likes country music or hard rock ballads....this is a Poison ballad..." HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

Eventually it stopped and did not come back. It remained quiet and to this day we have not heard that again. Anywhere.
King told us he thinks its a Tokolosh......a demonic "baboon man" that is usually sent to kill victims of a Sangoma or black magic witch.



Morne, one of the guys there and an old school friend of mine, affirmed this.
His father was a kind of exorcist, specifically dealing with Muti and African Black Magic. They once chased down a Tokolosh in a family's home and the father of the house cornered it in the shower, where it reached out and grabbed him, scorching its hand print into the man's arm....where it sits black in burned flesh to this day.

Who knows what would have happened if we did not fight this thing with MY POWER?

The Power of Melody!!! :-))

WELCOME FOOLISH MORTALS

I have been wanting to do this since last year, but never had the time or patience.
This is a blog for ghost stories I have heard and also a lot of things that had happened to me. Ghost hunting has always been one of my passions and now I feel I want to create another space I feel perfectly at home in ---- THE NETHERWORLD and its tales.

From a very early age all kinds of spooky things have happened to me, and I want to share my creepy experiences with others who believe and those who just enjoy a good chilling tale.

Take note: I don't want any shit from anyone here. You are welcome to comment, but I want everything in good fun and creepiness. This is not my attempt at proving anything and its certainly not a place for self-proclaimed scientists to come and spoil the fun for ghosty freakies.

The next AND FIRST story I post will be the most chilling and strange thing that had happened to me in Barberton, South Africa, back in 1999.

HAPPY HAUNTING!!!