LATE NIGHT BABY

I sat in the dusky room, lit solely by the flashing blue light of the TV.

Nothing interesting was on, so I decided to read some documents on my computer. The screen was on the lowest illumination because it hurt my eyes when the rest of the room is dark. The words danced mockingly in front of me as I felt my energy drain and the fatigue caused me to momentarily doze off.....and awake more alert. All the different hues and flashes in blues, grays and purples had me in a trance of semi-sleep and the Sandman had definitely paid me a visit already.

In all this, a carnival of letters and punctuation, I suddenly heard a soft sigh. It came from no particular part of the room ---more from everywhere in the room.

A sigh. Just a sigh.
No distinct emotion or intention, just a....sighhhhh........
I looked over the screen of my laptop and there he stood in the doorway.



Not a day older than nine, dressed in old clothing from the 1920's or so, he stood looking me square in the face. Well, I guess he was, because the little darling had absolutely no face! No face!

He just stood there and sighed with his faceless body and then I felt the numbness in my legs become unbearable. What I saw made my heart explode in my chest. Where his eyes were supposed to be, blood seeped from the luminescent skin and his sighing just escalated into full-on panting. Then his neck snapped hard and quickly to his left and he promptly disappeared.



I still don't know if this was real or not, so that is why I'm up right now, typing in the ill-lit room of TV florescence and eerie computer shadows, ready to look up over the screen....... right.......... about.............now............

ACTUAL EXPERIENCE, PUT TO PROSE ;-)

NIGHT THINGS

I open my eyes to an inexplicable impulse. The dark wraps itself around me like a cocoon and I feel the atmosphere stop. Just stop.

It ceases to breathe around me and I feel its silent constriction take hold of my uncertain mind. It’s alive, you know. The dark lives. It moves and breathes and shape shifts all the time, but it usually leaves me alone. Not tonight. My ears start hissing. At first it’s very subtle, then it grows louder here in my mind, hissing like a thousand snakes in the house of the sun beetles. Hissssssss….

Where is the night? My eyes widen under the peer pressure of my sanity. I make them see reason, but they refuse me and show me the truth. The dark blankets my vision, like a solid entity. Now, I’m aware of it. It will not be denied. I stop trying to make sense of it and I just admit to myself – the Night Things are here.

The silence is deafening now. All sound seems to be locked away from my room. The hissing progresses into a horrible feeling of helplessness in the back of my mind and I become aware of the tiny hairs on the back of my neck raising. More. More, it becomes more taught with every moment I spend in this nocturnal purgatory. Eventually it feels like an invisible hand pulls my skin so tight that I fear it will rip from my flesh. Tight, my skin pulls my hairs and I hear them, sucking the life from the darkness. The reverse reverb of the dying atmosphere glides in my ears and I know they will make themselves known to me soon.

My body feels incredibly heavy, like dead weight, impossible to lift. All my muscles strike in rebellious weakness and I can not move. I can not move! Eyes wide, vision naught.
The dark stands still in inanimate shock. The air is void of movement, too. I struggle to breathe as the entity lays it’s weight on top of me. Heavy. Heavier. Pressing harder by the second, it crawls over my entire body like an inevitable shadow, growing at dusk. Finally my whole body succumbs to it’s strength. Any resistance is futile, wasted. Like a black wall of death, it covers me, bringing with it, all the emotions in the rainbow of Hell.

Tears won’t come. Vocals absent. I can not call for help, nor cry out my desperate panic. Still I see nothing there!
My ribs feel like snapping under the pressure of the invisible intruder and I can swear I hear laughter…a cackling of whispery delight, emanating from a myriad of imps, obviously surrounding my bed. The demonic choir play audience and feed on my fear. I make them strong. I hope for the aid of Angels, but they stand afar, allowing me this well deserved torment. My heart stops. My lungs implode and my skeleton breaks in defeat. I’m so alone, lonely. I’m frightened beyond comprehension and I stand alone, my soul for the taking. An open invitation. A fortress breached. I become possessed by every horrible emotion the Devil deals. Hope eludes me as they snicker all around me. They have become the night. Darkness possessed, infested by the devil’s minions.
I feel sickly flattered. Flattered for their attention. They came all the way from the depths for me. For me.

Innocently – unaware of it all - my room remains silent. Ignorance personified. The digital time, suspended in the dark, calls out in crimson that my hell has not progressed beyond its initial commencement! It is another illusion. Time and space is frozen to the Nightmare and his devil friends. Fiends. I can feel every single soulless imp, dancing in victory as I suffocate here under the Incubus.

I wait. I allow. I submit. I yield. Let him have his way. Let him do whatever he is here to do. And he does.
Then he lifts, very gradually. Lighter now, but far from gone, my body lifts with lungs filling, but still void of movement. Finally, I scream. I scream with all the screams of a lifetime, my throat raw with friction and I sit up at once, wondering what the slumberers in this house will think. But they don’t hear me. The final part of my scream dies in the new darkness. Audible once more.

Still I am too terrified to move. I look around the room and it all looks the same, but something is different now. It is as if all the furniture saw and they know….
My paintings look at me with an ugly lifelikeness that makes me shiver and I’m sure they know too. I feel an overwhelming desire to switch on the television in a desperate attempt for company. Movement. Life.

What will happen if I get up? Will I be challenged by the Night Things as soon as I start for that tiny button? It becomes my sole objective now. I need to get to the power button, no matter what. Or they will get me. This night they will take me. Pretending to be unafraid I stand up, my heart pounding, fed by adrenaline and my entire being pitched sharp for anything that should move, but my face remains expressionless. They must not know. My fear is my secret and so it must stay.

The dark dances around me as I start my seemingly impossible feat. I accelerate towards the TV and I quietly beg my legs to hold me. They buckle and shiver with frailty, but I force them to work. As I move, I can feel that deformed dwarf pursue me and I make for the other side of the room. A tingle shoots up and down my back and through my legs, but I must not be kept from my target. I progress very slowly, for the fear runs thick in my blood, my ice cold blood. It feels as if something holds me back. Like walking uphill on a treadmill moving in the other direction. I seem to stay in one place, advancing in slow motion, but I push with all my effort and, as I hit that blessed button, I can almost feel their icy talons take hold of my hand, albeit too late for capture.

The wonderful light of the tube paints the whole room blue and my relief is immeasurable. I feel the life return to my body and I wait happily for the screen to bring me visions of, well, anything really. I sit back down to relax and my eyes fall on the only channel available. To my dismay I realize it is EVIL DEAD, my all too recent experience mirrored on the screen by demonic zombies and animated corpses, attacking humans to the music of hellish sound effects and distorted voices from Hell itself.

Quickly, my mind plays a game of pro’s and cons with itself and within a split second, I get up and switch it off.
Back in the stuffy blackness of the night, I return to bed and await once more, the Night Things.

Eerie religion?

Port Elizabeth, South Africa, last night

I had to share this, because it has a subtle paranormal feel.
Last night I prayed to the four Achangels....I'm a Pagan, we do things a tad differently. I felt like my prayer was a bit empty. As if I was not focused or as if I was not being heard.
Although I kept looking at the candle in front of me to see any unusual movement, the flame remained perfectly still.

I lost a bit of faith, and asked the angels to prove to me that they were there, because I could not feel them. But still nothing happened and I eventually completed my ritual and blew out the candle. I went to put away my candle and incense and such, and when I rounded the kitchen counter (right next to where I cast my circle) I noticed something that sent chills up my spine!!!

A napkin was standing upright on the counter!
A TISSUE napkin, not a strong one made of fabric. It was folded in three, vertically, when I last saw it, folded up, if you will to be put away later.

And here it stood on one of its sides, vertical, without falling!!!
I felt my hair stand on end when I reached out to touch it, but nothing strange happened after that.

I took the napkin and put it away in the drawer, smiling at this obvious revelation that physics as we know it is no match for the supernatural.

CHANGE OF PLAN

While I established this blog for mostly my and my family's OWN paranormal experiences, I have noticed that I have SEVEN FOLLOWERS now and maybe I could vary my stories more widely. The title of the blog is in Afrikaans, so I thought to maybe include ghost stories from South Africa in general.

Did I mention I have 7 Followers??? LMAO!
Yes, I'm not used to being this popular, so I guess since I have not had any ghost hunting opportunities lately, my readers might get bored without a good juicy spook tale every week or so.....those of which I seem to have run out of for the time being.

So, a hearty, chilly welcome to my followers.
I shall tell you something from the country I reluctantly call home.......

Kaapschehoop, Mpumalanga, South Africa

I used to live in the Lowveld of the Mpumalanga Province and I always said that, if I have the misfortune of dying in South Africa, I would like to be buried on the mountain of Kaapschehoop, a beautiful little village on top of a mountain crest just outside Nelspruit in the eastern part of S.A.
Have you ever visited a place that feels like home immediately?
A place where you could virtually hear the faeries giggle?
Kaapschehoop was mine.



It is almost always cloudy, because of the altitude of the village and very much resembles Ireland when the mist is nigh and if you listen closely through the impenetrable white of the fog, you can hear the hoof falls of the phantom horses. I know. I actually heard it myself.
Right next to me, behind me, not a stone's throw away. Had it been real horses that close, I would have seen them. These horses are said to be the horses left by the British soldiers after the Anglo-Boer War, and still, the road signs warn of both the living wild horses, as well as the phantom ones :-)



Kaapschehoop used to be a tiny collection of houses where the gold prospectors of old settled.



To this day, most of the little homes remain unchanged, and there is a distinct vibe about the place, as if you are merely a visitor to another time. It is now the settlement of B&B's and art galleries, and of course, my personal favorite, a little biker bar where the locals welcome you with open arms, a guitar jam and a beer.....(maybe it was because I drove a 1972 Ford Fairlane V8 and looked all cool )

In the 1950's, a mother and her child burned to death in what is now one of the pubs. It is said that you can hear the child calling hysterically for its mother in the dead of night.
Also, the laughter of children can be heard among the rocks outside where I used to hike.



The graveyard looks like something straight out of a beautiful old ghost story.....about 200 years old, I often went to picnic there and reveled in the obvious presence of the curious spirits that would casually stroll through me at times.....it was both terrifying and absolutely magical.



And then of course, there was the horses.
You can hear their heavy hooves in broad daylight, sometimes a neigh a few yards off and upon investigation one would only find empty rows of trees.
This is the ghostly town, still caught in history, rife with the vibrations of inhabitants who refuse to relinquish it to a new era.
And I absolutely LOVE IT.



This was the jail back in the day.....
Can you imagine the EVP's and apparitions one would get from this building if one were to stay over night? Aaahhh....one of my wet dreams.

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? :-)