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A few South African ghost stories
I have recently decided to start collecting some local ghost stories. It has been suggested that I post some, so here goes!
Haunting at 8 First-Street
This list of encounters which befell my family (mother, father, older sister and myself) dates back to the years 1990 up until early in 1995. At this time it may be relevant to mention that in this town, all houses are leased for free to the town's inhabitants, before our relocation into this house, early in 1990, it had been standing empty since 1983.
It was less than a week later that my 3 year older sister started speaking of a woman she had seen in the living room the night before. The woman as she had described had blonde hair and no face. Her being young of age, the rest of the family had let the incident slip by without taking much ennessial notice. Relevant was her persistance to this story and her fear of a built in back yard BBQ that she wanted 'removed'. What made my mother and myself take notice that perhaps it had not been my sister's imagination after all, was an event that had occurred just over a month later: at this time my mother, my sister and myself had all been in different locations of the house when the front door had opened and we all heard my father step inside and say "hello" as he always did. What made this greeting slightly different than usual was that when we all went to greet him, he was nowhere in sight. What added to the mystery was a telephone call an hour later stating that my father's car had broken down at work and my mother needed to come collect him. This incident had been enough reason for my mother to give in and have the BBQ wrecked.. nothing out of the ordinary was found.
My personal second encounter happened one evening while my sister and I had been lying on her bed. Her having just drifted off to sleep my gaze had fallen onto the floor where I had caught glimpse of a what looked like a sheepdog run across the floor, sure it was somewhat smaller, but genuine nonetheless. The animal had scurried across the floor and had gone into hiding beneath the bed, that was the last I had ever seen of it. That was the night before the crows started to appear..
In the months that followed these events seemed to die down and very few (including my father) would believe my mother, my sister and my own claims that there was something wrong at 8 First-Street. At this time, however, my parents started growing concerned about my growing fascination with the undead and macabre, which made sense since I wasn't even yet 5 years old at the time.
The next event that occurred, I believe it was close to Christmas time, involved a beating of drums in the back yard. My sister and myself had been getting up to the normal childhood mischief when a steady beating of drums had starting ramming on the outside gas bottles. The drumming had been soft and slow at first, then louder.. faster.. until it had been loud enough for any witness to hear. This had been enough to drive both my sister and myself to tears and we had fled the house and sat crying in the street until our parents had returned (from shopping or wherever it was they had gone). This inccident had laid to rest any doubt that my mother may still have attained, although my father had remained unconvinced.
What events had occured in the years 1991 and 1992 had in the years past slipped from my memory, with only 3 personal experiences remaining: the 1st had been while the rest of my family had been in the back yard and I had been alone inside. Until this day I can still recall an unknown presence that had laid its hand down on my shoulder, an icy sensation that now over eleven years later I can still remember as clearly as if it was happening right now. It was also round this time that my parents had discovered the art work I had done with my top room cupboard: three walls. two doors all covered in drawings of the dead. It was also in this cupboard that my favorite childhood book had vanished in an instant. This meaning that I had been sitting in the dark, reading it with a flashlight and the next moment it was gone. A thorough search by both my parents proved useless and what happened to it remains a mystery up until today.
The third incident I recall happened in middle 1992 while my sister was away at camp, this detail I recall particularly well for it just made it all the more strange that on the relevant morning wherever I had gone in the house her voice had still been calling out to me.
Early 1993 and all others are awoken from the silence by the father greeting incident repeating itself. Also my fathers' skepticism takes a knock at this point as my mother told the story of the night before where our newly aquired Labrador Retrievers both looked to the roof and started barking at an unseen force, the loud sigh that had followed not even my dad could deny. It wasn't much later that my mother started speaking of hearing a voice singing in the hallways late at night, a voice that would die down every time she went to check on it.
My sister had at this time also started growing more and more disturbed at what was happening around us and at one point claimed that an icy presence had been chasing her around the house and had been lifting her up whenever she had tried to stop. Although this did sound far fetched to even me, the way she had looked right after she had made this claim, suggested differently. What made matters worst was another incident which had supposably occurred while my mother had been collecting me from a friend. On our home coming we had discovered my sister and a friend sobbing in the street, spewing claims that footsteps had been heard in the hallway, doors had been opening by themselves and light and radios had been switching on and off by themselves. At this time it was now a mutual agreement, there was something seriously wrong. My own sighting of a teenage boy in the hallway (which I later lay eyes on again, that time with a witness) just added wood to the fire.
A summons not much later, that my sister had called together involving her, myself and two of her male friends would be the last time that these forces would ever be felt and after that it was as if nothing had ever happened (even the crows stopped coming), except one last thing:
Two years had passed since the final sighting at 8 First-Street and I (age 9) found myself sitting in the classroom. At this point a young girl who lived only a couple of houses from me (and coincidently had the same name as my sister) with whom I nonetheless had never truly spoken with started telling the class about a ghost of some kind in her house, the stories were exactly the same as mine. It was that same week that the crows again returned, very few at first, later up to 20 at a time.
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