[imagesource: SA Venues]

The Lord Milner Hotel in Matjiesfontein is famous for being one of South Africa’s most haunted buildings, if not the most haunted of all.

Over the years, many stories have been told about Lucy, a live-in ghost guest that some say can be seen floating around the passages and the stairs, wearing a negligee, or heard smashing glasses and plates late at night.

The Lord Milner Hotel’s blog has detailed three of the ghosts – Lucy, Kate (a nurse who died at the age of 19), and The Lady in White, and it’s rumoured that a fourth, Olive, enjoys messing with the light switches.

Of course, I call that good marketing, but the Lord Milner is far from alone in the Karoo, with the region awash with tales of spirits from days of old.

Writing for The Daily Maverick, Chris Marais has detailed a long, long list, but a few stand out from the crowd:

The earliest recorded Karoo roadside encounter with the departed goes back centuries to the lonely “Spokeveld” region between Ceres and Beaufort West. Which, not for nothing, is also known as the Murderers’ Karoo.

There’s said to be a transport wagon eternally crossing the sparse veld, drawn by “14 wide-eyed mules” and a driver with a look of utter madness. If you ask him where he’s going, he’ll scream back:

“To Hell! To Hell!”

My kind of ghost, just telling it like it is.

The Swartberg Pass (below) has three ghost legends, one of which is particularly grim:

Just before you turn off to De Hel is where a convict guard accidentally shot himself – his remnant spirit still haunts the site.

Image: Swartberg Hotel

And the cries of a little travelling family that died in a blizzard can sometimes be heard on the wind.

In the Kammanassie Mountains town of Uniondale, a hitchhiker named Maria Charlotte Roux is said to thumb for a lift, even though she died back in 1968.

She’ll hop into your car, sit silently for a while, and then disappear. If she was truly South African, your phone and wallet would disappear, too.

Johan Tolken, the curator of the Richmond Horse Museum, has his own story to tell:

He says he shares his office with the ghost of a little boy wearing a pale shirt.

“He once walked right through a wall and kicked me here, in the leg. But now he doesn’t bother me, and I don’t bother him.”

How does one walk through a wall, and then moments later land a kick to the leg?

Let’s end with a good poltergeist story:

On a farm outside Uniondale shortly before the Anglo-Boer War, a poltergeist targeted the farmer’s niece, a certain Miss Meyer.

After supper one night she went to bed, blew out the candle and suddenly woke up with her hair tied around the bedpost. Her yells of terror roused the others in the house.

Miss Meyer’s hair was loosened, she was settled back in her bed and the candle was extinguished. Suddenly she screamed once more, a match was struck and lo! There were her tresses, firmly wrapped around the bedpost.

Eyewitness CH Basson says that three people saw the poltergeist, which “resembled a phosphorescent crab with two huge pincers” as it floated around the room.

In these times of load shedding, that’s a skill that could come in handy.

The full Daily Maverick article, which you can read here, details many more Karoo tales of spirits and whatnot.

All of the stories above are featured in a new book by Marais and Julienne du Toit, titled Karoo Roads – Tales from South Africa’s Heartland.

[source:dailymaverick]