Hauntings and hitchings in the Karoo

So there I was, in the middle of a pub in a haunted hotel agreeing to take photos of a wedding the following day. A priest from Laisburg had been requested, parents had been phoned and friends smsed. You just never really know where your life will take you. It was 11pm and I was on my fourth brandy and coke. Oh and there was tequila. Of course. Served in champagne glasses. Because that’s how they do things in Matjiesfontein.

I was there to investigate the rumours of certain guests that have refused to leave. I am not talking about ones that get defiant when the pub closes. Rather ones that have been known to float down corridors, rattle doors, play cards, appear in windows and stare forlornly from turrets. Never has an assignment held so much intrigue and slight foreboding. There was no way I was going on my own so had to find a suitable person to accompany me – preferably a man who could keep me safe from things that go bump in the night. Monster flat-out refused saying he would “poop in his pants” and others had excuses of “no leave” or having to leave wives and girlfriends behind. But eventually I found a taker. None other than Brainy Friend. He was perfect for the job – loves ghost stories as much as I do, had never been to Matjiesfontein and he’s a manly-man sort of man.  I am still amazed he never chickened out at the last minute, but I think he’s more afraid of me than ghosts.

We arrived on the Friday with the storm in Cape Town chasing us down the N1.  With dark clouds amassing and dusk falling, the scene was set. As we pushed open the heavy wooden doors to the hotel, there it was. That staircase. With the red carpet. Straight out of The Shining. I swear I heard a small gasp from Brainy Friend, but he appeared stoic. The look of relief on both our faces made the receptionist laugh when we found out we were in Room 16 and not the infamous Room 10.  Room 10 is Lucy’s room and she is known to rattle doors and chuck things about in there. Phew!

After signing the massive and ancient guest book, we trundled our way up the stairs, keeping a beady eye out for the two soldiers that are said to lean on the balustrades. I was so busy gawking up the stairs that lead to the turrets and Katie’s Card Room (where sounds of shuffling cards have been heard) that I almost tripped over Theresa, the hotel cat. Theresa, being a good host to many a newbie at the hotel escorted us to our room and almost everywhere we went.  One hiss from that cat and I was prepared to run in the opposite direction! So I liked having her around, a sort of “ghost alert” if you will.  She must’ve picked up on this (cats are intuitive) because she decided to spend the entire night with us. Not hissing, but purring. She took a shine to Brainy Friend and chose to sleep with him.  He reveled in the feline affections, but was told the following day at breakfast that she is notorious for sleeping around. And like a true hussy, she ignored him for the rest of the day. Proving that women and cats will always do as they please.

Having got through our first night unscathed, apart from clanging pipes and creaking wooden floorboards (that hotel talks to you even if the ghosts don’t) we got taken on a private hotel tour by Johnnie, the resident entertainer. You can’t help but love Johnnie. The minute he catches your eye he shouts “It’s show time!” followed by “I love it when you talk foreign.” Just writing this is making me laugh. He took us around the various rooms of the Lord Milner, showed off his brilliant rendition of Nelson Mandela, pointed out the 100 year old piano, the 300 year old mirror and the cup that South Africa won in the very first cricket match played against the Poms in Matjiesfontein. He also showed us a photo of a ghost.

The story goes that he had the picture taken with the two little girls and the one said “Who’s the tannie?” Of course no-one else could see this “tannie”, but there she was when the photo was developed and posted to Johnnie by the family.

The hotel reckons the ghost is that of Olive Schreiner, who lived in Matjiesfontein (she wrote The Story of An African Farm here) and her house is right near the pub. It may or may not be a fake, but I tend to go with the latter. This town barely uses email let alone Photoshop.  Besides, there is no way you can get a small child to make an expression like that for no good reason. But you decide -  real or not, it’s chilling stuff!

After that it was time to go see some different ghosts. The fields near the hotel were once the campsite for British soldiers during the Boer War (the hotel was originally a hospital).  The soldiers, horses and tents may be gone, but there are still remains in the form of holey tin cans and rusting pieces of metal. We picked our way through the debris, startling a few hares and making sure we didn’t stand on baby tortoises (we saw three!) while searching for treasure. We felt like Pirates of the Karoo and we had so much fun that we were out there for hours. Brainy Friend became my new hero when he found the one thing that I wanted – a button! Oh the glee! Turns out that it is the real thing (Brainy Friend is the sort that researches these things) and possibly belonged to a General or Commander. We sat on the kopjie, which was probably the look out point, and took in the view. I closed my eyes and imagined how things must’ve been for young soldiers in their late teens and early twenties being plucked from England and sent to the middle of the blistering hot (and sometimes freezing) desert. I swear I heard the ghosts of tents flapping in the Karoo wind.

The afternoon was spent scoffing bangers n’ mash in the pub, taking a brief nap and visiting the township tavern to catch the rugby.  We also took a tour of the town (the shortest tour in South Africa) on the red bus, called Futtom Fluffy. It took ten minutes and we turned left or right because we couldn’t turn right or left. When the tour was over, Johnnie brightly informed us that the tour may be over, but the pub was still open. I was beginning to fall in love with this town. Not only did it have history, quaint buildings, ghosts and antique gas pumps, it had character and was filled with characters. It also served divine meals in a dining room where you had to dress for dinner, breakfasts with as much bacon as you could fit on your plate and the pub was always open. A desert oasis indeed!

But we still hadn’t seen any ghosts.  We checked our photos as soon as we took them, glanced furtively up the stairs and scanned the windows regularly. But nothing. Not even the sound of shuffling cards. I was secretly disappointed. Until I went to the loo upstairs in the pub that evening.

Above the Lairds Arms is a billiard room with a beautiful billiard table that I spent some time admiring – it had a thick wood cover that you had to slide out to open the table. I don’t think I had ever seen one like it until that day. After this minor distraction, I located the bathroom and switched on the light. As I stepped into the bathroom, “click”, off went the light. I went back and switched it on again. But no, the minute I stepped away from the switch it went off. I put it down to faulty electrics the first few times, but eventually I lost my temper. I said in my big girl brave voice “Now stop it! I need the loo and I don’t want to go in the dark!”  The light stayed on. And I sat on the loo praying it didn’t go off mid-wee. Which it didn’t, thankfully.

Now herein lies the interesting part. I scuttled downstairs hastily and asked Abie, the barman, about faulty lights. He just laughed and said “There’s no faulty light switches. Someone’s being playing tricks on you. Perhaps it was Olive. She likes it up there.” I immediately turned to Brainy Friend who had been threatening to scare the bejesus out of me the whole weekend, but he denied all. Besides, there would’ve been nowhere up there for him to hide.  I brushed it off, went outside and started chatting to the Groom To Be about the wedding. The conversation shifted to the hotel’s ghost stories and he told me that he had seen quite a few shadows in the hotel and something strange on the stairs in the pub. I went on to tell him about the ghost photo, which he hadn’t seen. I showed him the photo I had taken of the photo on my camera. He went quiet for a second, looked at me and said with a deadpan expression, “That’s who was on the stairs”.  I never went upstairs again and Brainy Friend took the long way round to the loo for the rest of our stay.

When I went up to our room after staying for an extra round in the pub (my nerves needed it), Brainy Friend was still wide awake reading a book. “There was no way I was switching off the light until you got here.” Strangely enough our feline “ghost alert” had disappeared as well.

The following days were spent eating enough food to feed a British army, taking walks through graveyards and singing along with Johnnie on the piano in the pub. And photographing a wedding of course. As you do. We also changed rooms to try out one with a balcony and sat on said balcony into the wee hours chatting, while Brainy Friend sipped on a whiskey and I quaffed a Savanna and scoffed melba toast  (with mountains of butter) that I kept from dinner. It was bliss and I was definitely getting into the simple routine of life in this Victorian-era town. So much so that I didn’t want to leave and stalled things on the day we had to return to Cape Town by insisting on a walk through the gardens. Poor Brainy Friend by this stage just kept on saying “Yes, dear” to everything as I was probably being bossy the whole weekend. Well, I like to call it “making suggestions of cool stuff to do”, others may call it bossy. Either way, it was definitely the yes-dear’s that made us seem like an old couple and people kept asking if we were together. They suggested we too get married in the chapel. It was the first time I saw him look genuinely terrified.

I have to say the weekend in Matjiesfontein was probably one of my best weekends so far this year. I loved it so much that I am planning to get a group together for a weekend there. Quaint town, grand old hotel, fabulous meals, a charming pub, lovely people and a beautiful swimming pool make for a good summer weekend away. Is the hotel haunted? Maybe, maybe not. But I think there is something there, faulty light switches and could-be-fake photographs aside. Definitely enough to make you look up at the windows constantly and not want to go to your room alone.

But I never really felt afraid and neither one of us had sleepless nights. In fact I am more worried that the General who’s button I have is going to come and reclaim it and Brainy Friend is probably having sleepless nights that I am going to drag him down the aisle in the Travellers' Chapel.  Scary stuff indeed!