A ghostly rider shuts down the town of Amsterdam, near the Mpumalanga border with Swaziland, on weekends. No living person roams its streets on Saturday nights, and that isn’t because the Bulls and Cheetahs are playing in a Currie Cup final.
Rather, it is at that time that a horse and rider long departed slowly walk the streets of the town. The rider, wearing an old Boer uniform last seen in the Anglo-Boer South African War, is heavily wounded. And no one from Amsterdam dares set foot outside his or her house.
Except, writes Arthur Goldstuck in his book The Ghost That Closed Down the Town, no one in Amsterdam actually believes in this ghost and many people have never even heard of it.
“The truth is, there never was a ghost that closed down Amsterdam. And the story is never told in Amsterdam, but rather by people who have visited the area,” he writes.
Goldstuck became one of South Africa’s leading authorities on urban legends and published four bestsellers on the subject in the Nineties. In his new book he examines how urban legends, half-truths and compelling personalities became fodder for haunting stories about individuals not willing to part with this world just yet.
He debugs the ghost stories of South Africa in the book and traces the origins of each and the legend associated with it. In Goldstuck’s examination some of South Africa’s most notorious ghosts come up short in haunting power, many having borrowed their mojo from stories beyond South African shores or through people’s superstitions and love of the romantic.
Daisy de Melker, murderess supreme, was ruthless enough while alive. But according to many, she now literally haunts all the digs where she once lived or worked. In the Johannesburg General Hospital, where De Melker was a nurse, she has become the angel of death in the baby ward.
Goldstuck traces the testimony of a nurse who says that whenever “the cold wind of De Melker” blew into the ward — despite all the doors being shut — the staff immediately called the doctor. But by then it was too late, as a baby would be dead by the time the doctor arrived.
Goldstuck takes the reader on a spooky ride through South Africa’s history and features ghosts such as the Uniondale hitchhiker, the tokoloshe and even its cousin, the Pinky Pinky of Mamelodi. But you may be disappointed if you are looking for eerie music and unexplained phenomena, as Goldstuck spoils the fun by revealing why each ghostly legend was probably started, as well as the historical inaccuracies in such tales.
But on the journey South Africa’s deep history and sparkling personalities are revealed and the book becomes an ode to South Africa’s times gone by.
If you are looking for a more haunting book, try Pat Hopkins’s Ghosts of South Africa, which is not quite as sceptical as Goldstuck’s book. Hopkins covers a lot of the same ground, but his book has a more romantically “let’s listen for the sake of the story” slant.
Once again strong characters suffer agonising deaths or return to find lost love or lost pleasure, as in the cases of the dancing Lady Anne Barnard of De Goede Hoop Castle and Jose Dale Lace, Johannesburg’s gold-rush diva.
Ghosts seem to love places of death and suffering such as hospitals, jails, gallows and the dangerous roadsides of South Africa. But they also have a flair for entertainment, choosing to haunt a number of theatres in South Africa.
It seems that the famous Baineses — the masters who built many of early South Africa’s spectacular road passes — have some accounting to do for the ghosts that roam South Africa’s Western Cape passes. Many convicts died while building these engineering masterpieces and their ghosts now haunt the living that travel there by night.
Through Hopkins the reader is also able to relive the difficult times of the diamond rushes, the gold rushes, outposts that became ghost towns and famous ghosts of Pretoria, Kimberley and Johannesburg.
Ultimately, both Hopkins and Goldstuck inspire a visit to the ghostly sites for yourself to experience a spooky walk through a haunted space, even if it is just to recall its history.
Another offering is Offbeat South Africa by Denise Slabbert, Richard George and Kim Wildman. Among the offbeat offerings the three introduce is a section on “ghostly tours”. You can join a haunted walk in Port Elizabeth, where ghosts such as Alfie, an Anglo-Boer South African War soldier, haunt the Drill Hill and where the ghost of Captain Francis Evatt keeps an eye on Fort Frederick, the earliest permanent structure still in existence in Port Elizabeth.
Offbeat South Africa recommends that ghost or history lovers of Jozi jump on the city’s The Mystery Ghost Bus Tour, which also operates in Port Elizabeth, Cape Town and Pretoria. The tour starts at the Pound & Penny Pub at the Sunnyside Hotel and takes in sites such as the old Transvaal Children’s Hospital, the Women’s Prison and Braamfontein Cemetery.
If chasing ghosts is not your thing, the book also recommends such ventures as Rastafarian township tours, gourmet motorcycle trips, an underground drain tour, the prickly pear festival in Uitenhage, the cherry festival in Ficksburg and the Evergreen Chilli Carnival at Tshwane Market.
This book will have you rediscovering South Africa in a wacky wonderful way that will have you saying: “I did not know you could do that in South Africa.”
Although the scalpel and buck-naked safaris might be too hardcore for some, there is no doubt that the brandy safari and the Rugby Addict museum in Hanover will fascinate many.
As for Amsterdam’s wraith-like rider … well, why not go and see for yourself one Saturday night.
The Ghost That Closed Down the Town is one of the 51 titles in this year’s Publishers’ Choice list. See www.exclusivebooks.com for more details