The Haunted House

In the autumn of 1970 my mother and I moved into a large house in Parktown; although not as ostentatious as some of the houses built by the Randlords in the last decade of the 19^th century, built in 1897 it was a very solid Victorian of typical appearance, single storey with gables to the front and one side joined by a covered veranda, and set in an acre of what had once been lush garden. It had an enormous lounge with a fireplace, an interleading music room looking onto the front stoep, a large dining room with a most interesting arched stained glass window which opened to the lounge, and several of the external windows were of etched glass. The lounge and music rooms both had intricate pressed-steel ceilings with a deep cornice and in the centre of each ceiling was a magnificent chandelier made of hand-blown Venetian glass. The floors, which at first glance appeared to be covered by lino, were made of the most intricate marquetry in a delicate pattern. It was one of the loveliest houses I have ever lived in.

The occurrences started as soon as we began moving in. The removal lorry was parked in the back garden and I gave directions to the men as each item of furniture was removed and taken into the house; in the meantime my mother was hanging pictures in the lounge and making sure each piece of furniture ended up in the right place in the right room. She was knocking a nail into the wall next to the stained glass window by the lounge fireplace and opening to the dining room but the nail refused to remain in position and kept on falling out. She clearly heard a voice behind her saying “What are you doing?” Thinking that I was in the room and had asked the question, she turned round to find herself alone in the house. When she looked out of the dining room window I was still outside with the removal lorry.

After I had been able to restore the living areas to their previous splendour (they had been painted in the most terrible colours by the previous occupants), we would sit by the fire in the lounge in the evenings quietly listening to the radio or to music on the hi-fi. We had at that time two cats which were never far away and these would curl up in front of the fire on the settee. However, sometimes, the cats, ever aware of their surroundings, would refuse to remain in the room; their hackles would rise and their fur would stand on end suddenly and, peering into the corner in the direction of the stained glass window, they would suddenly run out of the room. Sometimes if I looked up slightly I could see at the edge of my vision, a couple standing by this window and silently watching us. They were not malevolent, but they were definitely there. As time went by we became quite accustomed to sharing the sitting room with this nameless couple and so really ceased to notice them.

The front door opened into a large entrance hall next to the music room; the hall then led through an interior door into a passage which ran the length of the house between the living areas and the bedrooms to the door into the dining room. Outside the front door there was an electric bell which connected with a bell-pull in the main bedroom; neither of these appliances worked any longer and had probably failed with old age. However, sometimes and for no apparent reason, they would ring. My mother used her bedroom (she slept in the large front room) as a sewing room and often she would become aware of a woman in a long pink dress slipping through the closed front door and disappearing down the passage.

The piano was situated in the music room at an angle which permitted me to see both the front stoep and through the door into the entrance hall. Late one night I was trying to get my fingers round a Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody when, suddenly, I became aware of someone standing behind my right shoulder; it seemed he was urging me to let him show me the right way to handle the music. Afraid and ‘spooked’ I jumped up, turned out the light and went to bed.

Even friends of ours who were avowed sceptics and who denied the existence of the supernatural would often refuse to stay in the sitting room because they felt uncomfortable there; they felt as if someone was watching them.

When we had lived in the house for about two years I was introduced to a clairvoyant; he was a strange elderly man who lived in a very grand flat in the centre of Johannesburg. Wearing a copper-coloured corduroy suit over a dark red jersey, I visited him for the first time one winter night. When I knocked on his door he called from inside the flat and told me to wait a minute. From the other side of the door, in which there was no peep-hole, he told me that I was tall and blond and was dressed in a mixture of coppery brown and red. I was amazed, but was even more surprised when, as we sat across the table from each other, he described accurately the house in which we lived, even going so far as to detail the stained glass window which seemed to be the centre of these ‘happenings’.

He also told me about the two people who stood by the window from time to time: apparently they were a couple who had lived in the house about 1920 and who had had some very memorable experience in that room, hence their returning there quite frequently.

There was also, from time to time, a terrible smell of death which hovered around the second bedroom from the front door; on conducting some research I found out that an elderly man had been killed in the house by robbers who believed he had hidden a large sum of money under the floor. This happened in 1956, or thereabouts.

Say what you will, houses collect the feelings and scents of those who have lived in them, a bit like a piece of clothing absorbs the scent of the person to whom it belongs. Sometimes these spirits are downright evil and need to be removed so that we can enjoy peace but on other occasions they are merely the ghosts of those who once were who return to visit a place of importance to them from time to time. They mean no harm and we should learn to live with them.