Stone-throwing Spirits In Natal. (Slightly abridged from “The Transvaal of To-day,” by A. Aylward, p.204.
In 1869, a rumour spread over the county Weener that the house of a certain farmer on the banks of the Little Tulega, was the scene of nightly devilries of a harmless but annoying description. The family complained that when the doors were shut and the windows secured, stones of a large size, maizecobs, and other ponderous matters began to be pelted about by unseen hands, inside the boundaries of their narrow and well-lighted sitting room.
Everybody knows what the appearance of a South African waggon team is. There is a long double row of oxen carrying yokes, to which is attached a heavy chain or rope, a waggon-pole and the weighty African waggon. The spook at Van —-‘s used to vary its stone-throwing entertainment by arranging oranges and pumpkins in something like the appearance of an African oxteam, the oranges yoked two and two with thorns, and a pumpkin, or in some cases, a very large head of Indian corn attached to them by a chain of straw. This was evidently a hint for the family to go.
The manifestations which at first were only of occasional occurrence, became after a while a cause of nightly dismay and consternation to the poor Boers; and by the beginning of the winter of 1869 the extraordinary occurrences were the theme of every tongue in the wide uplands of Natal. Various propositions were made by the neighbours for the suppression of the ghost, understood to be a woman three years dead, who was said to have got up the seance in revenge on her husband for having married a second time, and allowed the stepmother to ill-use the first wife’s children.
One evening, towards the end of May, a large party, consisting of some of the more intelligent farmers of Weener and the neighbouring district of the Klip River, accompanied by two Britons, McCormack (an old soldier), and a friend of the present writer, assembled with guns and horses to exorcise the evil presence. The house was situated on a level plain, had no trees within 40 paces of it, and had no cellars. The roof was well and solidly thatched, was perfect in every respect, being almost new, and it came down fairly over the wall plates, leaving no possibility of any space being found through which the stone-throwing and annoyance could be conducted from the outside. The whole building was divided inside into but three rooms, the party walls dividing which were only eight feet high, pierced with openings from top to bottom. Instead of doors, these openings from the central into the two side rooms, were commonly closed with curtains. For the whole house there were two doors of exit and entry, opposite each other, opening from the central room into the veld.
In this little mansion there were four windows, two in the central room and one very small one in each of the side rooms. These openings, when I saw them, were firmly secured on the inside with heavy wooden shutters, bolted to the walls. The inside of the house was poorly furnished. The main room had a small table in the corner and a bigger one in the centre; a home-made sofa, three hard wooden chairs, a waggon box painted green; in the corner by the little table a soft chair with a footstool in front of it; and on the table a Brobdignagian coffee kettle, with a small fireplace under it always full of glowing charcoal. The two side rooms contained beds, comfortable, but of primitive construction. There were no pictures to obscure the whitewashed walls. The bare rafters and roof were open to the inside of the house, there being no ceilings. The floor was of hardened ant heap level and well beaten.
When once inside the house, and the door and windows properly fastened, it would seem as if the inhabitants were perfectly free from any molestation from the outside, and could readily see and detect any attempt that might be made to play tricks upon them by persons within. There was no fireplace or kitchen range, all the cooking being carried on at an outside kitchen. On the arrival of the party of investigators and exorcists, an armed watch was placed round the house outside. This consisted of men quick of eye and rapid to detect the approach of even the smallest animal, and to whom the quiver of a leaf or wave of grass had an intelligible significance. The guard being posted, seven men entered the house carefully, and fastened up all the doors and windows. There were two servants in the house, who were taken in charge of and placed sitting between the knees of two watchful men. The family were requested to sit under the central table, which they did. The candles were lighted, and in deep silence the watch commenced. The moon was almost at the full, there were no clouds, and the outside guards could see plainly every mark, every rent and nail-hole in the whitewashed walls of the haunted cottage.
Ten minutes after the arrival of the guests, the seance commenced by the fall of half a dozen pomegranates upon the table. This was succeeded by a shower of gravel, the small stones of which I had the curiosity to inspect. No pebbles of a smiliar nature were to be found within ten miles of the place. One of the guards got up to examine the pomegranates. He had no sooner left his chair than it was flung with great violence after him; then lumps of ironstone, the smallest of which weighed ten pounds, began dropping from unexpected places, and a mass of clay appeared to tumble through the roof, breaking and scattering about the floor as if it had come from a considerable height. The remarkable feature of the whole affair was, that not one missile struck any of the large party now assembled in the small room. Their excitement was increased by hearing a violent banging at one of the shuttered openings, but which, as we afterwards learned, attracted no attention from the outside guard.
McCormack, who is still a living witness to the facts of this entertainment, being, after his own fashion, a pious man, determined to shew the horror of his faith and the strength of his exorcisms. He stood up with uncovered head, and boldly addressed the ghost in Irish, ordering it in the most solemn manner to retire to where the wicked ought to cease from troubling and the weary are presumed – by all but Spiritualists – to take their rest. Whether led on by his subject, he went too far or not, I cannot say: he was stopped in the midst of a torrent of eloquence by what he afterwards described as “a lick from a three year old;” in fact, a “young paving stone” brought him to his senses and his seat at the same time. This violent counter-attack was too much for the visitors. Already in a state of high alarm, they hastily released their prisoners, flung open the doors, and dashed out into the moonlight, followed by showers of stones, mealy cobs, potatoes, pomegranates, oranges, and all the handy weapons of South African Spiritual warfare that the deceased had accumulated – where? In the still moonlight they saw their watchful comrades keeping their post in undisturbed silence. Waiting for no explanation, the signal for flight was given – every man caught his horse and galloped home as quickly as possible.
The “spook” of the Little Tugela became a far-famed and very troublesome ghost. The manifestations were continued for two months, during which the persecuted head of the house was struck by a stone that nearly blinded him. They then ceased for three years, being resumed in March, 1872, but whether they continue to the present day this deponent knoweth not, as he has not since been to the vicinity of the haunted mansion.
The Spiritualist, 9th April 1880.
Superstition has a strong hold upon the native races of South Africa, and the unenlightened Boers have, to a large extent, become participant in the weakness. The mythology of the different races therein is full of extravagant tales of birds, beasts, and fishes being gifted, not only with the power of speech, but with prophetic and vaticinatory knowledge. That weird writer, Olive Schreiner, bears me out in this statement. Largely mixed up with their own spook lore, the Boers have added many of these Kaffir fancies.
Weenen district, where our troops are now converging upon Ladysmith for its relief, is a very hot-bed for spooks. There is, or was, a certain homestead on the Little Tugela river, which used to be quite as favourite a playground for ghosts, as ever Cock-lane, in London, used to be. There, the occupants at one time were nightly persecuted by ghostly visitants, who whiled away the time by pelting the family, notwithstanding closed doors and windows, with chunks of iron-stone rock, oranges, lemons, or mealie-cobs.
Occasionally the amusement was varied. Sometimes, oranges were arranged in order, like unto a span of yoked oxen attached to a wagon, a few straws lying between the oranges to represent the trek-tow, a huge pumpkin having to do duty as a waggon. The superstitious looked upon this device as a warning of some coming evil, and were very earnest in their endeavours to persuade the owner to vacate his farm.
On one occasion the neighbours met, rifles in their hands, to attempt exorcising this joking spook. One among them, an old Irish soldier of religious tendencies, addressed the spook during a lull in the worthy spirit’s exercises. His method was spiritual advice, for the spook’s retirement to the place where the weary obtain rest. In this he must have been too free, or perhaps touched a sore spot in the spook’s conscience. But whether so or not, according to an eye-witness’s evidence, the advising Pat received a reminder to keep his advice to himself, by being hit by a lump of rock in the region which my small boy at home calls his “tummy.” Like Bret Harte’s hero, he was not interested in the subsequent proceedings. The other neighbours precipitately fled for their horses, being pelted the while with potatoes, pomegranates, and other lumpy garden produce of the fruitful Natalian soil.
Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, 3rd February 1900.