Pot that breaks!

I have to this day the last e-mails my friend Leslie sent me. They were full of hope and love. We had no idea that she would pass so soon.

I had three African pots that she gave me before she left. They were out in the garden by the bench she also left with me when she left for England. On the day - I later heard she had died - I found one pot broken.

What is the explaination - no one knew of her death until later.

Premonitions?

A secretary in Harare has experienced supernatural experiences which have frightened her. She feels herself lifted up, enters another world and hears voices giving her information or even instructions such as to take another route home.

She finds it scary because she is told of impending death of persons known to her and within 24 hours the premonition comes true.

How many other people have these experiences?

What should I have done?

I have never been good at remembering telephone numbers. On one particular occasion this was not the case.

I went to sleep and had a dream - a dream of an air crash - an explosion in the air. After the initial cash a young girl's face came into my dream view and repeated a telephone number - it stuck in my mind when I woke up.

I pondered all day as to whether I should pick up the phone and see who was on the other end - I could not decide if this was the right thing to do or not.

I asked my father and my husband and they both told me to do what I thought right.

Late that afternoon I decided to telephone the number. Who should answer but a colleague of mine in the travel industry! I had not recognised the number as i never phoned him at home.

I was flustered and a bit embarrassed as i knew him to be a rather down to earth person who would probably think I had gone mad or had too much to drink if I told him my story. i made up some excuse for having to phone him and hung up.

Later we heard about the Lochabie air disaster. My colleague's niece was one of those on board.

I would not have stopped her boarding the plane - it might have caused extra grief to the family if I had told my tale.

Perhaps I did the right thing.

The House in Central Avenue

A house in Harare was haunted over a period of several months by something that gave people 'an odd feeling'.

The house - which no longer exists - was situated in Central Avenue not far from the City Centre.

I knew the house well during the late 1950s as it had been owned by a Greek woman I saw when I went out walking. I got to know her quite well and was sometimes invited in to the house for tea or a cold drink.

I went away from Harare for a while and on returning discovered the house closed up and the garden overgrown.

On making enquiries I discovered that my friend had been murdered in her house. Soon afterwards bells were heard ringing at night in the house and no one wanted to occupy it.

As time went on the house still stood empty and the land was finally sold for development. As the building now on that land is many stories high and has many occupants working there, I have never been able to find out if the bells still ring or people get 'an odd feeling'.

We had to move house!

The house in Coltman Road must have had a sad tale to tell. My husband and I moved into the house shortly after we were married and decided to take as our bedroom a large room at the rear of the house with french doors leading off onto a patio. It was airy and had a view across the garden.

Soon after we took up residence I woke to a feeling of terror. I needed to go to the bathroom but was too afraid to move from my bed. I did not know that my husband had had a similar feeling a few night before and had decided not to go down the corridor to the bathroom to clean his teeth.

We put up with this manifestation for some time - there were nights when all was well - others when we huddled in bed until dawn broke and the feeling left us. What was it? In the end we moved out - not wanting any more stolen sleep!

I wonder if the people who live in the house now experience the same feeling of dread?

A cube of ice?

My father-in-law had gone away on holiday and organised for the furniture in his living room to be sent for recovering. My husband and I went every morning to the house to open up windows and curtains and returned in the evening to close the windows and curtains. On one occasion we walked into the room and near the centre discovered a 'patch' that was colder than the rest of the room. We investigated by moving around and going in and out of the 'cube', reaching up our arms to see if the air was warmer above a certain height and trying to find a shape for the phenomena. it was a definite cube about 6 ft square and six feet high. As we moved around it became colder and colder.

The month was December and the weather was hot and humid. The temperature often reaches 35 degrees or more. The temperature in the 'cube' was icy!

We went about closing windows - although neither of us wanted to go down the passage alone - and left the house before dusk!

It was an extremely creepy experience.

Some year or so later we moved into this same house but never experienced the cube of ice again.

Do we have a poltergeist?

Poltergeists are usually associated with children and teenagers - neither which we have living in our house.

And yet we have a poltergeist in residence.

My husband has a tie pin which is very old and of Indian origin.

He wore it to a wedding some time ago and after the ceremony took off his tie (he hates ties) and inserted the tie pin into the tie which he placed in his pocket. i saw him do this.

On returning home he changed out of his suit - it is far to hot to wear here! Took his tie out of his pocket - and guess what - no tie pin - he thought he had lost it. we looked in every pocket and it definitely was not there.

The suit was worn again - no tie pin in evidence.

We were going out one evening and he went to put on his suit and - the dreaded tie - the tie pin appeared in his pocket!

This is just one of appearances and disappearences that happen on a regular basis in our house.

Tokolosh

1999 seemed to be the year of the Tokolosh - these reports are just some of those that came through that year. Are they real?
In 1999, a woman of in the Bradfield suburb of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, paid an inyanga (n'anga) to exorcise her home. Although of Portuguese descent, the woman had grown up in Africa.
She believed that a neighbour's maid had summoned a tokoloshe that was tormenting her.


The exorcism was apparently successful, and the suspected maid fell ill and had to leave.

In the same year, Mr. K. K. Manyika, director of security for Zimbabwe's parliament, said that he had been attacked by several invisible tokoloshes sent by a disgruntled employee.


In July of that year, six women in Guruve, Zimbabwe, resigned as teachers after accusing a male colleague of using a tokoloshi to bewitch them so that he could rape them as they slept.

Fire Ball in the House

It was late afternoon on a Sunday and I was about to entre the drawing room from the kitchen - which was situated across the hall. I had a tray in my hands and so was moving carefully. i was just about to step into the room when I saw a fire ball come in through the front window - it passed through the glass! The ball, which was about 3 inched in diamiter and seemed to be spinning, bounced off the opposite wall - came back to the wall near the window it had entered by and then exited by a window at the back of the room.

I could not move as I watched it move about the room. There was no sound. The temperature in the room remained the same.

What was it?

Where did it come from?

Ghostly Knocks on the Door

When I first met my husband he lived in a rambling house in one of the northern suberbs of harare. the house must have been built around 1950 and was surrounded by similar buildings on the road.

He recounted to me the story concerning his experiences in his room. His room was a small bedroom half way down a corridor with other doors leading to other similar rooms. The doors were all made of wood and opened inwards.

The furnishings in this particular room were what one would expect in a small bedroom - a bed, bedside table with a lamp, a wardrobe, dresser and a bookcase. nothing unusual.

My husband recounts that he would often be woken in the middle of the night by strange scrapings on the door - coming from the hall. These would change in to knocks and would move from top to bottom of the door and increase in volume.

On opening the door nothing could be seen and all went silent.

After some months of enduring the noise my husband went out and bought a crusifix which he hung in the room. The strange knocks and scarpings stopped.

The Old Grande Hotel

The old Grande Hotel stood in the centre of Salisbury on First Street until it was demolished in the 1970s and replaced by a bank.

This was my first home in the country - in fact in Africa.

My room was on the First Street side, right next to the fourth pillar along the first floor. My room had bed with a mosquito net and was painted white. All the linen was spotlessly white. The door leading to the first floor balcony was painted white and the top section was open with mosquito netting over the open section.

It was October 1960 and hot. When I retired for the night I would close the door but was careful to lock it well. Each morning I would wake to find the door wide open! On some evenings I would hear sobbing coming from the balcony - I looked out onto the balcony on a number of occasions thinking there might be someone in distress on an adjoining balcony - nothing - no one at all. When I stepped onto the balcony the sobbing stopped.

Was the Grande Hotel haunted - I am uncertain. I never felt any feeling of fear - even though I was in Africa first the first time and staying in a room with a door I could not keep locked and closed!

Ghosts galore

This is a copy of an article that appeared in the Herald in October 1980 and refers to my father and my husband and their 'ghost hunting'. I think it was written by Colin Neilson.

Interesting stuff!

" The telephone grew red hot. One little mention in this column (Cabbages and Kings) about the ghosts and the pubic rang us asking the two psychic researchers I mentioned for help.

There was a white woman possessed by an evil spirit. There was a black family who heard heavy boxes Being moved round their house at night. Some young policemen living in a mess found their house definitely haunted.

The two investigators were astounded at the response. Several were desperate. There were people genuinely frightened asking "How much do you charge?" The answer, of course, was nothing.

Some callers' troubles were not psychic but psychological. One Harare man had vivid dreams of being chased by someone carrying an axe. He was told that his problem could probably be dealt with by a nyanga.

Said Leonard, one of the two investigators, "We have enough haunted houses and ghosts to deal with for the next two months. There is a strict code of ethics for psychic investigators."

"Names, addresses and case histories are kept secret. Often very personal details emerge. Sometimes it is the evil thinking a person has generated that brings about strange happenings"

In other instances, such as poltertgiets and similar violent behaviour, it is energy generated by young persons entering puberty that causes articles to break or doors to slam or mischievous happenings.

Often ghosts could be laid but in certain instances an exorcism had en carried out by a priest or minister of religion only to find out that it reappeared. The person who conducted the exorcism needed more than just religious training.

Several African men rang up saying they were not personally troubled but were extremely interested and would like to give help. Leonard said that he would form a committee of people ho could assist the public.

He said he had also had calls from cranks who quoted the Bible and had told him not to dabble with evil spirits. He said he and his fellow investigator were aware of what they are tackling and understood the dangers involved.

He and his friend, a psychic healer (my husband) went to two houses on Saturday and another on Sunday.

There was one case of what appeared to be vampire possession. An African woman said that after the lights were put out at her home there were sounds of a ball bouncing on the ceiling.

Many of the callers said they were so pleased to find someone with whom they could discuss their fears and frightening experiences, witch so many before had casually dismissed as imagination or too much drink.

Leonard said that many so-called psychic happenings had be proved to be someone jumping to conclusions.

One phenomenon that several callers mentioned was a scary sensation of getting into bed and feeling that another invisible person was doing the same. Leonard said that 60% of the calls he received were from Africans.

What happened to Dr Gombera?

Dr Gombera was the president of the True N'angas Association of Central Africa. He went to consuklt as woman n'anga who specialised in treating high blood pressure cases.

He was known to suffer from high blood pressure and had gone to Goromonzi to see this woman - he failed to see her and collapsed at a bus shelter on his way back to Harare and died on the spot.

However was that the end? My father claimed to have seen him and discussed his 'chemist' some week or so after he died. What did they discuss? We do not know but on hearing that Dr Gombera was dead my father did not believe the story - who did he meet? Was it Dr Gombera's ghost? We will never know!

Strange smells!

Over the last week or so we have been experiencing strange odors in the house. They do not seem to be associated with anything cooking or about the area. What are they?

Sometimes it is food cooking - with nothing on the stove. Sometimes it is a strange perfume that we do not recognise. Sometimes it is coffee brewing. I am sure that the house has a poltergeist. Things disappear and reappear where they should not be and now the smells! Strangely enough everything seems very calm and there is no sense of menace. We have no young children in the house and these phenomenon have only appeared after our children left the home. They are both well grown up. What can be the explanation? Both my husband and myself experience these smells or odors at the same time and the experience is the same.

Any ideas?

A picture from the past.

I wrote some time ago about the lady in red who appeared to my husband and I. I have now found a picture of the lady who appeared to us. Consuelo appears on the right - next to her is Peggy Dexter who was the chair lady of the Birmingham City Ballet in Alabama. Picture was taken about 1956.

Do Ghosts Like Music?

I think they do. A few days ago we were listing to classical music - Rachmaninoff to be precise. i had left the room to go to the kitchen. My husband thought he heard my late father's voice and turned his head to see my father, his own father and a very good friend who passed away some time ago. They were standing and listening to the music! The figures were solid and real. Not wanting to destroy the mood and frighten the figures away he did not call me to see them.

Adrian came to the kitchen to tell me when the music had finished and the apparitions had faded away. He said he had had quite a fright to begin with but then settled down to enjoy not only the music but the company of friends and family.

The story of Lesley

Lesley was a soul mate and her passing so prematurely was a very big blow to me, and to all who knew her - her husband told me the following story - although not in Zimbabwe - Lesley was from here so it is relivent.
This was written by her husband:

Well as you know Lesley passed away on 14th March 2006 and within 48 hr of her death I noticed a small rabbit nibbling the spring leaves off the wild Geranium in the garden. This rabbit stayed for some time in the garden and was quite tame but wild all the same. I got quite close to it and I had this strange feeling of familiarity when looking into its eye.
Last year at about the same time we had another rabbit in the garden which stayed and grew to quite a size before moving on.
We got quite attached as some how we drew comfort in the feeling that this was Lesley in spirit coming back in the form of a rabbit to see how we were.
So this year we waited with bated breath to see what would happen.
Sure enough at about 16th March an adult rabbit came into the garden. "last year's one??" and a short while later we had a young one take up residence and gambolling about on the lawn eating choice weeds growing in the lawn.
As I type this it has been basking in the sun at the edge of the driveway close to the shelter of the hedge as an escape route.
So is this coincidence or just our imaginations playing with us.
Sure we live right on the edge of a meadow and the garden is a safe haven as we don't have any dogs or the like to chase it off.
I leave that for you to decide.
Next year we will not be in residence here as Adam will be in Cardiff, Karen in Southampton and I will be in Cape Town so we will not be here to test the theory.
My feeling is that nature would repeat the sequence.

His Spirit Lived On

My father lived in a cottage in our garden for 9 years before his death. He was a constant pipe or cigar (when he could get them) smoker. He had a habit of banging his pipe on a glass ashtray to empty it and this gave out a very distinctive sound. He also watched TV - usually old films throughout the night - sleeping only about 4 hours a night.

Our bedroom looked over his cottage and we were able, when the wind was right and our window open, to hear the TV in the background and the pipe being emptied in the glass ashtray.

After his death we emptied the cottage and it stood empty for some months.

We continued to hear the TV and the pipe noise. The TV connection had been removed. There was no doubt about the sounds - we would wake and hear them distinctly.

A dear friend of ours was moving overseas and did not want to get rid of her lovely furniture so we invited her to put it in the cottage. We placed it so that it could be used.

From the day that the furniture was placed in my father's abode the mysterious sounds stopped and have not been noted since.

Hatfield Revisited

My father went to investigate the Hatfield Haunting. He went with another physchic investigator who felt there was nothing strange about the house. Moses arrived together with his wife Loveness and the wife of the neighbour they were staying with at the time. They were all very nervous. They were later joined by three other ghost hunters.

The ghost hunters walked around the house and announced that the atmosphere was heavy and that they could feel it in the walls.

My father said that all he felt was a headache - it was building up for rain. The ghost hunters said this was because of the haunting not the rain.

Moses then escorted them around the house which was semi detached, not more than six years old and newly painted.

One of the ghost hunters went into the haunted bedroom by himself and he could be heard talking in a low monotone.

Moses told my father that he had spent $300 on trying to rid the house of the ghost and had been to four ngangas. One from Mufakose had not even asked him about the house - but described the hauntings in detail. All the ngangas had said that there were graves underneath. One had said that a nearby neighbour was a witch but that she was not connected with the occurrences. Moses said he was so depressed he would weep at times.

The ghost hunter reappeared out of the darkened bedroom and handed his wife two crucifixes. "She won't come to me. She is afraid of these." he said and went back into the darkness.

Ten minutes later he came out looking pleased. "She touched my face with her hands and tried to close the door. I told her it wasn't right that I should be alone with her in the dark with the door closed."

"She has gone. It has never happened before. I've seen them and heard them but none have ever touched me before."

My father asked where the ghost had gone and was told to the next plane of existence. My father asked how he knew and the ghost hunter told him he felt it.

The ghost hunter assured Moses that the house was cleared and that he could return with his family, "It is no longer haunted."

My father offered to spend a night in the house to assure them the evil presence was gone but the family moved out completely to another area of town. They said they would never go back under any circumstances.

Ghost Hunters in Zimbabwe

During the 1970s in Harare both my father and my husband became 'ghost hunters'.

When one thinks of Africa one does not always think of ghosts - the general perception is that they belong to a more sophisticated society. Ghosts do belong in Africa! They manifest themselves throught the continent.

They don't only appear at night - there is a well documented case in Hatfield, a suburb of Harare, where an apperition of a woman struck the house owner (who we shall call Moses)three times on the face at 11 am in broad daylight. Moses was a civil servant and not prone to exageration. Both he and his wife Loveness had experienced crockery rattling after dark and other strange noises. Apparitions had manifested themmselves and the couple and their small son were scared enough to move out from the house and stay with friends a few streets away.

Mose's teenage brother was sleeping in one of the bedrooms when he woke to find a white figure standing over him. the figure was trying to haul him out of bed onto the floor. He fled the house and refused to return. Mose's said that his brother described the figure as a European woman with large eyes.

This same woman appeared to Moses on another occassion - but this time she was wearing red. Moses called in my father to investigate....to be continued.

The Lady in Red

My husband and I had moved into a modern ground floor apartment in the Avenues section of Harare. The apartment had windows from floor to ceiling and a small glass door leading out onto a balcony and terrace. We kept the light and airy look by curtaining the rooms with heavy sheeting - an off white rough cotton often used as lining for curtains but ideal on its own. We added colour by using Persian rugs on the polished wooden floors.

As we looked out on the tree lined avenue we would close the curtains just before dusk to enable our privacy in the evening - unless we were sitting outside watching the sunset over the city. On this occasion - being a very bright and sunny day - we had closed the curtains early to block out the glare of the sun.

On the occasion that I write about we had done just this. It was dusk when I saw what appeared to be smoke or mist coming from the area around the small door leading to the terrace. I was about to get up from my seat on the sofa opposite the window when I realized that the smoke was turning into a figure. It was a figure of a woman seated, wearing a red dress - a Spanish dancer's dress. She had her hair swept back and tied in a bun at the base of her head. In her hand she held a black fan which she was slowly moving back and forth as if to cool herself.

She turned her head and smiled at me. I recognised the well cut features of a women I had known all my life - who had taught me the art of Spanish Dance. It was Consulo Carmona - the great Spanish dancer - there was no doubt about this. It was the young face I remember seeing as a child.

I turned to my husband to see if he was also seeing the vision and as I did so the figure dissolved into the floor.

My husband had indeed seen the figure - but only in black and white.

Why did she appear to us? The end of her life was tragic. Despite being a model for Russel Flint and being known as one of the greatest classical Spanish Dancers her last years were spent scrubbing floors in an American Hospital to make living. Alone she died in poverty.

Perhaps she just wanted to say hello and show me that she was now at peace and happy again.

Boy with a Dog

Does this look like a haunted house? Well it is.

The tall white figure appears in this room and our other ghost walks through the door seen on the right of this photograph.

When our sons were both young they both started seeing the boy with a dog. The apparition is of a young boy - about 12 years old wearing khaki school shorts and shirt with a floppy hat in the style of the 50s, and holding, on a short lead, a mongrel dog.

He walks through the door and then after reaching the middle of the back of the room behind the chair in the picture - just disappears!

Over the last few years both my husband and i have also seen the boy.

He appears to know where he is going and is quite at home. He is not a frighting ghost and we just accept him.

Some year or so ago i was with a group of people at a club meeting when a young man of about 24 came over and introduced himself.

'I don't suppose you remember me', he said as he introduced himself. 'I used to stay at your house with your children'.

I commented that i did not recognise him but he must have changed over the 12 years that had gone by.

Out of the blue he said, 'Do you still see the boy and the dog? I used to be quite scared of staying in the house as I always saw him'.

No one in the room could have told him the story as no one knew about it - we kept the story quiet thinking people would consider us mad at believing in our ghost!

We still see the boy and his dog and would love to know why they haunt us. Did he perhaps fall down a hole on this property. there is talk of our house being built on what was an old graveyard - i think not - that is a common story to explain ghosts.

One day we may find out his origins and perhaps he will find peace.

A White Figure Appears

Our house is relitively modern - open - lots of windows - no dark crannies - and yet it is haunted. Today I will relate the story of a white figure which inhabits our residence.

It is a tall, thin specter who prefers to stand behind and to the right of who ever he, (I say he as I sense it is male) chooses to appear to. One feels a slight breeze, a presence strong enough to make one's head turn in order to find out who is standing behind you. As you look up towards 'his' face he dissolves and disappears. No one has ever seen his face but all the family has experienced his visitation.

Who can he be? Why does he appear to us? He never appears at any particular junction in our lives - just out of the blue and for no given reason.

There is no strange history about the house we occupy. I have been told there was a graveyard nearby - we have yet to substantiate this - it seems an all too common reason for a haunting. I don't think it is a ghost from a long abandoned graveyard.
I eould love to know his reason for returning.

Yes there are ghosts in Zimbabwe

I have travelled to many lands and seen many things but some of the supernatural experiences I have had in Zimbabwe have been amazing. I will recount these as time goes on and introduce you to other stories that I have experienced elsewhere.