From: duncan@unisup1.uucp (Duncan Anderson)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories
Subject: Kariga Phantom Floods
Date: 3 Sep 92 14:50:13 GMT
Organization: Lasernet (pty) Ltd.

My grandfather had a farm at a place called Kariga in the Eastern Cape Province
of South Africa. The place is known for several ghosts (or alleged ghosts).

Now, on this farm there were three farmhouses, two of them vacant because they
had a "past", i.e. haunted. One of the haunted houses was at the bottom of the
valley next to the riverbed. (The area is very arid, so for most of the year
the river is just that, a bed).

There were some naartjie (tangerine) orchids nearby.

One day, around 1925 or so, my father and his three brothers were picking
naartjies. There were a lot of naartjies, so the idea was that they were going
to stay in the old farmhouse overnight, instead of walking back the 5 miles to
their father's house. 

The structure of these old farmhouses was very simple: a passage leading from
the front door to the back dooor, with rooms leading off on either side.

So when the boys had finished gorging themselves on naartjies and had decided
to go to sleep, Hilton, the eldest went and made sure that both the front and 
back doors were bolted. The reason for bolting the doors was not a fear of 
the unknown at all - there had been a leopard in the vicinity a couple of days
before, and they had seen its spoor.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, at around midnight, Dudley, my father's twin
brother woke up and said that the door was open. Hilton got up and had a look
and found that both the front and back doors were open. He closed them, thinking
that perhaps he had forgotten to bolt them earlier. He was half asleep.

The next day they continued with the fruit picking and slept over again.
The same thing happened, but this time Hilton decided that it was peculiar,
because he had made a point of double checking the bolts earlier.

The next night they all decided to stay awake all night and see what happened.
At around midnight (none of them had watches, so this is uncertain) they heard
a noise. It sounded like distant oxen and the creaking sounds of an oxcart, with
the sounds of the driver whipping the beasts and whistling and so on.
The sounds got closer and closer until it sounded like they were coming from 
the track on the other side of the riverbed. Then it sounded as if the oxen and
cart had entered the riverbed, because the wheels made a different sound in 
sand. The next thing, they all heard this loud roaring noise and the sound of
rushing flood waters and lowing oxen and screams for help.

Then the sound died away, but a great rush of air blew through the house, and 
the doors were open.

By this time all the boys were shivering under their beds, even Hilton.

The next morning they rushed back to their father and told him the story.
He then told them that the old farmhouse had been deserted ever since a
terrible tragedy about 30 years before when a family of tenants had been on
their way home after a "nagmaal" (a religious service) and that, as they were
crossing the river bed in their ox cart, a flash flood had come and destroyed
them utterly.

And now, on a lighter note,
as a young man, my grandfather used to take his horse and go a'courting over
the valley. He stayed out quite late one night, and on his way home he was
cantering along in a happy way, probably dreaming of the fair maiden he had
been visiting when, all of a sudden, he heard a horse rider behind him. He 
stopped, and the rider stopped. It was pitch dark, so he couldn't see anyone.
He called out, but there was no reply. By this time he was getting pretty
nervous, because he had heard the stories about the "strange horseman with
the pale face and the great black stallion" (I'll tell that one another time)
and while he was a strapping 18 year old lad, he was just as much of a
scaredy cat as the rest of us. He decided to hoof it. To his horror, the rider
was behind him again - he could hear its hooves.

He galloped all the way home and put away the horse and rushed inside and bolted
the door behind him.

Anyway, the next day all was revealed. It had rained the day before, and his
high stepping horse had been collecting mudclods in its shoes and tossing them 
behind into the road. As the clods fell, they were making the sounds of the
phantom rider's horse's hooves!

He felt a right twit.


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Duncan Anderson                           ||+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Lasernet (Pty) Ltd                        ||+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
phone: +27 11 8874220                     ||******************+++++++++++++++
email: duncan@unisup1.UUCP                ||+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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