Two South African Stories

Two South African Stories By Jessie Middleton © 2007 by http://www.HorrorMasters.com

The Unseen Hand—The Dejected Kaffir I am indebted for the following true stories to a lady well-known in Johannesburg, to whom the incidents related actually happened. She gave me the stories herself while on a visit to London: “Some years ago we were living in a seaport town in South Africa. The house was built over a bank, and after the architect had designed it my mother suggested certain alterations in portions of the house, which were carried out. When the incident I am going to describe happened, the house had been enlarged and a landing had been thrown into one room to make it larger. “My bedroom had been our night nursery when we were children, so I slept in it without fear, especially as we had lived thirteen years in the house and no one had lived there before us. “One night, however, I woke up suddenly, feeling very queer, and with a conviction that there was somebody in the room. I looked round, and it seemed to me that there was a shadow between my eyes and the pale light of the moon coming in through the cracks of the venetian blinds. The shadow was indefinite in form, but I saw there was something there, and, although terribly frightened, I held my breath and watched it—fascinated. “As I looked it faded slowly away, and the next thing I knew was that my elbow was grasped firmly by an unseen handy I was lying in the middle of the bed, which was next to the wall, with the mosquito net carefully drawn over it, and my elbow was on the wall side, so no living person could have come into the room and taken hold of it. I will draw you a rough plan of the house to make this quite clear and also to explain what follows. “Presently the grasp on my elbow relaxed; there was no sound. Everything was deadly still, and in the silence I heard the church clock strike three. I remember nothing more, and must have fainted. “Next day I said nothing about what had happened—I knew my brothers would roar with laughter and chaff me unmercifully. But my mind was so full of it that the day after that I felt I must tell someone, and I told my mother all about it. She is one of the most level-headed, commonsense people 1 have ever known, and therefore I was surprised when, instead of laughing at me, she looked very serious and questioned me closely. I asked her if she had heard anything that night, as her room was next door to mine, and one of the children slept with her. She said she had, but that she had said nothing about it. Now that I had also had such a strange experience it fitted in, in a most extraordinary way, with one of her own on the same night. “She was sleeping, as I have said, in the next room with my little brother. The room was a very large one, with a door in one corner. She remembered distinctly having locked the door as usual,which she always did, and she went to sleep soon after. “She awoke suddenly, feeling the bed heave under her, and at once thought there must be a burglar in the room. She lay still, and in a few moments it heaved again, and so

violently that it woke my little brother, who sat up. My mother put her hand over his face and told him to lie down, and he went to sleep again. Meanwhile, all was still. Then my mother got out of bed, and as she did so she heard the clock strike three. “She went towards the electric light to turn it on, but before she could get to the light the door, which was standing wide opens hit her full in the face. She lighted a candle, and being very fearless, went all over the house, but everything was perfectly quiet, the front door locked, and not the slightest trace of anyone having come in. She examined every door and window. My father and four more brothers were sleeping in the house and heard nothing. “Whatever it was that gave me that fright, frightened us both. “Most extraordinary of all, I came to Johannesburg eighteen months after to visit some cousins, who had stayed in that same house during the Boer War while we were in England. We were talking one day about ghosts, and I happened to say I had had a funny experience at home one night. “The girls looked at each other, and one said: ‘I bet I know which room it was in. “‘So do I,’ said the other. “They named the room, and said that not one of them would sleep in it, as there were such extraordinary sounds there. When the house was full they had sometimes slept three in a room rather than go into it.” *** “Another strange experience I had was about three years ago. My brother and I were looking out for a house, and we heard of one to let furnished in a small mining town at an absurdly low rent, the owner having gone to Durban. “The rent was so small that I asked my brother if the drains were all right, and he said he had had them thoroughly examined. There were three bedrooms, a sitting-room, dining-room, and kitchen, and a small garden at the back, and it was really a charming little place. We took it for three months and settled in, and for about a month nothing happened. “The room in which what I am going to tell you about took place was my bedroom. I was sleeping alone, my brother and a girl friend of mine occupying the other two bedrooms. “One morning, very early—it was about five o’clock but broad daylight—I woke up suddenly and felt someone was in the room. I was lying on my right side, facing the door of the room, and I saw a Kafir boy leaning up against the wall in a very dejected attitude, just inside the door, as if he was being scolded. I sat up and asked him what he meant by being there, but as I spoke the figure vanished. I got up and searched, but the door was locked, and there was no chimney or other exit except the window, which the boy had not gone near. “Next day I asked my friend—I will call her Mildred—to sleep with me, not telling her what I had seen. “The second morning after, about the same time, the same thing happened. Mildred was asleep, but when I called out involuntarily ‘There it is!’ she woke up, and asked me what was the matter. So I told her, but by that time the figure had vanished.

“We were both very nervous, but continued to sleep in the room, and for a short time nothing happened. One night, when it was pitch dark, I woke up with a feeling that there was something in the room, and I distinctly heard soft footsteps on the linoleum-covered floor. They came close up to the bed and went. “I woke up Mildred and also my brother, and we searched the house thoroughly, but found everything locked and undisturbed. “Next night I told Mildred we would watch. We agreed to stay awake as long as we could, and if I heard anything I would not speak, but squeeze her arm, and if she heard anything she would do the same. “We half opened the door and barricaded it with a rocking-chair and other furniture, through which nothing could pass; and though nothing happened that night, we repeated the experiment the next and following nights. “A few nights later I woke up and heard the footsteps round the foot of the bed. They passed on towards the door. I squeezed Mildred’s arm and she squeezed mine, for the footsteps had awakened her too. I sprang out of bed and turned on the electric light, but there was absolutely nothing to be seen, and the door was still barricaded. “At the end of the second month Mildred and I left, being very glad to get away from the house. My brother stayed on there with a man friend, but they were also very glad to get out of it when the three months were up, as they were constantly hearing strange noises. The kitchen stove was like a big square iron box, and sometimes at night the heavy iron rings on the top of it would rattle loudly, but when they went to look they could see nothing. They stuck it out, but were thankful to leave and to get into a house that was not haunted. “About two years later I read in one of the South African papers that some children had been scared in the neighbourhood of the house—in fact, in the next street—by the apparition of a native.”